Canadian Airgun Forum

One more thing - someone left a travel mug on the course. Let me know if it is yours.

Thanks,
Rob

I mentioned the 50-50 shootout in the match report but just looked at the targets again today and thought that I would think on this a bit more.

There where 2 targets set out: a pig with a 1/2 inch Hit Zone at 25 yards, and a crow with a 1 inch HZ at 45 yards. The Troyer factor which calculates difficulty based on size and distance rates both of these at the very top of the acceptable limit and categorizes them as "Expert" level targets.

Six shooters signed up and most seemed to think that the farther target looked easier.

In the initial round 14 shots were fired at the near target with 7 knock downs, 12 shots at the far target with 5 K's.
2 Shooters were tied after making 3 out of 5 so a shoot-off followed with Mike P making 2 of 3, and Jeff H making 1 of 3 (all 6 of these shots were on the far target.

Interesting that the totals for each were 7/14 for the near and 8/18 for the far = pretty much what the same Troyer factor would predict.

Pictures of the targets are below. What made me think about this was the marks on the face of the target plus one on the paddle of the pig. The breeze was starting to come up as these shots were taken - you can see that most misses were on the left (the breeze was from right to left) except for the two wild high and right on the pig that were my last 2 shots (not sure how I yanked them both like that...but I digress).

The targets were freshly painted before these shots and it is interesting to see on the pig that the center of the paddle took a beating, but there are also 2 other spots that took a hit from a split (a pellet that hit the edge of the hit zone). You can see an impact mark at about 11 o'clock on the reducer that likely caused the mark on the paddle at 5 o'clock, and similarly a fragment from one of the face hits at 3 o'clock likely caused the small chip to the left side of the paddle.

I think of 2 things when I look at these targets: first how frustrating it can be to catch the edge of the hit zone and actually see a mark on the paddle but the target does not drop. Sometimes shooters believe a target is defective until you zoom in and see that there is a nick in the paint on the edge of the HZ. The second thing that I think of is the difference between a nice grouping and an accurate shot. We all want both, but you can have a tight group that is not in the HZ and still not knock down the targets.

Anyway, just my thoughts after looking at some paint chips.
Rob27