Hi Guys and Gals.
There have been quite a few inquiries at Beech Grove Firearms and Range about shooting leagues and Gary Burge has asked me several times about starting one.
I used to shoot on the Hoosiers Hills pistol team in association with the Indianapolis Pistol League that used to shoot at The Gun Room on Elmwood Ave. in Beech Grove, over by the bowling alley on I-465 and Emerson Ave.
That was many years ago and that alone does not make me qualified for anything except that I remember how it worked at the time and for a short time I was the President of the league mostly because no one else wanted to be tied down with it.
Anyway, it would be great to start one up again. It gives you a reason or purpose to shoot and to meet and fellowship with other like minded shooters, that's always fun and rewarding in and of itself.
The way it used to work was we would all meet up on I believe Monday nights at around 7:00 pm and shoot untill everyone had scored.
The course of fire was 10 shots in a ten minute time frame and it was called "slow fire", the target was an official NRA slow fire target shot at 50 ft.
Nexted was "timed fire", you had 1 minute to fire ten shots using an official NRA timed fire target fired at 50 ft.
The last course of fire was "rapid fire" in which you had 10 seconds to fire ten shots. It used an official NRA rapid fire target at of course, 50 ft. It worked like this, The range manager would call out in a even cadence, ready on the right, ready on the left, ready on the firing line and then blow a whistle to start the course of fire.
The even cadence would give you the opportunity to be prepared for your first shot so you wouldn't get "behind the ball" so to speak and end up with your last shot being disqualified for being after the whistle which ended the course of fire. This would result in your higest scoring shot being deducted from your score for that target. Embarrassing to say the least.
Now one problem with formal league shooting is the time frame, not everyone can "be there" at a specific time on a given day even though this enhances fellowship among shooters. So since there is "always" a range manager present at the Beech Grove range, they might be accommodating most any time if time permits.
Targets seem to be in short supply lately so a good supply of NRA approved targets might be hard to come by, a supply will have to be worked out if there is enough interest to start a league in the first place.
Caliber of weapon is usually 22LR but with the ammo shortage this might be a problem for some and not everyone has a suitable 22 caliber handgun so maybe a "shoot what you brung" format might be in order. It would only be 30 shots per week and if you miss a week it wouldn't count against you.
Scoring of targets would be done by anyone other than yourself.
Now another possibility is an Apple Seed rifle competition but I'm not familiar with that form of competition, at least not yet.
So, wrapping this up, we need to determine if there really is enough interest to get this going. I'm going to see if Gary will let me put up a
sign for league sign-up of those who might be interested at the range counter and when you come in you can do so and watch this INGO posting for more information. Thanks for looking.
I have also posted this on Beech Groves Firearms and Range link at INGO's, Gun shops/Class III and Ranges.
There have been quite a few inquiries at Beech Grove Firearms and Range about shooting leagues and Gary Burge has asked me several times about starting one.
I used to shoot on the Hoosiers Hills pistol team in association with the Indianapolis Pistol League that used to shoot at The Gun Room on Elmwood Ave. in Beech Grove, over by the bowling alley on I-465 and Emerson Ave.
That was many years ago and that alone does not make me qualified for anything except that I remember how it worked at the time and for a short time I was the President of the league mostly because no one else wanted to be tied down with it.
Anyway, it would be great to start one up again. It gives you a reason or purpose to shoot and to meet and fellowship with other like minded shooters, that's always fun and rewarding in and of itself.
The way it used to work was we would all meet up on I believe Monday nights at around 7:00 pm and shoot untill everyone had scored.
The course of fire was 10 shots in a ten minute time frame and it was called "slow fire", the target was an official NRA slow fire target shot at 50 ft.
Nexted was "timed fire", you had 1 minute to fire ten shots using an official NRA timed fire target fired at 50 ft.
The last course of fire was "rapid fire" in which you had 10 seconds to fire ten shots. It used an official NRA rapid fire target at of course, 50 ft. It worked like this, The range manager would call out in a even cadence, ready on the right, ready on the left, ready on the firing line and then blow a whistle to start the course of fire.
The even cadence would give you the opportunity to be prepared for your first shot so you wouldn't get "behind the ball" so to speak and end up with your last shot being disqualified for being after the whistle which ended the course of fire. This would result in your higest scoring shot being deducted from your score for that target. Embarrassing to say the least.
Now one problem with formal league shooting is the time frame, not everyone can "be there" at a specific time on a given day even though this enhances fellowship among shooters. So since there is "always" a range manager present at the Beech Grove range, they might be accommodating most any time if time permits.
Targets seem to be in short supply lately so a good supply of NRA approved targets might be hard to come by, a supply will have to be worked out if there is enough interest to start a league in the first place.
Caliber of weapon is usually 22LR but with the ammo shortage this might be a problem for some and not everyone has a suitable 22 caliber handgun so maybe a "shoot what you brung" format might be in order. It would only be 30 shots per week and if you miss a week it wouldn't count against you.
Scoring of targets would be done by anyone other than yourself.
Now another possibility is an Apple Seed rifle competition but I'm not familiar with that form of competition, at least not yet.
So, wrapping this up, we need to determine if there really is enough interest to get this going. I'm going to see if Gary will let me put up a
sign for league sign-up of those who might be interested at the range counter and when you come in you can do so and watch this INGO posting for more information. Thanks for looking.
I have also posted this on Beech Groves Firearms and Range link at INGO's, Gun shops/Class III and Ranges.
