2017 NRA National Smallbore Prone Rifle Championships
Day One Metallic Sights
(Based on Preliminary Results)
Your Correspondents in the Field
Joe Graf and Hap Rocketto
It was rather a surreal experience for any shooter with several years of National Smallbore Championship experience. It was the first single relay match since the 1948 Championships at Quantico which were by invitation only. On the positive side, you didn’t have to move your gear on the negative side you didn’t have to move your gear.
With approximately 90 entries the match staff re-squadded the competitors and allowed a 30 minute break between matches resulting in the shooters heading home for showers and dinner about 1PM.
George Norton, the first person to win the Iron Man competition and be presented the Wigger Trophy, won the Meter Match with a 400-35X Dan Pempel, an Air Force shooter Creedmoored the Army’s Mike McPhail for second when both posted 400-33Xs.
Pempel shot a 400-29X and found himself in second again, ironically on a tie breaker with Nancy Tompkins. Steve Angeli and Kerry Spurgin went to the rule book for third with Angeli coming out on top in a 27X tie.
Hank Gray nailed 32Xs in a 400 point effort for the 100 yard win while Ron Wigger came in second shooting a 400-30X. Norton found his way back into the money with the last of the clean scores, a 400-26X.
Gray’s rush to the finish line at 100 yards gave him an eight X edge over Norton for the Aggregate win, 1199-98 to 1199-90. McPhail, who had piled up Xs at a phenomenal rate-102 out of a possible 120, was third shooting an 1198.
