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Aaron’s AAR (Day 1)
Mike Voigt Match
Tehachapi, CA Sept 13-14
First, I’d like to thank everyone that put in time, money, prizes, thought, sweat and huge amounts of effort to make the match a really exciting and fun event. This includes Mike Voigt and his team, the Loop Ranch caretakers, all of the spotters, scorers, setup/teardown, the barbecue and food cooks, trash detail, the young lady we call cookie girl who place giant cookies on our plates, and who I also saw taking care of a large trash bin, the young men delivering much welcomed supplies up and down the stages such as cold water and Gatorade, and on and on. And of course all the sponsors, the presenting sponsor Surefire, and the many others including: Manners; Spartan; Bartlein; Viking Tactics (nice slings!); Nightforce; Swarovski; Short Action Precision; MGM Targets; Hornady; Safariland; Leupold; USO; XLR; GAP; LMT; Kelbly’s; Remington; Victor Company (Shout-out to Michael Victor); Vortex; and Vu and the Norcal Club, whom I heard several of the spotters comment about the quality of spotters brought down for them to use. I know I’m missing some others, for instance I was lucky enough to pick up a Duek offset sight, really cool prize.
The Loop Ranch was awesome, we saw only a portion of it. It is around 44,000 acres (if it were square a hair over 8 miles each way). I asked Len (I think that is his name) how many people it takes to run the ranch, he said 3. I guessed way more than that. With the drought, growing the grass needed to feed the cows is quite a challenge, and they haul a lot of water to keep the herd going. I saw two cows, the rest were in another fenced area. He says they hire some extra help when they need.
Esteban left his truck at my place, and I drove up and back. Funny to have 3 silver Tacoma’s at the same house (my wife Amelia just got her brand new one the previous week). From the hotel (La Quinta in Tehachapi) I hitched a ride with Evin and Esteban. From there, Evin and Esteban were on a different squad than me, so I collected up with Jennifer, Jeff, Henry, Danny and Ben on Squad 2. Thanks to Jennifer for driving me and Jeff around in their clean Nissan Rogue. It was really dirty when we were done…We had a missing squad member, David didn’t make it for some reason. Shooting order was: Jeff, Jennifer, Henry, Me (Aaron), Danny, and then Ben. We were to switch first shooter each stage to the next in line.
Once squadded up and collected into a semi-organized line of vehicles, we got going to the shooting area around 9am. The match was set up for 10 stages each day, 5 or so before lunch and the rest after. Match rules were explained. All targets are steel. Practice fire safety. Carry all weapons muzzle down. DQ for unsafe gun action (ND or pointing a loaded weapon towards anyone). All targets painted white. Not explained (found out later) was that in general, 1 point per hit. The only exceptions were KYL and the pistol spinner.
Equipment:
I was running my 243 with the extra heavy barrel. My rifle weighs 18 pounds and is really front heavy. Has 2,200 rounds through it at the start of the match, and I shot exactly 130 rounds (including the 2 rounds I shot at the zero check). Jennifer was running a 6 creed, Jeff, Ben, and Henry had 308 and Danny a 6.5 creed if I remember right.
As Squad 2, we started on Stage 2 Miracle Mile, the 1760 yard (1 mile exactly) shot to an 18” X 24” plate. Still mid-morning, little wind. None of us hit it, so it is aptly named. I ran my dope, calculated 22 mil with a 22° down angle (nearly 1000 foot elevation change to the target). I didn’t see my first impact, so I pointed lower after my second shot and spotted the splash another 4 or 5 mils down. Correcting with my last 3 shots I danced around the plate, getting close but no hit. We called corrections for each other on this stage and walked the other shooters in, close but close counts for nothing. By the end of the match and 71 shooters and 355 shots expended the result was 6 hits. James (socal guy on another squad) hit it twice for high score on that stage. Congrats!
