Three-Way Shoot-Off in Smallbore Prone Match at Perry

Breaking News: SPC Hall Wins Camp Perry 3-P Championship
Port Clinton, Ohio – With a final score of 2383-171x, Specialist Joseph Hall of the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit captured the 2013 NRA Smallbore 3-Position Rifle title in Camp Perry, Ohio. Besting fellow U.S. Army Marksmanship teammate Jason Parker by a total of three points, this is Hall’s first overall title at the National Championships.

The Smallbore 3-Position Championships consists of two separate phases — Metallic Sights and Any Sights. During each phase, shooters fire their smallbore rifles from the standing, kneeling, and prone positions. Out of a possible 2,400 points, Hall dropped a mere 17 points.

Story based on report by Lars Dalseide for NRABlog
The first match this Friday (19 July) at the NRA National Smallbore 3-Position Championships in Camp Perry was one for the history books. The first match, shot prone with “any sights”, ended in three-way perfection. For not only were three shooters tied for first, they were tied with a perfect score of 400-40X (“X” is a bullseye).

“Not something you see every year,” said Match Director H.Q. Moody. “Not something you see for a lot of years.” Perfect scores meant there was a chance to chase the National Record. All you have to do is keep hitting bulls until you miss. Nothing like carving your name into a little bit of NRA history, aye? For one of these three shooters — Reya Kempley, Joseph Hall (of the USAMU), and Michael McPhail — immortality was in reach.

But the weather gods intervened. As Kempley, Hall and McPhail got ready for the the shoot-off — lightning struck, quite literally. As lightning flashed and thunder roared, the shoot-off was delayed. With officials calling for a fifteen minute break, rangemasters, spectators and staff scattered for shelter. When the match resumed (Kempley barely made it to the line in time), the three competitors went at it. All three had early misses (nines instead of tens), so there would be no new record. Kemply was off her game, finishing third, but the two men finished with identical 199-19X scores — just one shot off perfect.

Hall was awarded the match by application of an NRA tie-breaker rule — on the basis that Hall’s one “miss” (i.e. not scoring a bullseye 10X) occurred earlier in the shoot-off’s record string than did the single “miss” by McPhail. The thinking behind this rule is that it is more difficult to shoot consecutive 10Xs later in the match.