The next day match is October 12, 2008.

What a difference a month makes! We had a better turnout this month with 13 shooters coming out, and several of our regulars attended the Nationals and were still out of town, so overall, we were pleased. We had two new shooters who seemed to have a good time. We hope you come back again.

Since last month, we all have had to contend with several hurricane threats, so everyone was a bit thankful that we were mostly spared. It is unfortunate that the people of Galveston are experiencing what we did just three years ago. We wish them the best. Today's weather was not quite so hot as it has been, and a breeze kept it a bit more under control, but it ended up that by noon, it was warming up. We managed to complete the shooting and teardown by noon which is a recent record, so thanks to everyone who helped speed things up.

With no Open shooters present today, you would have thought that the Limited folks would rule. However, you would have been wrong. Wayne Alcock, our local Single Stack guru, managed to take the overall match by the scantest of margins, edging out Limited shooter, Joel Senia. It came down to literally the difference between an "A" hit and a "C". Or if you prefer it in seconds, somewhat less than one-tenth of a second. Wayne, fresh off a 7th place finish at the Multi-Gun match out West, shot a very consistent match and just got it done. Joel was fast today, but had a couple of "M" bobbles, so he took first in Limited and was just 0.12% behind Wayne in the overall scoring. However, Wayne could only feed in 8 rounds at a time, while Joel could handle 20 or more in one move. So, this accomplishment is pretty significant. Congratulations to Wayne for his great performance today! One of our new shooters, Ray Bear, took first in Production. Great job as well, Ray!

The pistol match scores are here.

Thanks again to those that helped set up, tear down and even just show up. Having more bodies is always better and yet, the match ran very smoothly and quickly, so we managed to do it right, thanks to that help.

The next day match is September 14, 2008.

Once again, the weather ruled the day. The temperature started out pleasant enough (at 7 AM), but by match time, it was roasting. Six shooters sweated to the oldies today, with the heat and high gas prices keeping a lot of folks at home (I would hate to think they just didn't like us!).

We had 5 decent stages today, but with a small turnout, the divisions weren't all that competitive, with 6 shooters competing in 4 divisions. Only Limited had any real competition, and it even featured a regular Open shooter ditching the dot and going bare. Charlie Black won Limited without his trusty optically aided and compensated pistol and showed that good shooters can shoot just about anything. However, as you would expect Max Michel took Open and Overall match because dots help. In what is turning out to be a depressing situation for everyone else not in Open, Wayne Alcock took second overall with a Single Stack gun. Wayne's shooting has been terrific recently and he is making the rest of us look like we wasted a bunch of money on high cap / high dollar guns, when all it takes is a good ole 1911. He just gets it done and shoots the .45 as well or better than the rest of us hacks. Great job, Wayne!

The pistol match scores are here.

Speaking of great jobs, I want to expressly thank the people that showed up today for the assistance in setting up and tearing down. Gene Babin, who has been absent for quite some time came out today, and hauled stuff like a pack mule. Thanks for the help, Gene. Additionally, we really need to recognize Wayne for bringing the "trailer of fun" each month. Wayne works harder than anyone in making this club a success.

And, speaking of a successful club, what makes it possible is the regular turnout of the many shooters who have graced our humble gravel pit. However, the turnout lately has been pretty low. We have averaged only 9 shooters per match since April, and three times we have had 6 or less. We know that the heat keeps some folks at home, and the high price of fuel doesn't help, but we are still the cheapest match around. We have a great location and occasionally, even great stages. We are working on improving our prop situation but without the support of our shooting members, this club won't flourish. In fact, this club can't survive on less than 10 shooters a month. The same effort goes into setting up the stages for 2 or 40 people, but it is pretty hard to get excited about creating a complicated stage when only a handful of people will appreciate it. Please, if you are reading this and are a semi-regular shooter, try to make it to our matches more often. Our fixed expenses are the same (insurance and land lease), regardless of how many people shoot. Only pasters are a variable expense, and they really don't cost all that much. We need to be averaging 15 or more shooters per match to keep the club healthy. A few individuals have made contributions of cash or materials, which are greatly appreciated, but this shouldn't be necessary. All that has to happen is to get more people to come shoot.

In the coming month, your club officers will be sending out a survey to everyone whose email address we have on file. We are looking to see why people can't or don't make it to the match. If there are reasons that are within our control, we can do something about it. If we need more stages or better stages, let us know. This club has been around for too long to let it wilt. Talk to your shooting buddies, your friends, your neighbors, and get them to come out and enjoy the camaraderie, the competition, and the experience. The future is new shooters, either new to our club or new to the sport. The rest of us are just getting older and won't live forever. Try to sponsor a new shooter if you can. Very few of our members have been around since the beginning of this club and it is natural to have some attrition, but without new shooters to replace the old ones, the club will certainly not thrive, it really can't even grow, and faces the possibility of not surviving. Our finances are adequate to keep the lights on (metaphorically speaking) but at our current rate of shooters, they won't be adequate for too long. We just need people to come shoot. This means YOU!

