The 2016 National Smallbore Conventional Prone Championships Opened under bright skies, switching mirage, and temperature in the mid 80s.
The actual matches did not get underway until 10AM as a first shot ceremony was held.
Conditions were relatively benign for the 50 yard match with over 40m 400s recorded. The best was posted by Matt Chezem, 400-38X. Morgan Dietrich, Steve Angeli, and Kevin Nevius followed right behind with 400-37Xs.
Target frames were moved out 14 feet to the 50 meter line and Katie Bridges best the field with a 400-35X while Dietrich and John O’Conner were hot on her heels firing a 400-34X and 400-33X respectively. Conditions picked up a bit and only 10 shooters recorded perfect scores.
In the Dewar Hank Gray and Eric Uptagrafft battled it out for first with Gray winning with a 400-37X to Uptagrafft’s 35 X clean. Angeli posted at 400-34X for third.
It was quite late in the day when the 100 yard match was fired and the conditions had settled down a bit and Delcotto and Gray found themselves in a rare unbreakable tie with both shooters carding 400-35Xs just ahead of Bridges’ 400-34. There were 22 additional 400s.
At the end of the day Delcotto went clean with 132X to eke out a one X victory over Gray with Angeli third at 1599-136X.
Day two will begin at the regular 8AM starting time and the day will finish with the firing of the Dewar International Postal which takes on greater importance this year as it is part of the Roberts Team selection.
Your Pronematch.com correspondent in the field wishes to thank Joe Graf and Kevin Nevius for sending him images of the score sheets.
