Dawn shone on the golden foothills of the Sierra Nevadas mountains. This morning, I found myself at the Sacramento Valley Shooting Center, about 40 minutes outside of Sacramento, CA and about 3 hours from San Francisco (give or take an hour depending on traffic).
As a father of two school aged kids, my ability to travel to a gun range for an early morning match is somewhat limited by time and distance. This was well outside of my normal range visits but one I had long wished to make. I was invited by my range buddy, James, to film and observe a 1000 yard benchrest match organized by the a Northern California chapter of the Freedom Benchrest club.
Freedom Benchrest organize monthly 600 yard and 1000 yard matches open to all. But unless you want to consistently place at the bottom of the standings, to be competitive requires a bit more than a factory high-power rifle and store bought ammo. Each of the shooters invested a small fortune into their setup. The 13 competitors brought out a panoply of custom built rifles, heavy-duty geared rifle rests, precision scopes (that cost most than most factory rifles), boxes of hand loaded ammo, and an array of cooling fans and sundry gadgets.
The course of fire was 1 round of 5-shots within 10 minutes followed by a second round of 10-shots also within 10-minutes. The shooters were allowed as many “sighter” test rounds as time allowed provided they completed their “scoring” shots within the total time frame. The targets were 6.5″ rounds with a 3″ bullseye, but at 1000yrds I could barely see 10″ target board with my naked eye. To score a perfect round a shooter would have to place all of their shots within 1.5″ of the center X; in gun parlance that’s a rifle capable of less than half-sub MOA accuracy.
The rifle is only a 1/3 of the equation. Each shooter used custom hand-loaded ammunition. Many of them build their own ammo loading setup in their garages and spend hours developing, testing, and crafting each round of ammunition. And then the other 1/3 of the equation is the shooter and the time they spent practicing.
The shooters came from all different backgrounds and skill levels. Some had been shooting “normal’ firearms all of their lives but only recently entered into long-range shooting. Some had just learned to shoot a few years ago and feel into the challenge of long-range. One thing I noticed was there were no shooters under 40 in the crowd; probably because the cost of entry precluded all but retiree’s and well paid tech-employees or in some cases they were one in the same (as I mentioned this is not far from Sacramento and San Francisco).
But even if you don’t have the small fortune, the folks in the group were happy to lend spare gear like an unused backup rifle bag or rifle rest to anybody willing to bring a rifle and some ammo to join them. And they were all willing to share their hard-won knowledge about the sport to anyone who was willing to invest their time. That’s the one other thing I found all of the shooters had in common: camaraderie.
At the end of the 2nd match after most of the shooters had finished there was still 5-6 minutes left. Louie invited me to shoot his custom-built rifle and his 6mm “Louie” ammo at his bench. His rifle had a 2oz trigger (for context a military M16 rifle has a 6-8lb trigger pull) and a geared rifle rest that adjusts the rifles’s position by millimeters by turning dials. I let myself have 4-5 test shots until I found a bullseye hit and then proceeded to shoot 10 scoring shots. Most landed within the bullseye and I got a 93 out of possible 100 points. Not bad for my first try at 1000 yard precision shooting.
Freedom Benchrest hosts regular monthly events at the Sacramento Shooting Center. Contact them ahead of time to sign up to compete or attend a practice day. Tell them Moondog sent you. Contact James jamesbacardi@aol.com
Freedom Benchrest Events Calendar https://freedombenchrest.com/event/sacramento-valley-shooting-center-match-4/
