Just made it home from the clinic—Wow, am I tired! This past four days didn’t involve much sleep, because if we were not shooting or spotting we were talking long range shooting with specialty handguns. We even set-up a loading bench in our motel room and loaded into the early morning hours, which was a sight to behold. The clinic is the biggest shooting fix for specialty handguns aficionados that I can imagine. The range, which is East of Alliance, NE, is a dream world for long range shooting. Metallic Rams @ 500 meters, turkeys at 385 and pigs at 300. We eventually put a number of pigs @ 500 meters because hitting the rams at 500 meters became boring. Then, there is a number of fixed and or hanging steel targets all the way out to 1,000 yards. The 3-inch angle iron, which is constantly begging for someone to split a bullet on it, is located at 660 yards. We had a smaller group this year because of some last minute cancellations and no shows. We had seven in all (including Don). The frustration is that we didn’t have a lot of new shooters that would have developed abilities and accomplished things they had not thought possible. The joy was, everyone there was able to shoot to their heart’s content. We had quite an age span from 9 years old (my son) to the old master shooter himself. Everyone there split (not just hit) a bullet on the angle iron with a handgun with the exception of my son. Some split a bullet more than once and with a number of different handguns. My boy didn’t try the angle iron since shooting for him is relatively new. He shot a 22 rifle for the first time four weeks ago, but did he ever make a transformation this week. He shot around 400-500 rounds with his little scoped chipmunk rifle and he also shot 2 specialty handguns (sscoyote’s 17 Mach IV XP-100 and my MOA Maximum in 260 Remington). He regularly connected at 200 yards on a steel coyote with sscoyote’s 17 Mach IV and also hit several pigs at 300 meters with both guns. But the shooting that made this dad so proud was on Thursday morning when he decided he wanted to go for rams @ 500 meters with the 260 MOA. We had earlier in the week modified the MOA to work with Don’s rest system. Wednesday late afternoon and Thursday mornings shooting conditions were about as perfect as you can get in Alliance. Anyway, he hit the rams fifteen times with fifteen shots (no misses in between) at 500 meters with a MOA Maximum in 260 Remington he had never shot before until this week with a 3-12 Burris LER set on 12 power. Just in case you haven’t figured it out, the MOA is not for sale! If a young beginner can accomplish this, just think, what each and everyone of you are capable of doing if you have learn the basics of long range shooting, have an accurate specialty handgun, and have a good rest system. My boy could not have shot with this kind of consistency in my opinion without the Bower Rest System. My 6.5-284 was not able to stretch it’s muscles since I am still in breaking in the barrel. I was able to hit a 500 meter ram without being sighted in on my third shot during my first 3-shot and clean process. At least it got to taste Alliance steel this week. The Patriot had a wonderful clinic, but more on that later. There is a field shoot being planned in Laramie, Wyoming this fall with the possibility of a clinic the week before the field shoot. When all this firms up, I will give the details. I seriously doubt I will be able to make it because of limited vacation time. Marc Sheehan and myself worked together this year to make the Alliance Clinic a reality. I would be glad to share with anyone what it takes to make a clinic happen in your area. There is a lot of preparation and work that will need to be done depending on the range and how much help you have. The biggest problem is getting Don (health permitting) and all of his stuff to your area and having one (possibly two shooters depending on the size of the clinic) experienced person(s) who can help co-teach/co-coach, especially at the range. There is more, but weariness is overtaking me and I am going to lay down and take a nap. Feel free to ask questions, I will answer to the best of my ability.
Ernie
