Ronin Combat Strategies put on a great precision rifle match hosted by the Desoto Co range about 35 miles south of Memphis in Mississippi.
The weather wasn't too bad for February and the facility has some potential. The match was only shot on one range, which was basically a 650+ yrd by 100 yrd bay completely surrounded by 15' dirt berms. (somebody spent a lot of time with a dozer)
The match stages were fun and challenging. The first 3 stages were paper and the rest were steel with one milling stage. The closest shot was 200 yrds and the longest was about 640. Most of the distances were given, but not until you were on the clock.
Ronin had in an interesting twist to the normal match format, by incorporating a different kind of target detection into the stages. Normally, target detection is either the Steel Safari type, where there are a couple targets out there in the desert somewhere and you have to find them, or the paper/kims games type, where you have to pick your face or playing card or shape/color combo out of an array of similar but not quite identical items.
What Ronin did was scatter 26 pc of steel with little placards labeled A-Z (not in order) around the range. Once the stage started you ran to each barricade and found a card there with the targets and ranges you had to shoot from that barricade. What made that more challenging for me was picking the right scope setting.
Normally, with my 5-25x S&B, I'd set the scope near 6-8x to scan for targets in a field like steel safari and similar stages at other matches. And when running a paper kims game, where all the targets are usually on pieces of paper attached to an IPSC cardboard, I'd turn the magnification up to 25x to distinguish shapes/features. But in this case, you had to scan a field and be able to read the letters from up to 600+ yrds. It took me a while to figure that out and i just struggled to read the numbers and misread many of them at 6x (and thus shot at the wrong target).
Stage 1 was a single 'cold bore' shot. Stage 2 was a KYL on paper. Stage 3 was interesting because I practice this a good bit and haven't seen a stage before that was only this: Standing to prone, 1 round on a 3-4" circle at 200 yrds. Repeat 3 times with time limits of 7, 5, 3 seconds.
The rest of the stages all incorporated movement, barricades, target detection, multiple distances, etc with time limits that ranged from very tight to moderate. The combination made it pretty challenging overall and the scores reflected that.
I learned a couple other things at this match including having your scope zeroed before you show up and reload your mags so you don't discover in the middle of a stage that you only started with 2 rounds in the mag.
The prize table was very nice for a new match, the BBQ lunch provided was excellent and the staff was extremely professional and had great attitudes. I think this one's going to take off and I'm really glad to see more matches in this area. I think they're planning 3-4 per year, and I hope to make at least a couple of them.
Another interesting thing about this crowd was the number of people with ThunderBeast silencers. Of course I brought my two, but a local dealer Colonial Arms has sold quite a few of them. There was a lot of talk about them throughout the weekend.
pics and videos here
The weather wasn't too bad for February and the facility has some potential. The match was only shot on one range, which was basically a 650+ yrd by 100 yrd bay completely surrounded by 15' dirt berms. (somebody spent a lot of time with a dozer)
The match stages were fun and challenging. The first 3 stages were paper and the rest were steel with one milling stage. The closest shot was 200 yrds and the longest was about 640. Most of the distances were given, but not until you were on the clock.
Ronin had in an interesting twist to the normal match format, by incorporating a different kind of target detection into the stages. Normally, target detection is either the Steel Safari type, where there are a couple targets out there in the desert somewhere and you have to find them, or the paper/kims games type, where you have to pick your face or playing card or shape/color combo out of an array of similar but not quite identical items.
What Ronin did was scatter 26 pc of steel with little placards labeled A-Z (not in order) around the range. Once the stage started you ran to each barricade and found a card there with the targets and ranges you had to shoot from that barricade. What made that more challenging for me was picking the right scope setting.
Normally, with my 5-25x S&B, I'd set the scope near 6-8x to scan for targets in a field like steel safari and similar stages at other matches. And when running a paper kims game, where all the targets are usually on pieces of paper attached to an IPSC cardboard, I'd turn the magnification up to 25x to distinguish shapes/features. But in this case, you had to scan a field and be able to read the letters from up to 600+ yrds. It took me a while to figure that out and i just struggled to read the numbers and misread many of them at 6x (and thus shot at the wrong target).
Stage 1 was a single 'cold bore' shot. Stage 2 was a KYL on paper. Stage 3 was interesting because I practice this a good bit and haven't seen a stage before that was only this: Standing to prone, 1 round on a 3-4" circle at 200 yrds. Repeat 3 times with time limits of 7, 5, 3 seconds.
The rest of the stages all incorporated movement, barricades, target detection, multiple distances, etc with time limits that ranged from very tight to moderate. The combination made it pretty challenging overall and the scores reflected that.
I learned a couple other things at this match including having your scope zeroed before you show up and reload your mags so you don't discover in the middle of a stage that you only started with 2 rounds in the mag.
The prize table was very nice for a new match, the BBQ lunch provided was excellent and the staff was extremely professional and had great attitudes. I think this one's going to take off and I'm really glad to see more matches in this area. I think they're planning 3-4 per year, and I hope to make at least a couple of them.
Another interesting thing about this crowd was the number of people with ThunderBeast silencers. Of course I brought my two, but a local dealer Colonial Arms has sold quite a few of them. There was a lot of talk about them throughout the weekend.
pics and videos here
