Mother Nature Wins

David and Marty blow them away at 900 yards /Get blown away at 900 yrds

Marty Kelly, the ECDRA captain, despite the wind took out 2nd place overall in F Class Standard A grade. David Wallace, one of the East Central District Rifle Association new shooters, took 2nd place overall F class standard B grade at the Wodonga picnic shoot on Saturday.

Above Marty Kelly preparing to shoot the final Range.

The Wodonga shoot is triple jeopardy, as it is shot over 900 yards in three stages. On Saturday the extreme range was made even more challenging with a very strong wind changing to a fickle wind then back again. At one stage there was complete silence as the shooters waited to see if the wind would change again as it had changed direction by about 180 degrees. The silence was broken by a shot from ECDRA's Graeme Kerr. Graeme had been challenged by an electronic malfunction earlier in the stage and decided he had nothing to loose so he backed his judgement, the result was an almost dead centre shot. The rest of the field slowly followed suit and the match was back on in earnest.

A feature of the shoot is the outstanding hospitality, hot donuts for morning tea followed by a great lunch and hot donuts again for afternoon tea. Just the thing on a cold spring day when the conditions made shooting very tough for even the very best shooters.

Back at Violet Town things were no better with that Violet Town tormenting wind! The other contingent of the ECDRA were shooting at 600 yards, close to the warmth of the Club House with access to a hot drink. The evidence of the fickle nature of the wind was the way the shots were stretched across the centre of the target, some well outside the maximum scoring zone! 

All were very vocal about how to deal with the wind as they packed up and sat down for the afternoon tea chat. Soon the conversation shifted to next week's shoot, the final round of the Chas Hayes memorial long range pennant. The recent good experience at Horsham and the day's experience were just what is needed to get the team in the best condition. If they had know what was going on up at Wodonga these shooters would have been even more pleased. We can but hope that all this practice pays off as the main thing is that the local team beat the Shepparton/Natalia team as they both go into the final with equal match points. We wish our local team all the best.