Stage 3 Down and Over was a 6 target, 2 shots per target stage (12 shots total). This was used as a tie-breaker using the shooters stage time if needed. Jeff and I both hit 5, Ben hit 4, Jennifer and Henry got 2 and Danny got 1. Ranges were from 495 to 988 yards.
Stage 4 The Rack was the highlight of my Saturday. The 4 plate descending plate rack at 741 yards across a canyon. Shoot in descending order twice for 8 shots. I hit it 4 times, aiming about 1 mil left. I racked the focus a couple of times and saw a steady mirage and estimated about 5-8 mph. I’m told this was one of the highest scores. None of the others on squad 2 got a hit. The problem was that the target was against a tree and brush line and we couldn’t see impacts. Other squads had shooters that tried aiming at the berm in front to get a correction, then shoot at the rack, however that proved unsuccessful for most for some reason. Probably a switchy wind, but we’ll never really know.
Stage 5 Run Forrest Run was to engage 4 targets with 1 shot each at one position, move to another firing position about 20 yards away and repeat, and move again another 20 yards away and repeat. Total of 12 shots ranging from 368 to 482 yards. I pulled one, and just missed on some others so I hit 7 out of 12. Danny got 5, Jeff got 3, Jennifer and Henry 2 each and Ben got 1.
Stage 6 Pick Up Sticks. 5 targets, 2 shots each for 10 shots total. This was with rickety tripods made from plastic garden poles tied together with rubber strap. The RO’s let us screw around with the sticks for a few minutes to figure out how to deal with them. If I remember right I shot first this stage. I found a gopher hole for the far stick (as suggested by the RO’s), then wrapped my right leg on the near stick and held the last stick to the left with my left hand and sling to tension it all with some shoulder pressure on the rifle. I hit 6 out of 10 and feel like I could have hit a couple more. Danny got our squad high score of 7, Ben, Jennifer and Henry hit 4 and Jeff got 1.
We split for lunch, and were treated to a really good pulled pork sandwich, cranberry salad, cookie and some refreshing drinks. Back to shooting on Stage 7 Coyote Rocks. 4 rifle targets from 275 to 350 yards and two pistol targets, each with 2 shots. I had the high score of 9 (out of 12 possible), Jennifer got 8, Jeff and Henry 6, Danny 3 and Ben 1.
Stage 8 The Grassy Knoll. 4 targets, 2 shots each ranging from 545 to 771 yards. Danny had the high score of 4, Ben and I both got 3. The rest zeroed. The wind had picked up now that it was afternoon, and we were not quite able to deal with it correctly yet.
Stage 9 Danny’s Tree, 5 targets 2 shots each from 489 to 760 yards. Danny had our high score of 5, Jeff, Jennifer and I got 3, and sad zero for Henry. The stage was named for a reference tree out near the target line.
Stage 10 Heliport Road. 4 targets from 589 to 745 yards, 2 shots each. This was on a large pad at the end of the road for the stages. Relatively windy, Danny did a great job with 4 hits, Ben got 3 (with a 308 no less), Jennifer and I got 1 each and the others zeroed the stage.
Back to stage 1 The Gate, the last stage for us. I was first, and over-gamed my setup, and ran out of time trying to get my backpack hooked to the gate as a shooting rest. In retrospect (my favorite way of kicking myself in the ass) I should have changed my bipod to the 9-13”, and place it on my backpack to get the up angle needed. Targets ranged from 542 to 710 yards. Danny got 1 (high score for our squad) and the rest of us zeroed the stage.
We got back to the staging area, and shortly thereafter a great steak dinner was ready. I asked the lady serving me if I could have a smaller steak and she “nope, we don’t do that!” It was really good, along with the sweet corn, baby carrots and peach cobbler.
Day one totals for our squad were: Jeff 18, Jennifer 20, Henry 14, Me (Aaron) 38, Danny 30 and Ben 18.
Day 2 AAR to follow.
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Last edited by thegiff on Thu Sep 18, 2014 5:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
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