Filed by Randy Costa
Copicut Rifle Associations second Egg Shoot of the year was yet another great event! The weather could not have been more perfect for scrambling eggs at 200 and 300 yards. A bit overcast, temperatures in the low 70s, and just a trace of wind. Actually, more of a “puff” every now and then. Very predictable. We had 30 dozen eggs on hand, and with conditions like this, we knew we would be using them all.In the 300 yard custom rifle event, Gary Maciel stepped up to the plate and went five for five with his first attempt. No one matched this performance for the remainder of the day. Gary is shooting a brand new rifle he had built just for this event. Nesika Bay action, Tooley MBR stock, Krieger triple Cryoed barrel in fast twist 6BR. He’s shooting 107 grain Sierras at 3100 FPS and the gun is shooting like a “house a fire”. Factory 300 was won by Bill LaPlume from Attleboro shooting his Savage 112 in 308. Two hundred yards custom is still where the action is. We had five shooters enter this event and all five went 5-5. This turned into the longest shoot off in the history of the Copicut Rifle Association Egg Shoot. Jonathan Wong, Gary Maciel, George Harrison, Al Joly and Bob Newman just wouldn’t miss. At the shoot-off we started with five eggs each and went through at least 60 eggs. No one missed! We decided to put the eggs on their sides to make it a bit tougher. Still no misses! So we decided to put a small dot of paint on the egg to make the targets appear smaller. At this point, the field was pared down to Gary and Jonathan. After a couple more racks of eggs with no misses, it was decided that smaller targets were needed. I happened to have a few 357 Magnum pistol cases in my pocket so these were placed out at 200 yds and Gary and Jonathan had at it. As amazing as it may seem, five 357 cases at 200 yards and five clean hits! At that point it was decided to call it a draw. The title will be shared by Gary and Jonathan. Some fantastic shooting to be sure! By the way, Gary was shooting his 6BR with a completely shot out 40X barrel. The throat is so far out that the bullets are barely in the case! He plans on setting the barrel back and rechambering, but not until the gun stops shooting. I personally would like to thank all the shooters for an excellent display of marksmanship. This class is very competitive. Your rifle, your ammunition and your nerves need to be at its best! Lots of work goes into building rifles and loads to win this event. If you’re looking for a challenge, this is it!Two hundred yard factory ended up with Richard Douglas and Roy Bertalotto going five for five. Richard had his Remington 700 VLS in 22-250 shooting spot on! Roy was shooting his Cooper in 221 Fireball. But a shootout wasn’t possible due to the amount of time the custom guys used. Roy and Richard agreed to have their shoot-off at the next meet. As a small aside. Folks show up at the event with very accurate factory rifles, but they just don’t have enough scope. Anything under 16 power will just not be competitive. I would suggest a variable scope with 24X as the upper power to be a bare minimum. And a 36X Weaver to be just about perfect for the 200 yd events. It’s frustrating to have new shooters show up with rifles topped of with 3-9 hunting scopes and then realize that at two hundred yards you can barely see the eggs behind the reticle of a 9X scope. Tasco and Midway offer some very competitive 6-24 Target scopes in the $150 range that would work out nicely. And while we are on the subject of equipment, if you are planning on purchasing a rifle to shoot the 200 yard factory barrel event, stay away from the big boomers. Sure 308s and 30-06 rifles can shoot, but the 223, 222, 22-250 and even the 243 class would be much better choices. It’s a whole lot easier to get the 223-222 to shoot accurately and you won’t get beat up as much at the other end. Pistols at 100 yards was decided by Ray Piche shooting his TC with his 223 barrel.MAJOR RULES CHANGEIt was discussed and agreed by all at the match that a major rules change was needed. Here’s the scenario. You get there at 9AM and shoot the first relay. If you happen to go 5-5, you’re done shooting until the shoot-off. And that is if someone else in your class shoots a 5-5. You could spend all day at the event and only fire 5 shots. Not much fun! The way the folks are shooting, and how good the guns have evolved, 5-5s are the norm so everything begins to ride on the shoot-off. And it doesn’t seem fair that someone can shoot a 5-5 on his first string while others take four or five tries to get that score. So here is what was decided. The fee will be increased from $5 to $10 for each gun. There will be no $3 re-shoot available. There will be no re-shoots. Instead of shooting only one relay, each shooter will shoot a total of three relays and the cumulative score will hold. In this way, if your first relay isn’t a 5-5, you are still in the hunt as another shooter that did do a 5-5 could miss in his/her second or third relay. In any event, there will be a whole bunch more shooting for all the participants. Ties after the three relays will still be decided by sudden death shoot-offs.With so many folks shooting, sighting in time will need to be limited to one relay per gun. Each relay will be 10 minutes. If you can’t get your gun on target in ten minutes, you’re out of luck. (New shooters that have never shot at the range will be given extra sight in consideration. After all, this is a fun event and we don’t want to scare away any potential new shooters) Before each relay, there will be a two minute “barrel warming” period where shooters can re-zero on the paper targets at which time a cease fire will be called and then we will proceed to the shooting of eggs. Now that there will be so many folks needing to shoot during the event, bench moving will be a real situation. Be prepared to remove your equipment after each relay depending on the number of shooters. Relay positions and times will be decided with a deck of playing cards.
All shooters present felt that these changes would make the event much more enjoyable.
So, that’s it for now…