Multi-Gun Training/Fun Comp September 18-20 2014

[bwaites]

Looks like one of the nicest rifle ranges I have seen looking at these pictures. A complete review of rifles, loads, weather "wind" conditions etc would be very much appreciated. I sure hope someone took some videos and can post them. I hope this was a success and more courses will be available in the future. Dang I really wanted to go. Did Bill bring his master piece to the shoot? Thanks for posting the pictures and info.

I'll start with the venue. North Springs is perhaps the premier multipurpose range in the country. There may be comparable, but we had shooters from Nebraska, California, Washington, Utah, New Mexico, Texas, Finland, etc. and no one could come up with one. The Cowboy Town venue has at least a dozen different possible configurations and setups, (and we even thought up a few more). The Police Bays have movers and flippers. The open range goes from 25 out to 1000 yards. There is a shotgun range, a 1500 yard target, and two different and separate "free form" ranges with steel up one canyon (Buffalo Canyon because it has; suprise, suprise, buffalo targets (among others0 ranging from pistol distance to almost 800 yards. The other, "Over the Edge" has you shooting across a different canyon at multiple different targets from something like 2 dozen different possible shooting points! Ranges there are from right at 100 yards to somewhere around 600, depending on the angle. There are lots of different angles from very high and short to long and flat, with everything in between.

Did I mention the range also has a dedicated archery range?

We had pistols in 9mm, .40, and .45 being run in the pistol stages. We had Glocks, 1911's, M&P's, XDM's, Sigs, and I'm sure one or two others. We had very few pistol issues apart from me not getting in the right spot on my XDM and compressing the grip safety! We had 5.56, 6.5 Grendel, .308, 30-06, and the Ulfberht firing on the rifle ranges. Rifles ranged from Frankenguns to SCARS to bolt .308's and 30-06's. Most all the rifles ran just great with only one or two failure to feed or failure to extract issues.

Weather was almost too nice. We had very warm weather all three days, with a sudden downpour on day 2 while we were on the 600 yard range. It lasted about 60-90 minutes and cooled things down a bit. We never had more than a 6-8 MPH wind that I could tell, with maybe few gusts during the immediate pre-rain time that got a bit higher. We wore short sleeved shirts until 11PM on the nights we played late.

Bill Alexander, who hoped to be able to show, did not make it as he had to make some appearances at military type venues. But we had Ulfbehrt there for all to try, thanks to ammunition he sent out and that Black Hills provided for demonstration purposes. For those of you familiar with .338 prices, you know that it isn't a cheap proposition!