Thirty-one guns came out for our last match of 2013. Five fun and challenging stages which included our mover thanks to Sean Benners.

Welcome to our two new shooters; Justin “Mad dog” Grobe and Lucas Haynes, thanks for coming out and we hope to see you back in January.

Remember the discount for our Pirates match only runs through December 31st.

We won't be having a pistol match in January and right now we plan on having for sure two carbine matches on the 1st and 3rd weekends to get ready for Pirates.

From the staff of Texas Carbine, Merry Christmas, and a happy, healthy, prosperous New Year.

Twenty-seven shooters came out to participate in the last pistol match of the year. This match marks a new post-Thanksgiving “name day”. Texas Carbine Sunday now joins Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday as a nationally recognized day.

This match saw the shooting debut of Mini Doc Ellis and Melvin Baum. Welcome aboard to both and hope to see you back soon.

Reminder...we will shoot our final carbine match of 2013 next weekend on the 8th. We are doing this to allow for holiday travel. The first match of 2014 is pistol on January 5th.

Pirates match applications are now online at piratesoftexasmatch.com. Send yours in by December 31st and receive a $20 discount. Like last year, there will be a limited number of slots and we sold out last year.

OMG, what a great day! Wonderful weather and 47 guns including 11 new shooters came out to welcome Numbers back; Alex Nixon, Caleb Munster, Byron Scruggs, Cody Osborn, Dale Hunter, Josh Hanson, Nick Gutierrez, Eric and Desiree Scott, Tim Alonzo, Evan Enderle. Welcome back to La “Patti” Whitemore Gal after her three-year hiatus.

By the way, this broke our previous all-time record of 46.

This match featured the duel of the big guns. You must have at least a .308 to participate. Four battle rifles fielded by Yarek, El Whitemore Guy, Diesel, and Your Beloved Maytag all shot M1 Garands aka a real man’s gun. R2 and LT Dan also tried to run with the big dogs with their AR-10 and FN-FAL. We had a 3-way tie for the oldest guns that worked the entire match..between El Whitemore Guy’s “Vera”, Diesel’s “Susie Q”, and Your Beloved Maytag’s “Matilda”. The combined age of these three vintage blasters exceeds 210 years although it’s not polite to talk about a lady’s age.

All those who participated in this battle rifle class really enjoyed it and plan on doing it again sometime next year. So now’s your chance to pick one up for the re-match.

A change in next month’s schedule...because of the holiday season the normal carbine match will move to the second weekend, December 8th.

Scores were up by 6pm, not bad considering a long lunch at Catfish Charlie's and a LARGE stack of scoresheets!

Thanks to everyone who joined us today and especially to those who helped setup and tear down.

Reminders...Pistol December 1st, Carbine December 8th, and of course, Pirates February 16th

Well it seemed like a good idea when we talked about it. Shooting four classifiers that were all very similar, everyone shoot, then change it, then everyone shoot, then change it, etc. Well at almost 4pm we were just leaving the range OMG never again. That said, a big thanks to Rick “SkyGod” for all his hard work on pre-setup and for running the match.

Welcome to our new shooter, Billy Hobbs, and welcome back to Ski.

Sixteen shooters came out to pad their chances for the 3Gun Nation drawing.

Next week’s carbine match will feature the duel of the real battle rifles but will also be rimfire-friendly.

Thanks to everyone who came out and especially to those who reset props, taped targets and, help setup and tear down.

What a wonderful day to have twenty-three guns come out and join us for some fun.

Welcome to our two new shooters; Morgan Shirley and Adam Stearn. Thanks to Dave “Swooper” Tillema and Carl Matthews for coming down from Houston and KenDog from Port Lavaca.

As always, five new courses of fire, some more challenging than others. One of the evil Rick Walls fell victim to Maytag’s little gun with the Benny brake.

We tried out Heavy Metal class with one round on paper scoring, we’ll let you know how it worked our after scoring.

For you Real Men (and Real Women,) we are shooting real Battle Rifles (308 or bigger,) at our next match. Eight rounds max in the mag.

