Boyd Allen
Active member
A little Benchrest nostalgia
It was a beautiful day today. I opened my garage door, laid an old solid core door across some sawhorses, and took an unlabeled plastic storage crate off of a shelf, to examine its contents, with the main idea being to do some discarding and resorting. I made sure it was one that had mostly shooting stuff...more interesting.
In the back of a May '98 Shooters News, after rereading my review of some
Boretech products, I came to the section that featured the NBRSA match results. In that section, there was a two page spread about a match that took place at the Lakeland Rifle pistol club, which I saw by the title, is located in Florida.
At the top, spanning part of both pages, was a very good picture of the late Ed Watson, at a shooting bench, behind his rifle. The part of the caption that overlaid the image read, " Hall of fame Benchres Shooter ED Watson has won more matches than anyone in the history of the sport.' I had not known that. I guess because match results that do not earn Hall of Fame points tend to rapidly fade into obscurity. In any case, I began to think about that unopened box of a thousand of his .750 jacket 62 grainers in a slightly more respectful light. I remember when I ordered them. Ed was on the road, and I was having a little trouble understanding him, with the background noise. He called them his "little passion pills". I gathered tat he had some success with them. I guess that I had never fully realized the extent of that success. That little bit of personal contact made my history lesson that much more interesting.
The other thing that caught my eye, in the picture, was the long tubular, plastic mirage shield, that was somewhat crudely attached to the front of a Leupold's lens shade. This made me smile, because because it made me think of the number of times I had told newer shooters that that was not the setup that they should use, pointing them instead, to the more typical barrel mounted strip. Perhaps I may have overstated the disadvantage of the scope mounted plastic tube just a mite, considering the record that Ed piled up using one.
The other things that I noticed that he was shooting off of a Hart rest, that sported one of the earlier design Hoehn windage tops, both of which I still use, alternating the latter with one of Ron's later designs that fits a Protektor #3 bag.
Seeing his equipment made me feel better about my old equipment. Perhaps an $800+ rest is not required to shoot well
After all of that, I read the match results, noting that Ed had edged out Allen Arnette by a scant .0004 to take the 4-Gun with Mr Boyer in third place .0089 back from Ed.
I guess that my point is that it is good to look back once in a while, and that evidently not everything about who shot well is summarized in HOF points, (which, if I were to get even one, would be instantly recognized as a miracle on a par with raising the dead, or perhaps parting the Red Sea ;-)
It was a beautiful day today. I opened my garage door, laid an old solid core door across some sawhorses, and took an unlabeled plastic storage crate off of a shelf, to examine its contents, with the main idea being to do some discarding and resorting. I made sure it was one that had mostly shooting stuff...more interesting.
In the back of a May '98 Shooters News, after rereading my review of some
Boretech products, I came to the section that featured the NBRSA match results. In that section, there was a two page spread about a match that took place at the Lakeland Rifle pistol club, which I saw by the title, is located in Florida.
At the top, spanning part of both pages, was a very good picture of the late Ed Watson, at a shooting bench, behind his rifle. The part of the caption that overlaid the image read, " Hall of fame Benchres Shooter ED Watson has won more matches than anyone in the history of the sport.' I had not known that. I guess because match results that do not earn Hall of Fame points tend to rapidly fade into obscurity. In any case, I began to think about that unopened box of a thousand of his .750 jacket 62 grainers in a slightly more respectful light. I remember when I ordered them. Ed was on the road, and I was having a little trouble understanding him, with the background noise. He called them his "little passion pills". I gathered tat he had some success with them. I guess that I had never fully realized the extent of that success. That little bit of personal contact made my history lesson that much more interesting.
The other thing that caught my eye, in the picture, was the long tubular, plastic mirage shield, that was somewhat crudely attached to the front of a Leupold's lens shade. This made me smile, because because it made me think of the number of times I had told newer shooters that that was not the setup that they should use, pointing them instead, to the more typical barrel mounted strip. Perhaps I may have overstated the disadvantage of the scope mounted plastic tube just a mite, considering the record that Ed piled up using one.
The other things that I noticed that he was shooting off of a Hart rest, that sported one of the earlier design Hoehn windage tops, both of which I still use, alternating the latter with one of Ron's later designs that fits a Protektor #3 bag.
Seeing his equipment made me feel better about my old equipment. Perhaps an $800+ rest is not required to shoot well
After all of that, I read the match results, noting that Ed had edged out Allen Arnette by a scant .0004 to take the 4-Gun with Mr Boyer in third place .0089 back from Ed.
I guess that my point is that it is good to look back once in a while, and that evidently not everything about who shot well is summarized in HOF points, (which, if I were to get even one, would be instantly recognized as a miracle on a par with raising the dead, or perhaps parting the Red Sea ;-)
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