Well gentle readers it has been a few days since I last posted but I will try to catch up on the happenings in Tombstone.
I think at last report we had finished sidematches and had called it a night before the main match started. We had 6 stages on Friday, we shot 1 – 6 on the first day starting at 12:30 after a safety briefing from TA Chance. We had large posse around 28 or so shooters including the match director. The posse ran smoothly, took us about 4 ½ hours. I had a few sub-twentys and nothing over twenty 4 seconds. Harley and I both were fighting our shotguns but were able to remain clean for the first day. Long Gulch would have made Jackalope proud on most of the stages. I think he had on that gave him a little trouble. Cooper did a great job and shot really well. Cactus fell apart on stage two and after that just started having fun. He was the entertainment for the match to say the least. He was shooting in true Cactus style. I was trying to push hard and see if I could mess with the Gunfighters out here but on our last stage of the day I could not resist crossing my pistols on the draw, luckily I was able to clean the stage at a respectable time so got a few style points along with a 20 second stage.
I think I mentioned on an earlier post that my 66 had laid down on me during the speed events and I gave it to Shotgun Boogie to repair. I did not get it back until the last stage of the day but did get to shoot it on that stage.
The night before I had invited Harley, Kiss, Long Gulch, Roma, Pistol Creek and Cooper to dinner at the campground, Lady T then proceded to invite the blacksmith and is wife, we also had Hombre and our friends from Colorado Terry and Gina so we had 17 folks here for dinner on Friday night. We had a wonderful evening sitting around talking. The Blacksmith, Brian, had many great stories about this area, it seems his great grandfather came out here before Tombstone was even settled and was killed in the only bank robbery in Tombstone. We tried to make it an early night since we had to be at the range at 7:00 in the morning.
Day two started bright and early, good chill in the air with no breeze. First stage was killer for the black powder shooters and spotters but a slight breeze finely showed up by the second stage as it warmed up and helped clear the smoke away. Again the stages were fast and the posse moved well. We started on stage 9 the second day and all was going really well, I was probably within 3 seconds of one of the top Gunfighters in this area and running hard. On stage 11, Miles pulled a "P" and a miss and gave me the opening I needed to jump ahead of him. Everything was going great until on stage 12 my recently repaired 66 jammed up and I could not clear it. I had to lay it down with 8 rounds in the magazine. Took at 70 second stage to fall off the charts to say the least. Did I mention it had just been repaired by Shotgun Boogie due to extractor problems? To say I was a little upset would be like saying Hillary is a little bit crooked. Took it back to Boogie calmly told him I had just lost 8 rounds, a clean match and probably a buckle due to the extractor that I had brought it to him for originally. He took the gun apart again and discovered I needed longer linkage so I had too much head room and the extractor was not getting to the shell base. He had to longer links he wanted to put in for me but again I told him to just put my gun back together and I would have my gunsmith fix it when I got home. I think he was a little surprised that I did not want him working on my gun again. The things he changed on the gun really did help but he did not catch the original problem so I can assure all you readers he will never get a chance to work on another of my guns. Anyway I did finish strong and was clean all the way through not counting the ones in the rifle. I think my total time was around 300 seconds so I ended with an average of 25 seconds per stage which I am very happy with. Harley did end up with a clean match, Last Kiss received a “P” on our 5th stage of the day when she shot through the wrong opening in a barn. I was TO at the time but could not stop her quickly enough, she already had her pistols out and cocked so there was nothing to be done about it.
All in all it was a great match, lots of fun, a few tears (mine mostly) and plenty of laughs. We are already planning on coming back next year and if anyone wants to join us there are plenty of places to stay if you don’t have a camper and if you do want to camp Stampede RV Resort takes really good care of us. The apps come out sometime in March and it fills up in about 5 days. So let me know and we will send in all the apps together.
Heading over to the awards shortly and will try to post the results as soon as I can. Today we are heading to Silver Springs, NM for a few day then on to Albuquerque for a few more days. We really wont be back until week after next.
