The 23rd Elmer Keith Memorial
Long Range Handgun Shoot is in the books.
June 2nd and 3rd were the days of this years invitational .
January of this year another e-mail came saying it had been picked up by another fellow that wanted to see it continue. I'm back in. The location had been changed from Valley Ford, WA to Loon Lake, WA 30 miles north of Spokane. An extra 30 minute drive, well worth it I'm thinking.
In May when everything was for sure, reservations were made at the 9 room motel in Loon Lake.
After flying Friday morning my wife Kathy and I got on the road. Making the 3+ hour drive we arrived at the range. Friday was supposed to be practice all afternoon, but with new people putting this one on things were a little behind. I could sure understand that, and besides I'm just glad to be there.
No shooting happened on Friday, but things were set to get started Saturday morning. After a nice spaghetti dinner and more visiting that night Kathy and I headed into our motel.
Saturday morning was shaping up to be another great day weather wise. A safety meeting and scoring of the shoot was first in the morning. Then practice started, shoot as much as you want to at the targets placed between 75 and 500 yards. A lot of the shooters chose to shoot at the 3'x 3' steel plate at 500 yards knowing that a lucky hit would almost win the shoot the way the points were placed on the targets.
After watching most of the shooters shoot, and the plate never hit, but a lot of shots around it I was hoping to at least make a respectable showing and finish middle of the pack. There was one ole gal packing a S&W on her hip that really gave the plate a good scare, but still no hits. As close as she was I'm wondering if I can slip out without anybody seeing me.
Finally my turn for practice. My strategy was go for the mid range targets, 140 and 290 yards and at least hopefully get points on the board. My practice was terrible so I'm really doubting my shooting about now.
Practice went till lunch, then shooting for score started. 12 shots at your targets of choice, but you had to call your shot, several of the targets were close together. I was shooter number 17 so I had some time. Volunteers were asked to help on the spotting scopes for hits and misses so I got on one of them until shooter 14 or so then wanted to rest my eyes for a bit.
Several tried the 500 yard plate again, still no hits. A few were shooting the 3/4 scale wolf at 75 yards to get for sure points. Finally my turn, with no hits at 500 and few others on any of the other targets and only 4 or 5 shooters after me I'm going with my plan to shoot 6 shots at the 140 yard 10" tear drop then my last 6 at the 290 yard 15"square. I put shots 3 and 4 on the tear drop and shot number 10 on the 15" square all other shots were surprisingly close. I was fairly happy with my showing.
I placed better than I had hoped to so it was a pleasant surprise.
The revolver I chose to shoot, this will be no surprise to some of you was my 6" 455 GNR with 290 gr. cast hollow points and some HS-6. It was probably sacrilegious not to shoot the 454424 at an Elmer Keith shoot, but my LBT LFN's are a more accurate bullet. I think I saw one other person shooting cast.
This was one of the smaller attended shoots but still managed to collect $2,381.00 for the Citizens Committee for the Right to keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), $1,380.00 for the Foundation for Wildlife Management (F4WM), The NRA Foundation-Elmer Keith Fund and $246.00 for the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF). All in all a great time for hopefully a worthy cause.
The new host was pleased enough that it will continue next year. I'm already looking forward to it.