High-power clinic

This past weekend I attended the high-power clinic they put on at Central Jersey every year. This was a lot of fun and pretty informative.

The clinic was run like a high-power match, except in reverse order and with very loose limits for the timed-fire stages. In a match, the order would be slow-fire standing, rapid-fire sitting, rapid-fire prone, and slow-fire prone. The clinic does these in reverse order so that the shooters can start with the most stable position. Before each stage, one of the volunteer instructors would go over the basics of the stage, including how to set up the sling, how to get into a good position, etc. We'd then get one relay on the line, let them shoot, and then get the second relay on the line to shoot.

I had a lot of fun, although I'd need a lot of practice with the prone and sitting positions to get things right. (The light-rifle league I shot over the winter was shot off-hand, so I have the standing position down pretty well.) I also figured out pretty quickly that I need to work on my sling setup. I bought my M1A last year from one of the members of my club, and I was using the sling as he'd set it up. I think his arms might be a bit shorter than mine. The sling was a bit too tight across the back of my hand in the prone position. Whereas the instructor had said that you should be able to hold that position comfortably for the 20 minutes you have for the slow-fire stage, my hand started hurting a bit after a few minutes, and some of my fingers were asleep by the time I got out of position.

When I started shooting that light-rifle league last fall, my intention was to get ready for shooting high-power. Then I got caught up shooting bullseye and have been focusing on that. Bullseye is certainly a more convenient sport, as you can get in lots of practice indoors over the winter and in bad weather, and you don't have to find some place where you can shoot at 200 yards. It's also a bit cheaper per round (although you end up shooting more rounds.) But there's something about shooting a battle rifle at a target 200 or 300 yards away that you're just not going to get from shooting a pistol at 25 or 50 yards.

Oh, and now I can actually say what the view from Central Jersey is like. :-)