Cold Zero Long-range Precision Marksmanship courseBy
Preparing for a plate shooting event or a long-range course is a tedious affair. The berms need to be cleared of weeds and brush or rebuilt, plates and stands repaired and chains replaced. Then they have to be laid out at the various distances and painted. Flags must be hoisted, sighting-in targets erected and radios charged. The lecture room has to be prepared, the audio-visual aids set up and tested, course manuals laid out and refreshments set out. (The main reason why we pack up and store the plates is that they are uplifted and sold off to scrap merchants if left on the range).
Reinforcements arrived in the form of Angus de Jager, a German Sudwester. Gus had attended Course 5 a few years back and had decided to do it again, just to stay current. He is a dyed in the wool firearm enthusiast and arrived with an armoury of rifles, from .223 to .300WM, determined to have each one ring the gongs at 1 000 m. Not long after him came Paul Gerber, a student on Course 7. He had left the first course with a bucket list of improvements to his weapon system. Now he was back, having effected all the necessary changes and champing at the bit to put it to work.
Cracking the whip
Being part of the alumni has its downside, too. The whip was cracked and soon they were loading steel on the tractor trailer, painting gongs, raising flags and sorting out the odd glitch in my audio-visuals. The sun had cast its last shadows before all was said and done. We hauled our weary backsides into the showers, changed into fresh clothing and stepped out to meet and greet the new group.
A few weeks back, after consulting with our instructors – Roger Stockbridge, his son Austen, Henk Venter and Larry Bester – we decided that our three-day course needed to be condensed into a weekend. Covid-19 had not been kind to the man on the street. If you were lucky enough to escape the axe, your salary may have been cut or your annual leave suspended.
Straight to the classroom
So, instead of a first night of socialising, it was straight into the classroom for the first of the lectures. Not surprisingly there is a heavy emphasis on firearm safety. We are proud of our safety record, with not one infringement or incident to date. A short) at a casual shooting event or a pigeon or a pig hunt. An overview of a range bag and its contents ended the first half of the evening’s proceedings.