Scores were up by 5pm and considering that we didn't get off the range till 3pm and then went to lunch at Googlys, that's doing pretty good.

Attention, Attention, Attention...there will be an extra match next month on the 2nd Sunday. We will shoot a five-stage 3Gun match and four of the stages will be 3Gun Nation Classifiers. This will give everyone more chances to win the Remmington Versa Max and a HyperFire trigger. As always, we collect three bucks per classifer stage to send to 3Gun Nation. Come out and join us on the 2nd Sunday.

Finally, thanks to all who joined us today, Mother Nature gave us a gorgeous day for shooting. Hope to see you next time.

It was a scorcher of a day to shoot the carbine match, however 33 guns came out to shoot with us today. Did I say it was hot?

Welcome to our newest shooter, Gaby Munster, it was great to have you shoot something other than a camera! (grin)

It was also nice to see several returning faces who have been AWOL for a few months. (Bigger grin)

Scores were up by 5:30pm..not bad.

Start watching the forum and the Pirates of Texas website as we provide updates for the 2014 match. The theme this year is Pirates vs. Gangsters, revenge of the St Valentine’s Day Massacre. Mark your calendars for February 15/16 2014.

Thanks to everyone for joining us today, we truly appreciate your support and a HUGE thanks to Gerrit and Nick Milks for coming all the way from HOUSTON to shoot with us!

We’ll close with a reminder for our next two matches which will be Pistol on September 1st, and Carbine on September 15th. We may also be having a shotgun or 3Gun match on September 29th.

Welcome to our new shooters: Josh Hogue, Brian Townsend, and Luke Barrera. Thanks for joining us and we hope you will come back to shoot with us again. Conejo may need to change his nickname to Ocho Zero because his groups are either a figure eight or one hole.

All kidding aside, twenty-one guns came out today to challenge the heat for five new stages with a mix of paper and steel, that were deceptively difficult but fun.

Scores were up by 4:30pm which is especially good since we had a long, chatty, and enjoyable lunch at Panjo’s with about a dozen of our shooters.

We want to thank all the new and “newer” shooters as well as the old guys for joining us and we hope you had a good time and will come back and shoot with us again soon.

Also we need to tell my nephew, Collin, goodbye and thank him for all his help this summer. He has been an inspiration and has shown us there truly IS hope for the next generation.

Finally, the usual reminders..our next match will be a carbine shoot on August 18th and our next pistol match will be on September 1st.

We had a spectacular and very hot carbine match today, with one little rainshower to cool us off.

Not only were the stages very interesting but we had 10 new shooters who joined in the fun. A total of 41 guns participated in today’s match and a big TC welcome to: Nick and Gerrit Milks, Carey Ammons, Chris Waddles, Raphael Gutierrez, Kenedy Nguyen, Daniel Smith, Michael Smith, Ryan Rock, and David Ragsdale. Thanks for coming to your first TC match and we hope you will join us again in the future.

Thanks to everyone who came out today and a special thanks to those who took time out on their Saturday or Sunday morning to help us set up and, to those who helped tear the stages down and stow the props.

Scores were out by 5:15pm which is pretty good considering a long lunch break in between.

Hope to see many of you next time..

We shot a pistol/shotgun match today that was all steel including our two, new plate racks which were awesome but yes, it was REALLY hot.

Twenty-six fun-loving, heat-tolerating souls joined in the shooting with us and everyone said it was a really good match. R&R Designs did a fine job putting on this match. Some of the stages made you really think about what order you had to shoot the plates and poppers and others were run and gun. But all in all, it was a lot of fun and something a little different.

We had three new shooters: Shane McGee, Brian Miller, and Igore Janovic who came all the way from Serbia! Hope you guys can join us again soon.

Reminders..our next match is July 21st and it will be a carbine match.

Scores were up by 5pm which is doing pretty well considering a long lunch at Panjo's.

As always, a BIG thanks to R&R Designs for taking the lead as Co Match Directors for us as it gives us regulars just a little break which we appreciate very much.

Thanks to everyone who joined us today, we hope you enjoyed the match and that you’ll join us again soon.

