The Think Tank

Big Foot at Redding Trail Shoot (2012)

Update 5/24/2012:

I kept myself pretty busy while I was in Redding and didn’t get around to updating this post at the time.

I shot pretty well on the weekend, although I was a couple of points under where I would have liked to have been each day.  But, given that it was my first time, I felt I did OK overall… with the exception of one target.  I suffered what I have coined a Compound Brainfart, because it came from two different angles.

I was shooting at a 19 yard skunk target, and the first mistake I made was mis-setting my sight.  I set to 37.5 instead of 32.5, which means I shot really high.  Fortunately I still managed to catch the top of his tail, which on that target was only down one point.  I really got lucky there because a mis-set sight usually results in a zero.

The trouble was, I was ticked off that I had done that because I was trying to be very careful not to mis set my sight.  (That is something I did in almost every field shoot last year.)  I also should point out that there were eight targets to choose from on the bail, and only two of them had arrows in them at this point.  So, being distracted and upset, I pulled up, settled in on the spot, and drilled a dead center bullseye… in a different target than the one I had tagged in the tail.  There aren’t a lot of rules in Redding, but one of them is that both arrows have to be in the same target.  So I got a zero on that one.

That was a major bummer, but I guess shit happens.  Aside from that I did OK.  If had been able to get a muligan on that damn skunk, I would have come in with a 1515, which would have been good enough for 8th place.  (Out of about 200.)  As it was, I shot a 1503 and came in 18th.

Original Post:

Mom and I are down in Redding so I can shoot in the NFAA National Marked 3D Championships.

We have some photos from the shoot and from Lasson National Volcanic Park, but I haven’t gotten around to posting them yet.  Hopefully I will get to that over the weekend.

I shot pretty well today, although I dropped a few at the end of the day which took me from really good to just acceptable.  I wound up dropping 8 points on the day.  I feel like I could have been down only 4-5, but I struggled with the wind and the hills on the last few targets.  Oh well.

I don’t know placement so far, but I’ve only spoken to one person in my division so far who shot better than I did.  I figure I’m probably in the top ten, and maybe even somewhere around 5th, but that is nothing more than a total guess.

Check back for more details over the weekend.