Canandaigua Sportsmans Club Steel Challenge

[tapper3]

It has been a lot of years since I shot a match at this club. I tried to shoot one of their Steel Challenge matches last year but, unfortunately, the match got cancelled due to a scheduling conflict.

Last Saturday there were no conflicts and they put on a great match. A new bunch of guys have taken the reins and there have been many improvements made to the ranges. Kudos to those guys and thanks for giving us such a fun day.

Steel Challenge tests your ability to shoot accurately as fast as you can. It seems counter intuitive to me to pay a match entry fee and then spend as little time as possible actually shooting. So I found that by shooting slowly I could extend my enjoyment, really draw it out, and I feel sorry for all those people whose fun was over much more quickly than mine. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

Good job, CSC.

 

[LMS]

May I ask how long the match lasted? I shot a steel challenge there previously and what should have been a 2-3 hour match lasted 6 hours. I think they were overwhelmed with entrants and didn't know how to handle it. I hope they are running the matches better - I'd love to see them be successful.

 

[tapper3]

Disclaimer: I wasn't really watching the time so take this with a grain of salt. Shooting started about 9:30. Registration was open when I arrived at 8:45. I think we were done shooting about 12 o'clock, maybe a little after. Might have been 12:30 but no later.

A huge plus for the club is they have added two more pistol bays. So we were able to shoot 5 stages on 5 bays, which moved things along pretty quickly. There were 27 shooters and the largest squads had 6 people.

If you shot there before you must be familiar with the layout of the ranges. Two of the stages were on bays out near the road. A third stage was way down at the end of the 200 yard rifle range. And the last two were on the 2 new bays to the left (west) of the rifle range stage. What I'm saying is there is a long walk to and from some of the stages. So that eats up a little time.

But you should give them another try. They are doing a good job and will get better at it as they get more experience with bigger matches.

 

[LMS]

That's great news about adding more bays - that's what caused the backups when I was there. I will definitely give them another try. I think they are holding monthly steel matches.

 

[tapper3]

I wish they were doing monthly matches like this but the only one they have listed on PractiScore at this point is Aug. 12th. One of the guys on my squad is a member and did say they do 3 stage matches in the evening on the first Tuesday of the month. I got the impression these were unofficial pick-up matches. I didn't get times from him.

You do know that Rochester Brooks does Steel Challenge matches, too, right?

 

[LMS]

Yep - I shoot all of them. They cancelled the last one though.