Hi everyone, Back home now and enjoyed a very nice fathers day morning with the kids.
Just scanned through the many well wishes and huge support from everyone. It is more than greatly appreciated and thought I would dedicate some time to answer some of the questions and give a brief report. This will probably come in the form of several short postings as I catch up on some other duties as well
Yes it is true, the team had all 7mm. Some straight 284's, 284 Shehanes and a few lighter loaded magnums. Projectiles were 180 VLD and Hybrids doing 2800-3000 fps. Powders were mainly 2209 (4350) but some VV (165 etc) and some 2213SC. Barnards, Bats, Kelbly etc. NF, March and Sightron scopes
With the strong, flicky tailwinds the minor difference in ballistic performance was negligible. Far less so than pure crosswinds - it was more about reading the changes than a ballistic fight like you see in Bisley. Perhaps other teams did truly come "over gunned"??? but I suspect the end results had little to do with caliber choice and more to do with teamwork.
A few of the team members wanted to transfer the "house of pain" reputation from Lowerlight to Raton. Whilst no doubt quite different from Lowerlight it was very flicky and at times hard to read with mirage, and flags generally going in all directions and "dust devils" a regular occurrence. Marty and Alan seemed to have the best handle on this through the individual events and shot extremely well throughout. They have both given a lot to this sport and it was great to see them rewarded with outstanding performances.
In the end the team came together like a well oiled machine. It was one of those "lifetime experiences" to be a cog in that machine and I will try and go into more detail on that shortly.
