Results from Arizona and California Long-Range Championships

Over the past couple of weeks, State Long-Range Championships were held in California and Arizona. Many of the best shooters in the Western States were in attendance. In both CA and AZ, State titles were awarded in both High Power and F-Class disciplines.

California State Long-Range Championship, November 6-7, 2010
On November 6th and 7th, the California Long-Range Championship was hosted at the Coalinga Range. In the High Power division, Trevor Hengehold shot a brilliant match to finish first, and win the Championship, with a 795-36X score. Jim O’Connell was second with 783-37X which also earned him the High Senior Title. Dennis Flaherty had the next highest score (779-30X), and just two points behind Dennis was Gary Eliseo with 777-24X.

In the F-Class Division, Jerry Tierney, shooting his new 7mm RSAUM, won the championship with a 790-36X Score. Hot-shooting Brenda Hill took second with 780-31X, and Peter White was third with 773-19X. Though he had almost no time to practice with his RSAUM prior to the match (it was chambered the weekend before), Jerry was delighted with the gun’s performance: “This is the most accurate long-range rifle I’ve ever shot. And that’s saying a lot. I did get some load development help from Danny Biggs, who uses the same cartridge.” Jerry was shooting the new 7mm Berger 180gr “hybrid” bullets, with sorted Remington RSAUM brass, CCI BR2 primers, and Hodgdon H4831sc powder. The bullets were seated about 0.015″ off the lands and Jerry told us his load was running “real close to 3,000 fps”.

Jim O’Connell Reports: “Congratulations to Trevor Hengehold and Jerry Tierney, the two new State Champions (High Power and F-Class). Trevor started out in front and never looked back. Jerry posted some good scores on Sunday to come from behind for his victory. This was the last of the Big Coalinga matches for 2010. We get started early in 2011 with the State Fullbore Match in February (26-27) and the State Palma Match in March (5-6). We are planning on awarding F-Class titles at all the State prone Championships (Fullbore, Palma, and Long Range) in 2011.”

Arizona Long-Range Championship, November 20-21, 2010
At the Ben Avery Shooting Facility outside Phoenix, many of the best shooters in the Western states congregated last weekend for the season-ending Arizona Long-Range Championship. Conditions were challenging but the top competitors managed to master the switchy winds and post high scores. In the High Power Division, the match winner and new AZ State Champion is Rick Curtis. Congrats to Rick! Curtis finished with an impressive 986-45X Grand Agg, after posting a 591-24X Iron Sights Agg, and a 395-21X “Any Sights” Agg. Eddie Newman, the High Senior for the match, posted the next highest Aggregate score, a 985-37X. Phil Hayes also shot a 985 but with 34Xs. Middleton Tompkins followed Hayes with a 979-36X. Peter Church was next with a 974-43X (second highest X-Count), and our Contributing Editor German Salazar finished with 973-34X.

In the F-Class Division, twenty-one shooters vied for honors. In F-Open, Texan Erik Cortina won the Championship with an impressive 972-17X. Charles Gooding was close behind with a 970-27X. Charles had high X-Count among all F-Class shooters. Freddy Haltom, shooting as a “Expert” had the third-highest score, an impressive 962-25X. Next in line was Tony Mangold with 944-19X.

F-Open Champ Cortina offered this report: “I was able to pull it off last weekend and win the Arizona State LR F-Open Championship at Ben Avery. The winds were strong and switching, making it very challenging! We ended up shooting 5×1000 instead of 6×1000 as scheduled. On Sunday, we only shot two strings as the third was canceled because of rain. I was shooting my .284 Shehane with 180gr Berger VLD bullets. My winning gun is a switch barrel 6.5×47 Lapua / .284 Shehane built by Mark Pharr of Tumbleweeds Custom Rifles. This Lawton 7500-actioned gun is the same rifle I used to set Club Records at the Bayou Rifle Club in Houston: 600-49X at 300 yards, and 595-34X at 1000 yards.”