As a Matter of Interest

[Barry Davies]

Browsing thru a bit of history and found this in the entry book from the 1952 VRA " Queens " series.

Reference is to a conducted match fired at 600 yards---

Quote--

" Targets -- Ordinary 2nd class target, with a 12 inch CENTRAL bullseye counting as 6 POINTS. All other dimensions and scoring in accordance with S. Reg. 20 "

So, scoring the central as 6 points was done 61 years ago.
Are we that far behind??

Also of note was the reprinting of the entire SSR's in the entry book-- things were certainly much simpler then.

[pjifl]

Adding to what Barry had to say.

I started shooting TR in 1956 in Brisbane. It was not called that back then.

There were NO centres and scores were 2 to 5. This I am sure of. Centres came in in Brisbane in the late 60's.

An old scorebook my grandfather used showed centres used sometime back in the 20's in a Victorian Queens. But his scorebooks from other places (he was in Brisbane) never showed centres used elsewhere. Unfortunately, these score books have been lost and I cannot confirm exact dates and places.

Perhaps different areas experimented with different things.

In Brisbane the Governor (Queens Rep) presented the Queens Prize but one year Prince Philip was in Aust and officiated. I was there.

Did you know that way back round about 1913 the Kings prize at Bisley was shot with different calibers. This occurred because the service rifle and cartridge developed by Canada (The Ross rifle and a special cartridge they wanted to use) was used by Canadians. Others used 303. This cartridge was really something (the rifle had real problems as a service rifle).
The caliber was 0.280 which made it effectively a 7mm and it had a BC which would compete today fired at about 3000 f/s.

This happened for a few years then the Brits squashed all opposition by banning it - presumably so they could win again with their inferior equipment !!!

I have more details at home (still travelling now) but you will pick up some references to this via Google.

Strange things have happened.

It seems that many NRAA people are ignorant of these facts and often sanitize history to suite themselves.

Peter Smith.