We actually had 4 rifle shooters today, but the results were pretty much the same as always. Wayne Alcock, who shoots a big-boy gun (AR-10), took the overall match.

The rifle results are here.

The next day match is August 10, 2008.

 Ok, it was hot today. How hot was it? Well, let's just say that without the decent breeze, the gravel pit would have become a death pit. It was HOT!

We have another low turnout today, probably because of the heat, but still, six shooters is pretty low for our club. Hopefully, things will pick up in August when the "cool weather" finally gets here...

As mentioned, we had 6 heat-crazed shooters try their luck today, and as usual, we had a couple of standouts. Bryant Chaffin overcame his perceived "poor" performance and took top match honors along with Limited. Bill Jackson just barely beat Jason Brandt in Limited for second, although they were so far behind, they were likely in another county. Wayne Alcock, the only shooter in Singe Stack, took second overall with a very respectable 73.8% compared to GM Bryant.

We also had one new shooter today. John Hudson shot his first USPSA sanctioned match with us and we hope that he had a good time and can find his way back again. He picked a tough first match, with some very challenging stages for a rookie, but he managed to get through it pretty well. Thanks for coming, John.

The pistol match scores are here.

We also shot shotgun today, and 4 of the 6 pistoleros stuck around for the fun.

We had three stages requiring lots of birdshot and some slugs. It went well for most, but the pistol guys just aren't very quick at reloading a shotgun, so the times are pretty long on some of the stages. Bryant Chaffin managed another win today in Shotgun, but it wasn't so lopsided as the pistol match. Wayne Alcock managed to take second.

The shotgun match scores are here.

The next match is July 13, 2008.

The turnout today was a bit better than last month, but the heat and possibly even the soaring gas prices are keeping some shooters away. We all appreciate those who have long drives showing up and it is getting to the point where the gas cost more than the ammo expended during the match.

We had 13 shooters today with the bulk shooting Limited, but as usual, the Open shooters dominated the overall match. Max Michel took the Overall Match and the Open division, although Charlie Black was within less than 3% of Max's score. Randy Pretlove shot a very good score in Open, with a 91%. As a B shooter, that's pretty good. In Limited, there was a contest to see who could screw up the most, and most shooters had one or more stages that were total busts. In the end, Bill Jackson managed to take Limited by making the fewest mistakes. Derek Flores took second with George Stevens placing a respectable third. In Single Stack, the only other division shot, Wayne Alcock, put the hurt on the rest of the shooters. In fact, Wayne's overall score beat all the Limited shooters and was fourth overall, behind only the three Open shooters. Wayne is shooting very consistently and it is showing in his scores.

Today's match had one interesting aspect. Normally, the classifier is one of the lower point stages, but with 24 shots, it was actually the longest and highest point value stage today. We didn't have any other monster stages, so shooting the classifier well helped the point totals more than normally.

Because of the heat, the rifle match was not held today.

The pistol match scores are here.

Congratulations to our regular club members show performed well in the 2008 edition of the Mississippi Classic in Jackson last month. Wayne Alcock shooting in Single Stack won B-Class and was second overall. Tom Duchmann was high Unclassified and 4th overall in SS. Max Michel was high Master in Open and 4th overall. Randy Pretlove as 3rd B-Class and 16th overall in Open.

Remember our new policy regarding membership. If you aren't a member, your match fee is $15. Your membership will pay for itself if you come to only three matches all year, so it is well worth it.

Finally, we are now posting our match results on the USPSA web site as well as here. To check that out, click here www.uspsa.org and then click on Match Schedule and Results on the left side. Click on Local Match Results at the top and enter club code MS10, then click the List Matches button. The information presented here is a bit different from our results here, in that it shows a summary of the individual shooter's performance. To see this, select the division, then click on the shooter's USPSA number.

The next match is June 8, 2008.

Our match today set some sort of record. We had only 5 mother-less shooters who came out and we finished shooting and packing up by 11 AM. That's the good part. The bad part is we only had 5 shooters today.

Not much is news, other than to talk about the winners. Wayne Alcock took Single Stack and Overall Match winner with a consistent performance. Although he won only one stage (of four) overall, he was steady enough to beat out the other shooters for the match. In Limited division, Derek Flores won a fairly close match over Bill Jackson. The weather was nice and getting done early was a bonus.

