First match of the 2026-2027 Short Range shooting season Arizona—Light and Heavy Varmint—
After 2 days of practice in mild to medium wind conditions, it went to hell when the match started. At around 9:00 Saturday morning the wind picked up to 15 mph and steady along with gusts to 25. For most of this agg the wind was usually moving in the same direction, with a few angle changes. The burms we have at the Ben Avery range can cause varying conditions on the section of the range we were using (benches 31 through 60). This happens when the wind moves in certain directions especially coming over the burms. At times it can be an advantage and other times it can cause odd shots depending on what wind condition you pull the trigger in. We had 29 shooters start the LV 100 yard match; six of those were Lou Murdica family and friends. In match #1 Cameron Snow, won this match shooting a .196. Cam also shot the small group for the aggregate a .131 in match #3. Winning the 100 yd LV aggregate was Kendall Hughes shooting a really good .2588 in the very challenging wind conditions, great job Kendall. Kendall’s aggregate was .048 smaller than Joel Nader’s second place aggregate of .3074. It was very easy to loose a shot and end up with 4 shots in a decent low .200 or a nice mid .100 and then end up with a mid high .300 or even larger. There were 2 Hall of Famers shooting this match and they finished in 12th and 24th place.
LV 100 Yards
1. Kendall Hughes .2588
2. Joel Nader .3074
3. Jarrod Hahn .3102
4. Jim Wheeler .3136
5. Cameron Snow .3150
6. Paul Weaver .3152
7. Earl Horgeshimer .3196
8. Jim Aylor .3232
9. Lou Murdica .3236
After lunch, we shot the 100 yard Heavy Varmint match. A surprise for all us that attended the match this weekend; one of the shooters paid for lunch for everyone in attendance, he also did this on Sunday as well. Thank you anonymous shooter. The wind conditions for this aggregate were, what seemed like a 10th of an inch lighter or maybe the wind didn’t fluctuate as much. However the wind gusts were as strong as in the morning, just not as frequent. Upset over his performance in the morning LV agg. Lester Bruno put it too us shooting a nice .2264. Interesting that Lester didn’t win any of the matches in this agg. His agg of .2264 was made up of 3 small .200’s a .294 and he finished with a .181 (second smallest for the 5th target). Dave Woodward shot a .153 to win the 5th match. Small group for the agg was a .139 shot by Ross Mccollum in match #4. The other Hall of Fame shooter shooting this match went backwards from his morning performance to finish in 27th place; not a fun day for sure. During this aggregate he was in an unofficial contest with one of the Murdica clan, Dani Agras. This was Dani’s first match and some how she ended up in this unofficial competition. She won this competition in match #5, shooting a group .139 smaller than his and beat him by 27 thousands in the aggregate. Over all the HV aggregates were 40 thousands smaller for the afternoon aggregates. We had 5 shooters shoot aggregates under .3 which was decent for the amount of wind and direction. For the day temperatures started out in the high 70’s and warmed up to low 90”s.
HV 100 Yards
1. Lester Bruno .2264
2. Dan 6br Sutton .2722
3. Jim Wheeler .2756
4. Wayne Christian .2822
5. Joel Nader .2870
6. Cameron Snow .3140
7. Ricard Van Heemst .3208
8. Kendall Hughes .3356
9. Roger Alofs .3514
Sunday we shot the 200 yard stages of the match. Forecasted winds were similar as the day before with winds 10 to 20 with gusts to 30mph and temps high 80’s to 90 afternoon. We started the match off as usual with the class we finished on Saturday the Heavy Varmint. For the first match the wind wasn’t as strong as is was going to get and a few of the shooters did a decent job. Winning match #1 was Ross Mccollum shooting a .449. In match #1 there were only 7 shooters who shot over an inch. It wasn’t until match #4 when the groups started to get bigger. Shooting small group for the HV 200 aggregate was Dan 6br Sutton who shot a .349 in match #3. Dan won the aggregate with a .2851.It was a close contest between the top 3 finishers. Jim Wheeler who finished in 3rd place won two matches #2 with a .426 and match 4 with a .481. In second place was Joel Nader who won match #5 shooting a .449. Lester Bruno, Cameron snow and Dana Andrus were in contention but each had one target that hurt their chances. Looking over the results I can see that 200 yard shooting is where newer shooters need to practice more. When you make a mistake with a miss read on the wind, that mistake hurts the aggregate usually big time and will move the shooter down in the standing really quick.
