Nečichy rifle match

Beautiful shooting range, excellent organization, great competition - on August 12, 2018 a sniper rifle competition took place at the Nečichy, Louny shooting range. It was our first start at the Nečichy shooting range although it was already the second year of the competition.

And it was wonderful!

Behind small village is a slight turn and then the long tarmac road between the trees takes you up to the shooting range. The shooting range has two parts of 300m and 50m. Green lawn, tarmac road, large parking and sheltered 50m range. Simply beautiful. The whole competition was accompanied by a perfect organization, the main referee took care of safety and the competitors were good shooters.

To the match itself: There is no limitation on the caliber of the rifles, distance between 50m and 300m. The competition is a combination of tactics and entertainment - fun - disciplines which we enjoyed incredibly.

The first cold bore shot was 225 meters on a clay pigeon, shot from the shooting tables in the prone position and in 1 minute. If the shooter did not score the first shot, he had the chance for second shot, obviously with lesser point. I appreciate this opportunity very much and I really needed the second shoot. It was for the first time I shot prone on the table and the first shot went lower, I was nervous and speculated about the correction The second shot was for sure.

There was just another discipline: prone on the table with 3 shots, target was a standard pistol target (only the black center) at 300m - of course, we could not see any hits in black. In the fast-paced sequence, another 5 shots from the table, 1 minute, the same target, the same distance - but the starting position behind the rifle.

This ended shooting from the table and we moved to a distance of 175m. Another discipline was shot at an undetectable target, with two circles - larger and smaller ones in a very light gray color on white paper, so it had to be estimated where to shoot. The smaller circle was of course for more points. A total of 3 shots in 1 minute and a maximum of 2 shots in each circle. A little more logical is to send the first shot to a big one and if there is a hit then move on a small one. I reversed it and my female logic commanded me to shoot first on the little circle for the first time. Still I did it, the first shot in the little circle was exactly where it supposed to be.

Another discipline at the same distance was even more wilder - first shot in the chamber and the second one about 2 meters behind the shooter on the ground. Time here was 40 seconds on the shot, then run for the other cartridge, load and shoot the second one. And it was possible! Again I had a dilemma. My Ruger PR rifle has an excellent feature and it eats more types of magazines. Well, the one I use has something like bolt-stop which makes really difficult to load the round just thru the ejecting port one by one. I'm very happy with this, because in competitions where I'm shooting more rounds I know I'm done. But what in this case? We did not have another type of magazine, nor would it be fair to others shooters. And the instruction sounded clear - one shot and then reloading only one. One option was to overload the bolt-stop with power, and the other option was simply to use another magazine with one shot ... You can guess what won in 40 seconds.

Other disciplines were on 115 meters distance. The first one was a little mysterious stage: 2 shots, 20 seconds and you do not know the target. Simply amazing! The referee gave us a green ticket, which we could turn to see what is written on just after the start. On the card was the name of the headgear - a hat, a baseball cap, a bobble hat, a cap and a fur hat. Of course, I had the fur hat, and most of the time I spent to find the right one.

Even another discipline was once again funny, the same distance of 115 meters, 2 shots, time 5 seconds! The shooter is ready in the prone position, pointing to his target, rifle loaded. The referee cover the scope and within 2 minutes whenever he uncovers it, then the shooter has 5 seconds for two rounds. Harry did it in 4s, I needed 5s. But some shooters did not make it in time.

The last discipline on the long shooting range was for one shot only, again 115 meters, the target was a metal rectangle and you need to shot through the whole in the barricade. Techniques were different, but in the end the best was using a tripod in a kneeling position. This ended shooting at a long shooting range, and we were expecting what was going to happen.