Friday March 10, 2006 300, 500 and 600 Team Practice

For our second practice day at short range we decided to proceed with a dress rehearsal for the Pairs Match. We were particularly interested in seeing how we would fair with the timing. For people unfamiliar with the sport here is a thumb nail sketch of a pairs shoot. The shooters work together, one firing and the other watching for changes in conditions, altering the sights and keeping the bookwork. When the first person finishes they switch roles and the first firer now becomes the director for the second persons shoot. There is an overall time limit for the pair to shoot their required number of shots on score. At the distances we fired today it is 35 minutes for a total of 20 shots on score. Part of the key is to prepare for both shoots as much as possible in the preparation period that precedes the start of each distance in the match. The second is to transition roles quickly after the first firer finishes. The final key is to clear the firing point quickly and move back to the next distance and get set up to do it all again. Pat and I had a dandy 300 yard shoot, 100x100 fired in 17 minutes flat. For a first run as a pair you could not ask for better. The 500 and 600 also went very well. We executed our changes cleanly and although we dropped a few points the process went so smoothly that we should be able to focus mostly on learning the range and not having to rush things in order to finish within the allowed time. A good day but alas no photos. Cheers, Jim.