Mother Nature got us again and we had to cancel the shotgun match due to rain. However, since we have the stages, we'll do our best to schedule another shotgun match in the not too distant future. Obviously, we HATE to cancel a match but in our area, it's definitely hard to complain about three quarters of an inch of rain so there is a bright spot.

Seeya next time..

Today we had 23 shooters who were able to make it out on Father’s Day and brave the ever-climbing temperatures and humidity.

We had our totally automatic mover up and running, and to make things more interesting, the steel stage was shot out of the back of a Deuce and a Half. With the added optional target of a half pound jar of Tannerite, just to add to the fun of explosions and smoke. It was a small target at eighty yards. Jake Panknin can add to the claim of the only one to hit the Tannerite on the first shot. Not a very nice thing to show up the Old Man (Spider,) on Father’s Day.

Thanks to Rick Lilly and his friend for the use of the WAY big truck and for his extra work rigging the Tannerite charges. More thanks to those who helped set up and tear down.

Scores were up by 5:30 after a LARGE gathering at Catfish Charlie’s.

Reminder..next weekend is Steel Challenge at CCP&RC and the following weekend is Shotgun with us at Starry.

Happy Father’s Day to all you fathers...

We shot five-stage, 3Gun Classifier match today with 13 mud enthusiasts enjoying the fun. (El Whitemore Guy was not allowed to do a rain dance so, once the sun came out, it dried up very quickly.

The 3Gun shoots are a lot of fun, it let’s you shoot two or more guns in one stage..some clays, some steel, and some paper targets.

We would like to thank those who came out on Saturday to help setup..Rick L., R2, and Hawk and also, everyone who helped on the tear down today.

Scores were up by 5pm which isn’t too bad.

Reminders..regular carbine match on the 16th and a shotgun match on the 30th.

Thanks to everyone who joined us today and we hope to see you next time.

Mother Nature had her way with the 25 guns that came out today. We were in the second of five great Maytag stages when she opened up with a downpour. Word has it that El Whitemore Guy was doing some kind of a dance to invoke the rain to ward off the inevitable defeat to Your Beloved Maytag.

Because of Mother Nature's intervention, all shooters today will receive a "Rain Check" for the July Pistol Match where we will use the same stages as today's match.

Remember this month we will have something to shoot every weekend; next weekend the R&R Designs team is devising a 3GN All Classifier match to test your skills with all three primary weapons. In addition to the 3Gun match and our normal carbine match on the third Sunday, R&R Designs is putting on a shotgun match on the fifth Sunday.

Our own Numb3rs is still in the Hospital. She is better than she was but, she still has a long, way to go in her recovery. She contracted Rocky Mountain spotted fever from a tick bite. This started an avalanche of problems which persist still. Please keep her in your prayers.

Maytag, Spider, HAL9000, El Whitemore Guy, Wild Bill, Numb3rs, and Nightmare.

Wow! Thirty-five guns came out to celebrate our two-year anniversary, what a great turnout considering all the other activities going on this weekend. At least ten of our regulars were out with work or other committments.

Welcome to our four new shooters: Nathan Hougancom, Steven Wintrode, Ron Mann, and Gary Ragsdale. Thanks so much for coming and we hope to see all of you again soon. Another thanks to all of you who made the drive down from San Antonio.

Rick aka "Skygod", came up with the 200yd stage to break the monotony of targets you actually see. This stage along with our typical coastal breeze and no max time, gave some of our shooters a little extra time on the range.

Thanks to Patty “El Whitemore Guy” for staffing the mover stage which went off without a hitch.

Standby for a marathon of shooting during the month of June. First Sunday pistol, second 3Gun, third carbine, and fifth shotgun.

On a more serious note, Donna “Numb3rs” Lowery is very ill and is in the Bay Area ICU. Please keep her, her husband, Wild Bill, and her son, Mark, in your thoughts and prayers.

Scores were up by 6:15 and again we thought that was doing very well considering we had a HUGE gathering at Laguna Reef for the post-match lunch.

