18/01/2026
Back and White Shoot - sorting the boys from the men!
We are always trying to come up with new shoots that are suitable for our range and membership. Today's shoot was "calendared" as a 223 speed and accuracy challenge, and as always we welcome any calibre folks arrive with - and arrive they did, 20 shooters, roughly half visitors.
We must always validate zero at 100M on our range, that done we moved back to the 200Y mound. Our "Eric Cortina Blackjack Challenge " plate-set was hung with each altenating plate painted either black or white . . . So 12", 8" 4" painted black, 10", 6", 2" painted white. Plates hung at 205M.
Two shooters on the mound, prone with whatever rest/bipod etc they fancied. Each with 5 rounds in the magazine, 5 more handy, must be loose, i.e. not in a second mag. On "GO" shooter A starts on the 12" plate and shoots the black plates in order, shooter B starts on 10" white and shoots them in order. Once they have hit all their first colour they start on the other, so A having nailed the 4" black goes to the 10" white and finishes on the 2" white, shooter B finishes on the 4" black. First to finish wins the round and advances, loser to a repercharge.
It took a well zeroed rifle in cool hands to nail all targets in 10 rounds, although there were a number of possibles of 6 rounds shot. Wind was quite light, but enough to drift a 223 down the side of the 2" if the shooter wasn't concentrating.
It was a tonne of fun, with some early surprise eliminations, one slip up running your bolt was often enough to let the other guy through. By the time we got to the semi finals the visiting shooters had knocked out all our members except Club president Ben . . . Damm. And then he was gone too and we had a final between Oscar ( half moa Tikka Tony's son) and Callum, a visiting hunter /pest guy. Callum had run out of ammo so was shooting my 2nd rifle (I'd also run out of ammo for my main gun, it got through 75 rounds with various visitors), and that at the end of the day was the difference, a hot barrel and unfamiliar rifle caused a couple of misses on the 2" and Oscar kept his cool to shoot a "possible" with 6 rounds for 6 hits to claim victory - Tikka to the fore!.
So Oscar, who has only used a rifle a few times showed up not only his Dad but all of us! We'll definitely be running this shoot again, a tonne of fun.
