Wyoming Dinosaur Ranch Blog

The Bliss Ranch just held the first Wyoming Tactical Rifle Championships.

July 22-24th this year, Mac’s Gunworks (Gillette), Bliss Ranch (on the border north of Gillette), and Extremunition (Wyoming produced ammo) and others sponsored the event while Bliss Ranch hosted the event. This keeps in Wyoming the essence of the International Tactical Rifle Championship which has moved to Gunsite in Arizona from it’s previous home of two years on the Bliss Ranch. Over 160 metal reactive targets remain on the Bliss Ranch and will be reconfigured for next year and the Second Annual WTRC to be held July 27-29th, 2012. A very concise description of the rules and regulations are at www.macsgunworks.com and reviews of shooters having played our “sniper golf” tournament are located at the snipershide forum.
http://www.snipershide.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2703932

Entry fees are 300 dollars per team member consisting of a rifle shooter and a carbine shooter. Both shooters carry pistols, pistol targets are mixed in throughout the range and count toward or against (with a miss) your final score so brush up on your pistol before you play this game. Pistol targets are out to 50 yards, carbine out to 500 and rifle out to 1000 yards. 300 Win mag is maximum caliber allowed on course. No armor piercing bullets allowed. Winnings were significant with first place team taking well over 6 thousand dollars worth of cash and prizes.

Think of the Wyoming Tactical Rifle Championship as a really hard game of Sniper Golf.  You have a shooting station (tee) , a carbine and rifle team (each with pistol work to do too), you try to hit a 10 inch square from 50 to 1000 yards, and you “green” are the group of targets from 1 to 8 in number per “hole”.

While one shooter ranges (laser ranges) the targets), the other shooter zooms in (or looks up to see what is going click, click, click and is not an empty handgun).

The range officers converge at the headquarters yard ready to go out with a team.

This is a shooters meeting to go over the rules of engagement before the Team on Team competition the last day of the tournament.

This was a good turn out considering we only had 90 days to organize the event.

We had several short 700 yard courses of fire for the team on team event.  It will be MUCH bigger next year.

Group on up to the line for the egg shoot (a 3 inch target at 400 yards) which is a one shot at a time competition.

Can you even see any 10 inch metal plates at normal magnification???

How about here, any targets?

The 1/3 mile walk to the beginning of course three is through very scenic country.  We are not just a ranch covered in grass.   There are easily over 10,000 trees here too.

Here is a telephoto shot looking over the shooters shoulders at some targets starting over 200 yards and ending out past 600 yards.   This is an easy station though. Did you notice the targets on the ridge line IN FRONT OF the trees?

Everybody is pretty seriously prepared with gear for this game.

Ditto.  I all had a great time and this event will grow like a snowball thrown off Everest on a warm day.  Stay tuned.

Contributors/Organizers/Helpers and a BIG THANK YOU TO:

Bliss Ranch (Host for the entire event)
Mac’s Gunworks – 2 custom rifles lots of time and money to make this happen
Extremunition- $600.00 gift cert. & AR upper lots of time and money to make happen
Specialized Tactical Systems – 4 AR lower recievers
Thunderbeast Arms -  2 cert. 1/2 off supressors
Crimson Trace – cert. for 2 free lazer products
H-S Precision – stocks for custom rifles
Pacific Tool & Gage – 1 free reamer of choice
Black Hills Ammo – 200 Rnds 168 match ammo
Berger Bullets – 3 cert. for 3 free boxes of bullets each
Burris – Steiner – 60% off cert.
Brunton – 40% off cert.
VOO-DOO Tactical – free padded gun case
Stag Arms – Free static proof reloading mat
Sierra
Rocky Mountain Discount Sports – Hunting video, 7 hats, Nikon sport suit, Bipod, bino – cover, bino-strap, key-chains, tanerite, decals
Other thanks going out to,
Matheson Drilling
Rob Clark & Family
K&K Auto
John Crump
Miles Lunde
Calvin Taylor
B&B Roustabouts
Pete McIntosh
Nate Jensen
Dick Kohler
Jim Pershard
Amber McIntosh
John Harvey
Duke Campbell

If I missed any, I apologize and will fix this as soon as I know about it.

