Alvin C. York Memorial Shoot

[Tumblernotch]

We come through Albany to get there. If I was driving or could get our driver to do it, I'd like to leave by way of I-40 just to see some new country.

That's definitely a crooked mountain road coming from the north. We have a pop-up camper that we use and you have to take your time and watch the road. But it's worth it when you drop down into the valley of the Three Forks. That's a beautiful little valley and the locals that I've met there are good people.

I can see why Pall Mall could be mislabeled Wolf River. One fork was right behind our campsite last year. It being warm, a couple of us took advantage of it for getting cleaned up Saturday night.

 

[TennesseeJed]

For the 4th time Paul "Spidermatic" Griffith won the York Shoot. :bow: He shot a match record string of 3.560. Same as last year, he gave what would have been one of his prizes an Ed Rayl barrel to the shooter who finished 150th. What a great shot and great guy Paul Griffith is. :applause:

I fired 5 practice shots and had the dreaded two groups. One group of three shots and one group of two, bad thing was they were located 3 inches apart. I put my target in the location of the 3 shot group and my first shot hit an inch off of X-center and thought yeah. Unfortunately my next shot went into the two shot group below for a score of 3. :hmm: After that the next couple of shots alternated between the top and bottom groups. I had 5 shots go for a score of under 6 inches and the other 5 over 14 :cursing:

In spite of my poor display of shooting I had a fantastic time. I got to spend all day with a great bunch of people and renew friendships made the past two years. Many thanks to Ron Borron, Mel Hankla, Jim Franks, Allen Coon and all the folks who are responsible for putting on what to me is my favourite day of the year...yep even better than Christmas. :wink:

 

[Tumblernotch]

Jed, I just got in a few minutes ago from Pall Mall. Three of us made the trip together and another member of our club and his wife travelled separately.

I shot 6 practice shots for my group and did nearly the same thing you did. I had a high and a low gr.I finally got settled in and shot at the high group for score. I shanked a few and shot 5 over an inch, the longest one being 1.667". The rest were under 1". My shortest shot was 0.193". My total string was 8.806". Much better than last year and just good enough to get the meat, but by that time all that was left was turkey. But still an improvement! It is amazing how much shorter your string has to be to win this year compared to last year. I was just looking at last year's scores and the score I got this weekend would have taken 20th place last year. This year I got 56th! This year, more shooters were separated by thousandths of an inch than before. Last year, one of the guys in our club was 56th with 10.173". I ranked the same this year with 8.806". That tells you something, it's gettin' tougher!

Paul is a great shot and a great barrel maker. 8 out of 10 barrels used by the top winners were Spidermatics. I'm in the market for a new barrel and my buddies were trying to get me to buy one off Paul, but I didn't allocate enough money to take one home. I offered to carry Paul's sirloin to his camp for a discount, but I don't think he works on a barter system. I'm thinking seriously about buying a barrel from Bob Hoyt. I was shooting next to him and we talked a bit. He lives pretty close to the in-laws and I'll probably make a visit this Summer.

I hope the money we raised passing the hat will help out the York School. It's not a huge amount, but I think it surprised Ed York that considering the cost for everybody just to get down there, we were able to come up with it.

Our little group did OK considering the competition. Two turkeys, a pork loin (some of which was our supper Sat. night) and a country ham for a best X (not mine ). We had a good time. And the Good Lord blessed us with a cloudy, windless morning without rain. At least whilst we was shootin'! I reckon we'll try 'er again next year if we can. The 2nd Saturday of May will be the WV Chunk Gun Championships in Wayne Co., WV. Maybe I can do some good there.

We should have had a flag or something for Forum members to rally around. I wonder how many made it. Anyhoo, glad to see you made it home all safe. Maybe next year we'll figure out a way to ID each other.
:hatsoff:

 

[2feathers]

Could anyone tell me what position Bobby Grimm from Johnson co. KY placed in the final tally?? I was wondering if he brought any braggin rights home or if he cried all the way back??

 

[Tumblernotch]

It seems like I may have heard his name called, but I'm not 100% sure. Does he have a grandson who shoots there too?

