The World Benchrest
Championships in France By Vince Bottomley
Vera was shooting on the next bench to me for the whole competition, which was a pleasure in one respect as Vera is a delightful lady but demoralising in another, as I watched her shoot tiny group after tiny group, hammering me in every single Match!
Day-two and out come the Heavy Varmint rifles but still at 100m. As I say, most will use the same rifle but now, the USA decided that it was time to ‘kick ass’ and Jack Neary took the win with Argentinean shooter Christian Rando in second and current World Champion Gene Bukys in third. Such are the idiosyncrasies of world-level benchrest that Vera could finish only 31st shooting the same rifle – she still beat me though! Jack Neary’s winning agg. of 4.064mm was another record.
Day-three, Thursday – now it gets serious. 200 metres is the distance where the Championship is won and lost. Our tiny 100m groups, when averaged (or agg’d) with 200m groups really sort out the men from the boys! At 100m we are looking for 5 or 6mm groups to be competitive but at 200m anything around 13mm will be ‘respectable’. However, believe me, it’s not difficult to shoot groups around an inch or more!
Here, the targets are at 200m. Concrete walls and baffle-beams for the first 100m produced some strange winds
Benches are rotated every day to ensure fairness, which means that our wind-flags must also be moved. Each Team shot from two designated benches each day usually with five or six wind-flags on each lane. With shooting starting at 8.00am prompt and not finishing until after 6.00pm, it meant that after cleaning rifles and moving flags, we weren’t leaving the range until eight o’clock – a long day.
Former World Champion and benchrest legend Mike Ratigan and USA team-mate Jack Neary watch the action
The 28 bench firing-line
Until today, the weather had been glorious but now rain clouds threatened. Sure enough, the heavens opened – on my relay! The rain came down in the proverbial ‘stair-rods’ plus it was also dripping off the overhead baffle-beams. No one really knows what happens when a bullet travelling at 3250fps hits a rain-drop – but some sure found out! Poor Jack Neary suffered a ‘rain-strike’ which took an otherwise respectable group to 36mm and plummeted yesterday’s winner to 127th place!
I got lucky and shot a 13.24mm but Vera also had a rain-strike, which at least meant that I beat her today - at last! Brit shooters Martin Miles and Steve Newman also came good today, finishing in 9th and 10th places and France’s Carlos Pacheo shot another new world record group of 2.27mm – it looked like a 308 bullet- hole!
Day-four. The six o’clock starts and three days of competition were taking their toll on me. It was a couple of hundred yards from the reloading area to the firing-point, up a steep hill, which meant that
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