The Rainmaker, SASS #11631

As I see this, we are reading too much into it. As soon as the shooter realized the action was closed, they took immediate action to make it safe for movement. The action WAS open and unless it was stoked (which I highly doubt) there was no empty left in the chamber or no live round loaded into the chamber. We had a thread a while back about what to do when you are going to the loading table and an action closes... take immediate action to remedy the situation. This shooter did exactly that. They are not required to open the action for safe movement, as a hammer down on an empty chamber will suffice and that's what they did; place the hammer down on an empty chamber. If this was a rifle (or SG) and there were rounds in it that could be loaded into the chamber, then yes, I see a problem. No call.

I have the same problem with my Dillon; the stuff gets all over the place!

One word... RELOAD! Save them precious STS hulls and reload them. A MEC 600 goes for less than $300 or even a Lee Loader (that's how I started) for $50 and you can take them STS hulls and save lotsa $$ and reload them with payload and recoil to taste. I shoot em till they split and get many reloads from them.

We have a fella that does it and he does it carefully and correctly... I hate it! IMO, I think there's too much that can be done wrong at speed.

OK, enough popcorn munchin', time to chime in. Some really good points of view here. Now, FWIW, here's mine. I think people say "as befits a championship shoot" when they have shot a big match as a way of complimenting the producers of the match; stage writers, match directors and so on. I don't really think they mean that the match was somehow more difficult or complicated, although it may have been to some. Ref. Billy Boots' comments; a lot of people shoot at big matches and are running stages that they just normally do not shoot on a regular basis, even though many do. I try to incorporate into my monthlies, what I have seen at other matches as a way to, not only bring in good ideas I have seen elsewhere, but also to help "prepare" my shooters for other places they may go and see some of these ideas. I'll admit, I shamelessly "steal" ideas from other clubs. I know, I know... one of my $!ns. I do always try to give credit as to where I've taken a stage from though. I'm a fan of some movement (yes, I do throw a stand and deliver in once in a while), both lateral AND uprange movement as well but some of the big matches I've been to cannot do that on most of the bays due to the sheer volume of shooters and common firing lines; this is still no reason the stages cannot be fun and challenging. For my monthlies, I write the stages and come back to them a couple times to see how things flow and if I can see any problems; for annual stages I've written, I write them many months in advance and run them through several trusted pards to have them all look through them and I will try to set them up and run them to see how it all works. I have written stages I thought (on paper) were awesome only to find out they really were not. I've also written stages that I thought were nothing special and folks loved em. For reasons of timely flow with a large amount of shooters, obviously large matches cannot have long, involved stages, especially with a long reset, but championship matches CAN and SHOULD provide challenges (this does not mean hard) and entertainment for the shooters and this does require some time to get right.

Haha, how do you think I know about it? Damned water fountain... 😆

I've used Nevr-dull wadding polish on some loaded cartridges I had that I wanted to shine up a bit; worked great. https://eagleone.com/products/all-metal-polish/

You sold off the original 302? I have been dyin for years to put together a small block with a cross-ram manifold with dual fuel injection throttle bodies on it. Marriage... kids... kids... kids' school... still determined though. Went to Sebring over the weekend for the 12 - hour. Went past Fort White exit; maybe someday I'll get there for the BP matches.

Great list... and posts. Nice resource. Thanks all