About markers and Friday practice

Markers are young men (mostly) who are employed for a day to go down to the butts (pits in American English) and pull our target frames up and down out of sight. They are protected by earthworks and a concrete abutment from shot impacts. These frames hold our targets, with a new target face pasted on for every match.

After a shot is made, they pull down the target, put a white or red disc in the shot hole (whilst patching the last shot hole from which the disc was removed), put a scoring marker indicating score value of the shot, and then run the target back up for the score to be confirmed. After it is recorded and confirmed, the next shooter can fire a shot. Speed of service is essential in tough wind conditions. Acceptable speed (in America is 5-7 seconds). Here, we can occasionally see much longer times. But it is what it is.

Today was a pub lunch with family. Then tomorrow morning I head off to Bisley with my hire car for an afternoon practice shoot, followed by a major tournament (the British Commonwealth Rifle Club match) over the weekend. About 250-350 shooters participate in this, making it about the size of the US Fullbore Nationals or the Berger Nationals (the two largest target rifle events in the USA).

I've syndicated my afternoon practice target tomorrow with a few friends and thus lowered the cost quite a bit (£77 for target and marker for the afternoon). We'll shoot at 900/1000x with likely two sessions of 2 sighters and 15 rounds on score (depending on available time and the weather).

This is really for me to get a feel for Stickledown (the long range range at Bisley) again and to get my rifle sighted in and zeroed with the new 2016 GGG ammunition (we are issued ammunition for the Imperial Meeting).

Saturday we have the BCRC match, which is held over two days. First day is short range (out to 600yds) and the second day is long range (900 and 1000 yds).

Followed by cream teas in the clubhouse. Very civilized and very tasty.