Thanks to everyone who joined us today and especially to those who helped with tear down and prop storage.

Seeya in two weeks.

Next Sunday's match will mark Texas Carbine's two-year anniversary. Hard to believe that much time has passed but for sure we've come a long way since that first match.

Anyway, we wanted to do something for our loyal shooters to celebrate the anniversary and for starters, we're just going to cover our range costs so everyone will get to shoot for a mere ten bucks! To add to that, Maytag wants to use our way cool electric mover on one of the stages and to help get you readers excited, here's a little "mover promo" video I put together (thanks to Shane B's video from the Pirates match..hope you don't mind me using a clip, Shane!) 

Mover Promo Video

Let's hope we have good weather and that many of you can make it next Sunday. Thankfully, our match wasn't TODAY with all this rain.

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers..

Well, what a great day for blasting five original, all-steel courses of fire, with one surprise stage that 99 percent of the folks enjoyed. Thirty-one guns came out to shoot with us today and all seemed to have a really good time.

Welcome to our three new shooters: Koulton Mansilla, Michael Bartek, and Greg Laves. Thanks for joining us and for your interest in Texas Carbine. It was also great to see Betsy P. again.

The new steel worked great, look for more all-steel matches in the future.

Got to hand it to Maytag for his surprise stage. Each shooter went into the stage not knowing where any of the targets were located, with a few sneaky ones thrown in for good measure to make it more interesting. It’s a good bet we’ll see more surprise stages in the future.

Scores were up by 5pm which is pretty good after a long social gathering lunch at Sparrow’s Landing.

Thanks to everyone who joined us today. We realize ammo is tight and having thirty-one guns at the match today tells us you all really want to shoot and, it confirms for us that we’re doing the right things.

Hope to see you all at the carbine match on the 19th.

Just a heads up on the May 5th match..

After our recent purchase of 37 new steel targets, we now have enough for an all-steel match and that is the plan for the 5th. Because of that and because of the ammo shortage, we wanted to make it possible for more people to be able to shoot. So, you will be able to shoot the match with a centerfire pistol, shotgun, rimfire pistol, or a rimfire rifle and we hope that will allow more folks to join us.

Well you couldn’t have asked for a better day to come out and exercise your right as an American under the Second Amendment and do some fun shooting and since we we had another Three Gun Nation classifier we opted to use MuiltiGun scoring on the whole match.  One new shooter today, Esperanza Lopez, and a big TC welcome to you. We hope you enjoyed yourself and will join us again soon.  Also a welcome back to our good friends, Yarek M. and Byron H.

Today was our first test of the remote scoring system as Nightmare was on the road up in Austin with Rick L. and Billy Carbine where he took advantage of the Surefire Texas MultiGun match to buy a BUNCH of new steel at some great prices.  So a HUGE thanks to those two individuals for helping him out. Spider and Will Bill entered the scores and I emailed them to Nightmare who put them on the Web at 1600 while driving home. Consequently, we were able to maintain our tradition of having the scores up on match day.

Stay tuned for info on our next month’s pistol match which will feature a surprise stage.   

Nineteen intrepid, hard-core multigunners came out to challenge four original stages, devised by R&R Designs, plus one 3Gun Nation Classifier stage.

Great day, great stages, great people made for a great time for everyone. Welcome to Alex Christiansen, glad you came out to shoot with us.

Maytag’s OMG award goes to R2 for his drill teamesque twirling his AR rather than grounding on the Classifier.

A BIG thanks to Rick and R2 for being volunteer match directors and of course, thanks to everyone for joining us today. Don't forget, Carbine next weekend..

Welcome new guys; Charles Salmon Jr., Terry Stacy, and Top Gun Mundo Yanez. Glad you came and hope you will join us again soon.

Twenty-two shooters matched their skill against our five original courses of fire this month with contributions from SkyGod and Nightmare. Maytag says he is going to stop designing stages after he's been drinking. (See stage 3 for an explanation) <grin> But, despite the pain of stage 3, a good time was had by all.

Welcome back Mike Merkler and Jacinto Perez, we're happy you chose to join us again.