The pistol match scores are here.

Don't forget the MS Classic State Match starts May 16, 2008 in Jackson, MS.

Also please note some minor changes to the schedule. We will now only shoot rifle OR shotgun after the pistol match, not both as had been indicated.

Special note to Tom Duchmann: your stage 2 score would have actually been .2 less if you didn't didn't take the last shot. So, it was better to reload and shoot, as you did.

The next day match is May 11, 2008. The next night match is April 19, 2008.

Well, here it is, Monday night and I finally have a few uninterrupted minutes to get this down. Our Sunday match went off very well, but our turnout was a big disappointment. We had hoped to have a big turnout for our annual three-gun match but only 15 shooters showed up. The weather was pleasant, if you like wind. It blew constantly all day and while it kept the temperature under control, it caused lots of problems for the target stands. Well, it could have been worse.

We started the day out with a salute to our friend, Tim Lott. As most of you know, Tim passed away in February after a brief illness. Guns were Tim's life and he knew more about them than most. He was a fierce competitor and won the Mississippi State Championship for Revolver a time or two. What better way could we salute him than to offer a multi-gun salute? The picture above shows some of his SMPSA friends firing three volleys of rifle fire to honor his memory. Its a good thing this group isn't a precision shooting teams, because, well, oh, you just had to be there!

We had 4 stages for the pistol match and it was a relatively low round count, but the stages were challenging. Remember, if you don't like how our stages are set up, come earlier and help set one up yourself. Don't complain unless you participate. Anyway, the misses were flying fast and furious and on one stage, only one shooter managed a clean run. It was a bit different from our normal blast-a-thon, but it reminded us that shooting partial targets at a distance is not easy, to say the least. In the end, Bryant Chaffin, our Grand Master in Residence, took the overall match and Limited honors.  We really didn't have much in the way of competition in the other divisions, so if you are interested, just check out the scores. We are also posting the match results on the USPSA web site now, so check them out there as well.

All the latest pistol match scores are here.

We held a business meeting after the pistol match and we elected a new slate of officers. Your leaders for 2008 are:

	Bill Jackson - President/Webmaster
	Wayne Alcock - Vice President
	Bill Casanova - Secretary/Treasurer

As the new team takes over the club, we focused on several issues. The April match has always been our member appreciation match, but we weren't able to hold it this year. We also renew our memberships in April, but with only 10 of the 15 shooters joining the club as members, we find that our funds are running a bit short. We had to pay our liability insurance this month which has all but depleted our funds. Our lease for the gravel pit is due in November and it costs about $750 a year just to lease our little plot of heaven. Insurance runs about $600 a year and targets cost about $0.60 each including shipping. We also pay $3.00 to USPSA for each shooter that competes. This helps support the national organization, as well. So, you start to see that shooting is just another really expensive hobby. If we are going to continue shooting, however, we must raise more money. The members in attendance voted to start enforcing the membership rules and actually make non-members pay $15, while members continue to pay $10 for a match. This has been the rule for quite some time, but we have never enforced it. Your annual membership is only $25 and that includes your match fee for that day, so it really only costs you $15. This is paid back in just three matches, so unless you are once a year, you really need to become a member. We will be maintaining a list of paid members and enforce the rules starting with the May match. Please consider joining as your $15 can go a long way towards helping the club function.

After dispensing with the business, we got back to shooting. It was time for the long guns. We set up three very challenging stages for shotgun and rifle, with one stage being a combo shotgun AND rifle. Wayne Alcock and his son, Chris, spent several days over two weekends creating some very challenging mover stages to test the rifle shooters as they have never been tested. The combo stage was shot the quickest by Wayne in ONLY 75 seconds, and included 13 steel targets (lollipop targets for birdshot or buck, a round plate for rifle, and two large steel plates for slugs at 50 paces (or so), 6 clay pigeons, plus 7 paper targets, with two of these mounted to a moving plywood board. Take it from me, that sucker was moving! We take reloading pistols for granted and most of us are pretty good at it, but reloading the shotgun while on the run and trying to get the right ammo in there at the same time is tough! I guess getting to crush clay pigeons at 6 to 10 paces is at least satisfying. If you didn't shoot with us, you really missed an experience. Much thanks again goes to Wayne and Chris for the tireless effort to set up and take down their movers.

The long gun match was easily taken by Bryant Chaffin, with Wayne Alcock almost 32% behind. Fast with a pistol, fast with a rifle, Bryant is a pleasure to watch, unless you are shooting against him. 

The rifle scores are here.

The schedule for 2008 is located here. Or, you can download the schedule here in PDF format.