The International Tactical Rifle Championships were held on the Bliss Ranch.  In 2010, there were 30 teams of shooters competing in the proving grounds of long range carbine and long range rifle targets out to 1000 yards for rifle and 500 yards for carbine. The ITRC is no longer being held on the Bliss Ranch, it has moved to Gunsite in Arizona.

The competition is open to all professional shooters active in military and law enforcement as well as select qualified civilian marksman.  This event is held on very hilly terrain, in the heat of august and targets are very small.  Hits are positive scores and misses are negative scores so finishing with a score above zero is quite difficult.  Wind, sun, heat, mirage, optical illusion, dust, bugs and exhaustion all take their toll on the shooters and their equipment.  This competition is classed as one of the most difficult in the world and is widely attended.  We have hosted the rifle and carbine events for the last two years and plan to continue for 2011.   There are over 100 metal targets standing on our ranch to challenge the best shooters in the world.  If you think you can hit with your rifle a 10 inch square at 1000 yards while running a timed several mile long course, you should sign up for the event next year.

The chopper event is a separate event held in conjunction with the two other courses of fire and is unrelated to the ITRC except that it is held here at the ranch at the same time.  4 metal targets are spaced on a ridge line over 1/4 mile and the shooter in the chopper engages the targets.  All chopper shooters shoot the same guns so it is equal and the most hits on targets win the guns used in the event (nice AR-15′s).

I am very sorry for my lack of post and admittedly poor management of the blog lately.  It has quite a few hits each month and I try to write but the end of the year is wrought with weather changes, closing fossil sites up for the coming bad weather, and we had this little event here called the International Tactical Rifle Championships.

Here is a post that is essentially the story/article about the ITRC in the Powder River Examiner (a newspaper from Broadus Montana.

The Bliss Ranch just east of Biddle on the Montana/Wyoming line hosted 2 legs of the 3 events related to the International Tactical Rifle Championships over the weekend of Aug 21-22.  The well attended event was held under beautiful blue skies and great long range shooting conditions.  A team consisting of two shooters, one on a highly modified carbine (almost all AR-15 or M15 to a team) and a rifleman (shooting mostly 308 with some wildcat calibers in the mix) took on the hilly terrain with a time limit of two hours.  Running out of time meant you loose the ability to finish the targets above you, overtaking the team in front of you disqualified the overtaken team from continuing so most team ran the course.  Every man had to carry his own gear and stay on the mowed, flagged courses each over 2 miles long.  The third event was held off Bliss Ranch down at the Small Arms Training Academy near Gillette.

Several locals including  Colby Trump, Terry Powell, Ted Amsden, Dave Reed, Trusty Matheson, Marty and J Reno, and Chris/Frank Bliss were Range officers keeping score, calling hit and miss for each of the several thousand shots on both courses and enforcing very tough safety rules. There were no injures except to some of the chains holding targets.  Frank Bliss had several trips around the 4 miles of courses left to pick up the remaining loose brass from the event.  The two days of the shooting event yielded 63 pounds of highly prized, very high end match rifle/carbine cases.

The shot distances envelope were from 0 to 500 yards for carbine and 100 to 1000 yards for rifle.  Ranging lasers were permitted.  Wind instruments, barometric readings and altitude corrections were all the rage. The targets made from either rectangular railroad hard plate used to hold rails to the ties (8 inch by 14 inch) and 10 in square 1/4 inch thick hardox steels hung between regular T posts with either a rebar/rubber belt or rebar and double chains on each sides.

Twenty six teams from all over the world attended the the competition which boasted a 44 thousand dollar first prize, several custom rifles, 10 day/10 animal safari trips to africa with Randy Cotoure (the professional mix martial artist) as a companion, lots of gear donated by “Spec Ops corporation” and plaques for the Winners.

A sideline competition which almost everyone attending (even spectators and neighbors) was a helicopter shoot where 4 “pepper popper” targets were strafed by passengers with feet on the landing skid using custom Rock River AR-15′s.  The highest score took all.  The prize was the two custom Rock River AR-15s. Ejected brass was collected before it left the helicopter by an attached bag on the firearm.

The winners of the ITRC were the team of Bennie Cooley and Michael Voight with a total score of 5023.  That was a big lead 90 percent of the other teams had scores below 4000.  Cooley and Voight have been national Champions before.  They defeated the other teams consisting of a mix of professional shooters, military, government and qualified civilians.

