500 Meter Handgun Match Prior to the World Championship

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therose7
Target Painter
Posts: 25
Joined: Thu Apr 14, 2011 4:38 pm
IHMSA Member#: 15213

500 Meter Handgun Match Prior to the World Championship

Post by therose7 »

Hey all,
I plan to put on a 500 meter ULTRA (Ultra Long Target Range Association) handgun silhouette match at Avenal, California on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the World Championship begins on Friday at the Los Angeles Silhouette Club. I have been putting on 500 meter handgun matches since 1984. It's a serious challenge and a lot of fun.

Avenal is about three hours north of the Los Angeles Silhouette Club range. The range is located within 5 miles of the Avenal exit off I-5.

Those coming in on I-80 and going south on I-5 will pass right by the range.

This will be a set your own targets match like most ULTRA matches.
The rules have been the same since the mid 1980s.
Pistols must be IHMSA legal and are shot in the same categories as IHMSA: Production, Revolver, Unlimited, Standing, and, oh, yes, Half Size.
You think you're good at silhouette? Try shooting half size targets at the rifle distances; chickens at 200 meters, pigs at 300 meters, turkeys at 385 meters and rams at 500 meters.

All categories are shot either scoped or iron sights. They scopes are not shot against iron sights. They are separate categories.

There will be no entry fees and no trophies. The only fees will be $5.00 a day for shooting and $5.00 a day for camping on the range and another $5.00 if you run an air conditioner in your mobile home. There are several hook ups, and there is a motel about 15 miles north on I-5 at Harris Ranch.

If you win a category, I will sign your card and write "Match Winner" on it. If you break a record, I will have the card bronzed and mounted. These records are serious, and some of them have stood for quite some time. I would have trouble believing it if I had not been the spotter, but the late, great Ted Zysk set the Iron Sights Half Size 500 meter record in Yuma, Arizona at the Cholla Challenge in 2002. He shot 30x40. If shooting was not a pariah sport in the eyes of the major media, Ted would not just have been mentioned in the back pages of some shooting magazines. He would have been on the cover of Sports Illustrated that week. No one has come within five targets of that, and a lot of top shots have tried.

There is one significant difference besides the longer distances. The firing period time is longer. The load period is the same, 30 seconds, but the firing period is two minutes and thirty seconds.

Targets must fall over to count as a hit. Rams are set back from full foot but not quite to topple point. You have to hit them fairly hard to knock them over. No 6mm will do this reliably, but 6.5mm with 140s moving at the relatively higher velocities possible for a handgun will do it. I shoot 168gr. Sierra BTHPs at 1950 fps out of my Production MOA, and I never have lost a ram at Avenal. Ditto 142gr. Sierra BTHPs out of my 6.5 BR.

If this interests you, please email me with your questions at <therose7@earthlink.net>
I hope to see you there.

As the man used to say, "Let's shoot silhouettes."

Thanks for reading this,
Eric King

=^..^=
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