Bullseye Resurrection

After a 50 week hiatus for many reasons, I’m back to shooting Bullseye.

After a 900 L-Match this morning, we shot a Bullseye 22 caliber 900 at the short line and, while my scores are down a full classification from what they were a year ago, the rudiments were all in evidence in what I did. With practice and perseverance, I have every confidence my scores will return and, eventually, exceed what I was shooting a year ago.

Slow Fire on those tiny B-16s can be, as anyone knows who has shot them, distressing. The X-ring is the size of a nickel but the fact that I never hit it was of no real concern. Instead, I was simply pleased with the mid-80s point scores.

I had feared worse.

As you can probably tell, however, the Slow Fire portion of the National Match Course (NMC) had a couple of “Maggie’s drawers”. It was at that point that I realized I was having trouble concentrating and the dreaded, “When is it going to break? Oh God, make it break NOW!” explains one of the misses. The other? Well, I called most of the shots but some just happened anyway. The second miss was one of those “WTF” shots.

The Timed and Rapid Fire of the NMC were nice with my first Bullseye Xs in a very long time. The L Match Xs I’d shot earlier in the day’s first 900 were very nice but cheap by comparison. These Bullseye Xs, on the other hand, were the “real McCoy”.

Nice to see “real Xs” again!

And you may notice that the X count increases slightly from then on. My group size was slowly shrinking toward the center of the target and I was shooting more and more Xs. Unfortunately, the frequency of the “Oops” increased along with the ache in my shooting arm so the outliers offset the group tightening.

Fatigue had taken its full toll by the Rapid Fire match and my “hold” was carrying the dot well outside the black. The best I could do was focus on the essentials and repeat my trigger mantra, “Squirt the Clown,” while watching to see where the break would happen.

It was a new beginning.

And I’m pleased.

It will take time and patience but I am still convinced as I was a year ago that, somewhere in the future, a Master Outdoor classification will be mine.

See you on the line, my friends!