HV 200 Yards
1. Dan 6br Sutton .2851
2. Joel Nader .2909
3. Jim Wheeler .2950
4. Lester Bruno .3194
5. Cameron Snow .3208
6. Dana Andrus .3291
7. Wayne Christian .3687
8. Earl Horgeshimer .3906
9. Chuck Miller .4086
After our free hotdog lunch we shot the Light Varmint 200 yard stage. The winds picked up and started to change directions as well. To give you an idea how much they picked up; I don’t adjust my point of impact for the wind intensity; I only adjust for the point of impact change from 100 yds to 200 yds for elevation. The wind was going from right to left so I held on the lower right sighter bull dead center. My shot hit the 10 ring on the lower left bull at 3 o’clock; that’s 4 inches of push; at this point I knew it was going to be a challenge. Winning this yardage was Dan 6br Sutton. Dan’s start wasn’t what he had in mind. His first 2 groups were over an inch; after his second group Dan was in 14th place. At this pace he was on track to shoot a .5318 aggregate. However he shot competitive in matches #3 and #4 and finished with a very good .269 in match #5; shooting small group for the yardage and giving him a .3874 aggregate for the win. One other shooter; Wayne Christian shot under .400 for the aggregate; Wayne ended up with a .3973 for second place. Wayne’s last target cost him the yardage win as he shot a 1.097, not all that bad as half of the shooters shot over an inch on their last target. Again looking at the match stats every shooter shot at least one group over one inch.
LV 200 Yards
1. Dan 6br Sutton .3874
2. Wayne Christian .3973
3. Ross Mccollum .4211
4. Jim Wheeler .4321
5. Michael Zeman .4505
6. Joel Nader .4705
7. Gary Ocock .4712
8. Chuck Miller .4917
9. Isabella Gonzalez .5034
The Grand aggregates and the 2-Gun Championships top 10 places were for the most part taken by those that shot better than most at 200 yards. This is nothing different than what happens at most matches; so again I say if you want to be competitive,practice wind doping at 200 yards. Sometimes it pays to shoot defensive at 200 and maybe go for the little one at 100 and see where that takes you. It’s fun to shoot small groups, however sometimes that’s really hard to do. Sometimes it’s a lot of fun just to beat the conditions the range throws at you and when you do you’ll more than likely beat a lot of the other competitors as well.
| Light Varmint Grand | Heavy Varmint Grand | Grand 2-Gun | |
| 1. | Jim Wheeler .3729 | Lester Bruno .2729 | Jim Wheeler .3291 |
| 2. | Joel Nader .3890 | Dan Sutton .2787 | Joel Nader .3390 |
| 3. | Kendal Hughes .3953 | Jim Wheeler .2853 | Dan Sutton .3392 |
| 4. | Dan Sutton .3998 | Joel Nader .2889 | Wayne Christian .3885 |
| 5. | Paul Weaver .4216 | Cameron Snow .3174 | Cameron Snow .3979 |
| 6. | Chuck Miller .4217 | Wayne Christian .3255 | Earl Horgeshimer .3996 |
| 7. | Earl Horgeshimer .4232 | Earl Horgeshimer .3760 | Chuck Miller .4014 |
| 8. | Lou Murdica .4279 | Chuck Miller .3810 | Kendal Hughes .4142 |
| 9. | Jim Aylor .4497 | Michael Zeman .3944 | Paul Weaver .4256 |
| 10. | Wayne Christian .4516 | Ross Mccollum .3947 | Michael Zeman .4284 |
