A buddy and I went out to "Best of the West" in Liberty Hill today and had a ton of fun.

I brought my custom 260 rem, and my friend was bringing his new custom 6XC.

It was windy; 15-25 MPH from our 4 o'clock . We'd been shooting at 750 yard steel gongs (and successfully hitting) when we were abruptly confronted by the range officer (RO) and told that "only those who qualified in front of him were allowed to shoot beyond 250 yards". It was only our second time there, and we were just ignorant to the un-posted rule that we had to qualify to shoot beyond that distance. Needless to say he was not pleased, and immediately grabbed his spotting scope/tripod, posted up next to us and told us we'd have to qualify on the spot. (mind you there were six or seven other folks we knew, who were standing four feet behind us observing.)

My buddy and I both looked at each other and gulped; it was time to put up or shut up. We'd only just created our drop charts that day, and were both using relatively untested hand-loads. From our current 750 zero, we dialed the scopes back to 200, came up a half minute, and each scored three successive hits at 250. We were then instructed to dial our scopes to our 500 yard zero, and engage at that distance. my buddy went first; nailed them, thee in a row. I hit my first two, but the third missed by 2". The RO said it was an increase in wind that had caused the miss and told me to shoot again. The 4th center punched it.

He qualified both of us on the spot. I let out a sigh of relief . Hopefully you guys can appreciate the pressure and relative difficulty of that.

After all the excitement, we adjusted back out to 750 for a while, finally ending up on the 1000 yard targets. I scored 7 hits at 1000 yards out of 12 rounds (32 minutes of elevation to reach that far BTW). I'm sure I'd of done better if it weren't for all the wind.

It was a really fun day;I just had to share

Good story and good shooting!

I was shooting a 3D tournament one day and not on my best game. To make matters worse, I had gotten teamed up with some Pro shooters. Just as I was fixing to take a ~50 yard quartering shot on an Antelope, somebody hollered STOP! A local TV crew was filming bits of the tournament and wanted to film my shot. Toughest target of the day. Shooting with a Pro team. Not shooting all that good myself. A huge TV camera lense visible in my peripheral vision over my left shoulder. I can only claim divine intervention when I caught a solid 8; almost a 10. When the reporter interviewed me on camera, I was still so rattled I don't remember what we said. I never knew if it made it on the air but it pretty much took all the air out of me.

Excellent job

Wow! That is some great shooting! Thanks for sharing the story!

That funny. I went there for the first time to take a pistol class and was asking about the 1000yrd range. We talked for about 10 mins and not once did they say anything about qualifying for it. I would be nervous as all get out too. Great job!

Thats awesome, I would like to learn about more long range shooting someday.
Russell

WHen we had annual qualifications I once said we were using a timer and told the shooters X amount of seconds to shoot. Messed them up so bad they had to reshoot. It was like 30 seconds for 10 shots and a reload.
Just the added stress of a timed shoot.

Great story.

My hats off to anyone that can shoot that far. I thought I could till I hunted on a place with a range that went out to 700 yards. I looked down range and decided that was beyond my ability! You don't realize how far 700 yards is till a three foot square board looks like a postage stamp!

Great shooting!