Remember, next weekend is 2Gun/3Gun, with four stages designed by R2 Designs and one 3GN Classifier.

Speaking of 3Gun, remember we are now part of the 3Gun Nation Club Series and for every classifier you shoot, you get an entry in the end of the year drawing for a Remington VersaMax shotgun with a treatment compliments of Triangle Shooting Sports or, a HyperFire Trigger.

Scores were up by 5:45 after a long lunch at Wings and Rings which by the way, is very good.

Thanks to all who chose to join us today and to those who stayed after to help us tear down. We know you have a choice of matches to shoot and we are grateful that you choose to shoot with us.

To join 3Gun Nation and sign up for the raffle, click here.

Thanks to Kim and Rick Lilly, we had some rather unusual non-threat plates in the match today. They were pink bunnies and only one of them was lost, the others managed to survive to hop again.

Nightmare grabbed some photos and Sergio shot a video. (Thanks, amigo)

Photos

Video

Our next match is this coming Sunday and it will be a rimfire-friendly Tactical Pistol match. As a matter of fact, we will have a match on each of the next three Sundays and on April 14, we will hold our second 3Gun match and we will once again have one Classifier stage. We’ll close out the four in a row with our regular Tactical Carbine match on the 21st and we hope you can join us on at least one of these weekends.

From all of us to all of you, have a Happy Easter..

18MAR - Two of our shooters at the match yesterday provided us with some really cool videos..so a big TC "thanks" to Rene Y. and Jefe!

Rene's vids: Wild Bill, Rene 1, Rene 2, Bill L., Nightmare

Jefe's vid: Jefe

I also took a handful of photos yesterday..click here to see them.

MANY thanks, guys!

17MAR - What a lovely day in the neighborhood, all in honor of St Patrick’s Day, and our carbine match. Twenty-six guns came out to compete in five challenging courses of fire and to check out Your Beloved Maytag in his 511 tactical kilt. Everyone had a great time and a few caught a glimpse of what was/wasn’t under Your Beloved Maytag’s Kilt (they may never sleep again).

In keeping with the St Patrick’s Day theme we had one stage where the shooter had to carry a pot of gold while shooting. This stage featured the automatic activator for the swinger thanks to Sean Benners, just walk by the magic point and the prop activates on its own.

Welcome to our four new shooters: Bill Lewis, Rene Yanez Jr., Luke Barrera, and Chris Bixby. Thanks to Logan Ellis for keeping score for one of the squads. Someday soon he will be shooting the matches.

Scores were up at 1830, not bad considering we spent a long time at BJ's celebrating Mrs. Maytag's birthday.

On another subject..Our friend, Yarek M. has been having some health issues of late and hasn’t been able to shoot with us but please join with us and keep him in your thoughts for a full recovery. You’re missed, Yarek so get back in good health soon so you can join us on a Sunday to burn some power.

Our next match is our Easter Shotgun Classic on March 31st and the next pistol is April 7th.

Also, don't forget Steel Challenge next weekend with R2 and Rick at CCP&R.

Thank you all for coming out and shooting with us we hope to see you again soon.

Stage one featured a swinger actuated when the shooter passed by an electonic beam in the hall.. no buttons, cables, ropes, or falling plates for us.  All this is thanks to Sean Benners our resident electrical wizard and you will definitely see more of these type actuators and new action targets in the future. In the match today, we had a mix of movement and stationary shooting stages.  One was seated through the whole stage and one was all steel which rounded out the day.

Rick L. took videos of four of the five stages and you can view them by clicking here.

For the foreseeable future we will be keeping the round count under 100 until the current ammo shortage passes.  We really appreciate those who are able to come out and shoot with us, “..it’s good to live in Texas”.

Reminder: We will have our normal carbine match on the third Sunday this month and the 31st will be a shotgun match/Easter Egg hunt. Then pistol on April 7th and Rick an Roy's MultiGun match on the 14th.

