NRA F-Class Championship: Walt's Day 3 Write-up Competitive Shooting

It's day three at the NRA's F-class National Championships at the Winnaquah Gun Club range in Lodi, Wisconsin, and NRA Board member H.J. "Walt” Walter is once again serving as our NRAblog.com correspondent:

Today was 600-yard day at the F-class nationals. Three matches with five relays were fired. There were 34 F-T/R shooters as well as 83 F-Open shooters.

Today’s weather was almost a repeat of yesterday. The temperature was once again in the low 40s; however, the winds were howling just a little bit more that yesterday. Many competitors were exasperated and had no coach to help, as this was individual match day. Most points were lost today due to the inability of the competitors to keep up with the wind changes.

In Match #1, Brad Farrell, an F-T/R shooter, led the way firing a 150-9x (with a perfect score being a 150-15x). In the F-Open category Shawn Ahrens had a perfect 150-13x. During the firing of this match the wind cooperated and was not bad to neither read nor keep up with the changes. Beginning with Match #2 the wind was a different story. It picked up in velocity and was tricky at times to read and keep up with the changes. At the completion of firing Dale Rathwell had the high F-T/R score firing a fine 148.7x. Open shooters Larry Bartholome, John Gaines and Bryan Otey all chimed in firing a perfect 150 with 10x.

Match #3, the final match of the day, saw the wind calm down and be more forgiving on the shooters. However, only Rick Jensen fired a perfect score firing a 150-8x.

In the aggregate for today’s 600-yard matches consisting of Matches #1, #2 & #3, F-T/R shooter Danny J. Biggs, firing 149-7x, 149-5x and 146-7 triumphed over all other F-T/R shooters, establishing an aggregate score of 444-19x. In the F-Open category, Robert Bock scored 150-9x, 150-6x and 149-7x respectively to end the day with and aggregate of 449-22x and was declared match winner.

Gong into the first day of 1000-yard matches the F-Open shooters have 15 competitors bunched up less than 7 points off the pace. F-T/R shooters on the other hand have only 4 competitors within 7 points of the leader. Tomorrow and Saturday will be the 1000-yard phases of the national championship and anything is possible but those within the 7 points of the leader are in the best position to overtake the leader.

Don't go anywhere! Tomorrow Walt will once again report live from Lodi, Wisconsin.