Pictars from the Palma range

[Fresnel]

So I spent all weekend pulling targets at the AZ State Palma Championships today. Palma is a match shot at 800-900-1000 yards, 15 shots at each position. BY "pulling targets", I mean I was downrange in the target pits, scoring the targets for the shooters so they don't have to. The shot comes in and hits the berm, you run the target down, put a 6" disk with a peg in it in the bullet hole, put an 8" red disk in one of six spots around the edges to signify the score of the shot, put a little piece of adhesive paper (a "paster") over the old bullet hole, and run the target back up. A good turnaround time is five seconds from the time the bullet hits the berm to the time the target touches top again.

As a note, the X ring is 12" in diameter, and each additional ring around it adds on another 12" in diameter. The score disk is exactly 6" in diameter.

After the first guy took his shots at th 800 yard mark, I just had to take pictures. Unfortunately all I had was my phone, but it has a decent camera on it. The course of fire was 15 shots and unlimited sighters. He fired only two sighters. They were both tens. His final score that round was 150 with 13 Xs.



He also managed to hit the score disk five times in a row. Had to take a picture of that. The one that just nicked the edge wasn't him, that was there when I got the disk.



The other two shooters on my target didn't do as good as he did, unfortunately, but at the end of the 800 yard stage, the target was pretty torn up. Unfortunately, I forgot to take the disk out when I shot this, so you can't really see the X-ring.



At the end of the 900 yard strings, it was far worse. The first guy held his own back here too. Perfect 150 again, but I lost count of Xs here.



And at the end of the 1000 yard string, my target was in shambles. I could hardly put the spotter in the X ring most times, as it would rip the paper around the hole. At this point, the first shooter had fired a 148, making his final score for the day a 448/450. ******** impressive.



Keep in mind now, that this rifle does not use telescopic sights or a bipod. There is no benchrest here. This rifle is supported in the prone position by two arms and a shooting sling. The sights weren't iron, unfortunately. The front sight is a magnifying aperture lens, and the rear is an adjustable aperture. It was a bolt-action .308. This man was not ex-military, he was a civilian, as were 75% of the people on the range. There was hardly anyone on the range that day below retirement age. One of the few who was, though, won the match. He used to shoot high power with us, and he could operate the bolt on his TUBB2000 faster than most of us could recover from the recoil on our AR-15s.

Just a reminder of what a determined individual can do with a few years of practice, and a reminder that old people can still be dangerous even if you CAN outrun them.  

[Buki_Actual]

He might have made a good Marine sharpshooter