Frank Bliss (who is a certified instructor of small arms and self defense) of the Bliss Ranch has worked in close cooperation with Mr. Dave Lauck toward this event for the past two years. Dave Lauck is considered by many to be the most knowledgeable small arms expert in the world. He has excelled in every aspect of the industry in addition to spending over 25 years in law enforcement. Dave is a much sought after instructor by police and military units and was presented the Golden Eagle Award from the U.S. military for professional firearms training. He holds numerous training certifications and was the Chief of sniper instruction at the 2004 World SWAT Conference. Dave is also a world-class shooter with multiple championships in three-gun, pistol and rifle matches. He was the first person to surpass Jeff Cooper’s 20-20-20 challenge: 20 shots, in less than 20 seconds, at less than a 20-inch target at 1000 yards and a member of the One Mile Club. Dave is also the Director of the International Tactical Rifleman Championships and the Carlos Hathcock Benefit Shoot-off. Dave has written for numerous shooting publications and authored four books including Advanced Tactical Marksman. He lives in Gillette, WY.

It is planned that this event will occur next year on the Bliss Ranch with a rearranged course of fire and perhaps a new course in the mix connecting the first two so we can configure as we wish.  Good shooting all.

Frank Bliss

If you want to post a blog relating to my comments or along similar lines, feel free to type away on the make a comment button on the bottom of each post thread.  I will monitor contributions of course to keep them clean but I welcome good discourse and discussion.  There were over 3000 hits on this blog last month but just a few of you left comments. Have at it.

Thanks  

Frank Bliss MS Geology

Owner Bliss Dinosaur Ranch.

I would like to talk about breakfast for a minute but to do so I will have to take you across Wyoming for a while.  I love the drive on St. Rt. 26 from Dubois Wyoming to Riverton Wyoming because the highway takes you by some amazing geology.  The Wind River Mountains (like the Bighorns) are the result of a gigantic uplift of really old Precambrian (greater than 600 million year old) granite in the center with all the younger sediments draped on the sides steeply tilting (dipping) away into the basin.  Around 10 miles south of Dubois,  the massive beds of red Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) become quite obvious as hundreds of feet of rusty deltaic muds tower over the right of way.  These beds are dipping steeply away from the mountains core as does all of the succession of geologic formations for the next 5 miles to the southeast following the road.  Yes, I said 3 miles of tilted beds stacked on top of each other like pancakes.  That is over 15000 feet of sediment piled on top of another additional mile of rock sequence stratigraphically below (older than) the Morrison Formation Red Beds. These beds expose on the flank of the Wind River Mountains way above the road and end at the granite core of the Wind Rivers. This makes for a 20000 foot plus thick sequence of sedimentary rocks.

I ask the simple question, was there a 20000 foot thick hole there that filled up with sediment over time?  Think about that for a second.  That is a really big, thick pile of sediment piled up in a non-repeating sequence of events.  Was there a really big hole in Wyoming that was nearly as deep as the deepest abyss in the ocean today?

The answer is simple.  No!   As the sediment accumulated, the huge amount of weight above pressed down on the rocks below and they simply sank deeper to maintain their equilibrium with the plastic mantle rocks much deeper in the crust. To think of this another way…

I think of the North American Continent like a series of teeter totters.  As weight is removed from one location by erosion, transported by water and deposited in another location. Something has to give as the amount of mass is just too large to ignore.   This resultant subsidence and subsequent rising of the lands that were the source of heavy sediment is well understood by earth scientists.

Another excellent example of this phenomena is the Mississippi Delta region.  The Mississippi River and it’s tributaries drain all of the central continent and all the sediment it carries has built up in the delta area.  We now extract oil from river sediment at depths exceeding 35000 feet.   Again, there was not a 35000 foot deep hole there.

Is there other evidence? (An attorney says, “never ask a question if you don’t know the answer”!)
Of course,  it exists in the Great Lakes.  If the part of the country that is unloading sediments is rising (to counter act the lowering of the Mississippi delta) then there should be proof of that.  There is!  The northern shores of all the great lakes show exposed ancient beaches and the southern shores show submerged beaches.  Just as you would expect if you tip your morning bowl of milk and cereal toward you. A ring of milk appears on the side of the bowl away from you and the side of the bowl toward you is about to spill over on your lap.  The great lakes are just big bowls of water that are tipping along with the continental teeter totter they are sitting on.

A geologist loves a good breakfast.