 

[TennesseeJed]

He and his two grandsons were shooting down at the same spot I was. I'm not sure where he finished at. I think he shot a little better than his grandsons based on the way they were comparing targets though.

Both of his grandsons finished higher than he did last year.

 

[Tumblernotch]

I remember hearing Mel saying that somebody's grandson outshot them and I thought it may have been the Grimm family. But I think there were two different families where the son/grandson outshot Dad/Grandad. Either way, it's good to see the younger ones getting into the sport and it's great that the York family is still being represented in shooting.

Did you notice that the girl who won the Youth Class came up from around 14th place last year? There's someone who is spending some time at her trade.

 

[Rancocas]

Sorry I missed it. It was pouring rain, thunder and lightning down here in south Tennessee. Although on Friday, the day before, I went trout fishing and caught 6 nice rainbows.

How did Paul and Sandy Swanson do? Sandy is usually one of the range officers.

 

[Tumblernotch]

It rained at Pall Mall intermittently almost the entire time except for during the match itself and the awards ceremony. It rained real hard for a little while Friday night and thundered loud a couple of times. And it misted and drizzled a good bit. But we were told that it had been very dry down there for quite a while and even after Friday's rains, the ground was quite dry. Other than getting your clothes a bit damp if you stood outside for long, it was quite comfortable. And like I said earlier, we shot under a cloudy sky which is what I prefer and we had no wind in the morning relay, just enough to clear the smoke. There was some crosswind during the afternoon, but I don't know if it affected anyone or not. At least it was blowing pretty good up at our camp.

As for Paul and Sandy, I don't remember hearing their names called during the awards. I'm pretty sure I saw her there, but didn't see if she shot or not. She may have shot in the afternoon.

 

[TennesseeJed]

One of the Grim boys was shooting on one side of me and the girl was shooting on the other side. Last year she shot over 25" and this year, she shot half that.

Both of them were shooting quite a bit better than I was.

 

[Tumblernotch]

It seems almost everybody was shooting better this year than last. One of the guys I was with, who is a very good shooter fell way down this year though. He shot one of the best X's and the very next shot went into the white. He won a ham for the X (.045) but didn't place high enough for the other meats. This game is gettin' tougher every year. My string this year was only 1/4" bigger than the one that won in 1994. Paul's winning string averaged 1/3" per shot! We'll have to try harder next year I reckon. That's part of the fun. It's tough to get real good when you shoot several different types of targets, offhand, bench, &c. Over the Log is all some of these guys shoot. You wanna be real good, you concentrate on one type of shooting and stick with one gun. Hard to do when you got other guns agettin' jealous!

 

[shortstring]

It should be noted that this years conditions were probably the best I've ever shot in. There was just enough breeze to clear the smoke & after the first few relays in the morning the light was perfect. Somebody should have got me in the second relay. We set back with a scope watching Charlie Bower & Tom Swigart & both were on track to do it. Charlie got blew over on the 10th shot & Tom lost 8 & 9.

You're right that there's a hand full of people that mostly shoot chunk. In a couple of weeks we'll be in Xenia OH. I see you're from WV, You should come up to Pritchard sometime when they've got a shoot.

Paul

 

[Tumblernotch]

We went back to camp and ate lunch after we shot in the morning and went looking at barrels and gabbing with people so I missed watching the afternoon relay.

The weather was just about perfect for shooting. Like you said, just enough wind to move the smoke, though I had to wait a few times for it to clear when my next door neighbors shot. I did notice that it got slightly brighter the last few shots but not enough to mess me up.

I was shooting a rifle just finished the last day of February. The guy who built it wanted me to take it to York and see how it would do. The only real problem with it is the short barrel. My sight radius is just too short. It is a Douglas that had been hanging from a rafter for 30 years. I shot it at Joe Lycan's range over in Yatesville earlier but wasn't quite used to it yet. I shot the York shoot last year with a .40 flint longrifle. Hopefully, I'll have a new, longer barreled gun finished and shot in before next year.

I live only a couple of counties over from Pritchard and shot there last year. I'm planning on going over for the shoot next month. They are a hardcore bunch of chunk shooters in that club and you'd better be ready to hunker down and shoot your best. We enjoy shooting with them. They're a great bunch of fellers.