Hunter Match Review - I Did Terrible!!

Well, it finally happened. This last weekend's match was terrible for me! It was pretty much a full on NRL Hunter match instead of a PRS match. I've spent my time trying to learn the skills to do well at PRS and the NRL Hunter stuff is very different. The conditions were brutal also. Wind all day, starting in the 7-10 range building to 12-15 and a few stages with 18-23 mph winds!! Plus, it was already over 90 degrees! Factor in moving from stage to stage with all my gear, carrying it through the stages, then moving to the next, I was well exhausted by the end of this. My rifle and gear is probably around 30-35 pounds that I would carry each stage. My rifle is designed for PRS, not going hunting, lol. I am about double the weight of what most people use when they are serious about doing NRL Hunter matches. That worked against me a bit, but mostly I think my problem was data collection and utilization!

I was missing way more shots that I should have. After a few stages, I started trying to lock in the wind direction manually like I do in PRS and have had good luck with that. I forgot that when I range with my binos that it also sends the target direction and somewhere in those numbers, things were off I am guessing. The only stage I could see misses on, I think I was overcorrecting and then not coming back properly to get on target. I was defeated with a few stages of Zero hits! That mentally has me down.
I show off a little example here of how one of the stages would be run. Start carrying everything you'll be using, move forward to the ranging position and scan between a left and right mark to find the targets for that stage. Then range and get your data (hopefully correct, lol), then move forward to the firing position and engage the targets.
What I would do is get my wind reading, then drop my Kestrel into a pouch and not look at it again during the stage. I never noticed that the target direction was likely off at least 90 degrees! I noticed that after filming this mock stage at my place. I went to see if I could figure out why I was missing the same shots I was hitting before the match. I realized that the target direction was off considerably. I am pretty sure that at some point early in the day my binos lost calibration and I never realized it. I just figured I was having a terrible day and not doing very well. After I manually corrected that error I noticed, the numbers were different and I tested them. All hits after that! So, I am pretty sure that was my problem. But, I will do some more testing on that theory this weekend.
We have 1 more match to go in a few weeks for this series! It should be a more normal PRS type match, so I'm hoping to end the season well and get back some confidence that I just lost after this one!! Then, on to try my hand at some of the more pro level matches!!

Thanks for your time. If you have any ideas, please leave a comment and let me know what to check. I need to identify and correct the problem. I will look into a few more things and find the error and share with you all what it was and how I fix it!
I hope you have a great rest of your day and an awesome weekend!!

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