Long, long time ago, I had a perfect match. Perfect, in the sense of, I hit all the targets. I did that with the 1875 Remington’s – 7 1/2 barrels. Real easy gun to shoot with. The time, if you keep reading the next comment, you’ll see was around 275 seconds I think. 275 seconds – not a great time by many standards, but kind of okay for a rookie (BTW – that 275 seconds was for a five stage match — pretty much a 55 second average per stage).

So, with a clean stage out of the way, on to improving the times for the matches. I’m pretty sure I’ll never have anyone give me a belt buckle for winning a match, no matter how big or small. With that in mind, it would be best to just try to improve each week, no matter how small the gain might be.

Well, that’s a crappy plan. I was shooting faster, but missing more. When the penalties for the misses were tallied up and added to the score, my times were actually starting to get worse. Slow and steady wins the race….

Over the summer I purchased a few new guns – some Cimarron Pistolero’s – 4 3/4 inch barrels. Quicker out of the holster, quicker back in to the holster. Do that twice on each stage and some time is made up. Short barrels though, it’s all a mind game, but harder to hit the bad guys with those things.

I knew I’d get back to another clean match and last Saturday, it finally happened again. Out of 60+ shooters on the day, about 6 of us were clean, so that makes it all the more special. It was good shooting and not close and big targets. Oh, and the time? Very nice as well, it was 228. That’s for 6 stages too!!