Stop the presses! Our data entry team tells me that one shooter didn’t have a raw time on Stage 2 so we made an educated guess.  For ten bucks I will email you if it was your scoresheet.  :-)

Scores were posted by 5pm after we took a Panjo's break for beer and pizza.

Thanks to everyone for coming out and enjoying this bee yoo teeful day with us and unless the ammo situation gets really bad, we will continue to host our normal monthly matches.

Welcome, welcome..the first match of the new year is in the books and it was a big success. We did freeze earlier in the morning, but it turned out to be really beautiful by midday.

Due to the recent run of cold temperatures, we were not expecting a big turnout but, we ended up with 30 shooters four of which shot two guns. Definitely a nice group for it being so chilly.

Out of the thirty people that joined us today, we only had one new shooter, Gregory Dombrowski. A big TC welcome to you Gregory and we hope you enjoyed yourself enough to want to come out and shoot with us again. Of course, we would like to thank all of our regular shooters that continue to make Texas Carbine as successful as it is.

The Beloved Maytag’s best of the match award is shared between Cheston and Eddie Munster who were both conked on the head by the turret hatch. Well done, guys! There may have been others who did equally well with the new prop but they were the only two reported.

Scores were posted a little late today because a whole bunch of folks wanted to celebrate Nightmare's x0th birthday at La Playa, but we still got them up on the same day as the match which is always our goal.

Our next match will be a carbine match on January 20th and in anticipation of the upcoming Pirates match on February 10th, we will be testing out more of those stages.

Our first full year of operation ended with a really great shotgun match thanks to Rick and Ray Jay (aka R2,) who designed all the stages and, provided a bunch of new steel for us to use. So from all of us at TC..thank you guys VERY much.

And speaking of Rick, Sergio got some good video of both Lilly's at the match and you can view them on our Videos page. Many thanks, Swifty.

Also, the numbers for our first full year were WAY beyond our wildest dreams and that was entirely due to the incredible support we’ve been fortunate enough to have thanks to all of you. We put on 28 monthly matches and not even counting the Pirates match attendance, we had just shy of 900 shooters for the year which is absolutely, positively outstanding and we simply can’t thank all of you enough for helping Texas Carbine continue to do so well.

Today we had 30 shooters which was near our record for a scatter gun match and considering the rather chilly temperature, we thought that was doing very well. We also had yet another new shooter join us, Devan Wooten, and as always, we hope you enjoyed your first TC experience and will want to join us again in the future.

Scores were up very early this time at around 3:30 and we know that means a lot to most of you.

As for upcoming matches, right now we’re planning on having a carbine match on our pistol weekend next Sunday to start testing out stages for the Pirates match. We will definitely have another carbine match on the regular weekend and as we mentioned previously, we may even have one on the second weekend. Obviously, ammo prices and extremely limited availability of centerfire rifle ammo will certainly be a consideration for most if not all of our shooters so we will definitely make all the January matches rimfire-friendly.

One other reminder..TC Associate Memberships expire tomorrow so if you’re interested in applying or renewing, drop us an email or mention it at your next match.

In closing, all of the TC Gang would like to wish each and every one of you a VERY Happy New Year and we will certainly do our best to give you even better matches in 2013.

WOW another new Texas Carbine attendance record! Forty-seven shooters came out to exercise their carbines and that was after Blaine and Cameron Lee got called into work and couldn’t stay and shoot. Among those forty-seven were eight new shooters: Josh Barnes, Kevin Martin, Larry Orines, David Graham, Jason Garza, Paul Williams, Albert Ramirez, and Andrew Raines. Thanks for joining us and we certainly hope you enjoyed yourselves enough to want to come back and shoot with us again.

This match featured three new props: First was an electrically-operated swinger that was released with a push button by the shooter, the second was a drop plank (as in walk “the”,) and the third and arguably the coolest, was the Hawkmobile thanks to our own Hawk who built a vehicle silhouette for us. This prop gave shooters the opportunity to shoot UNDER a vehicle.

One of our more interesting stages allowed the shooter to crawl halfway into our large pipe, (that was fun?).

Scores were up by 6pm and considering that we didn't even get off the range until 3pm, we think that's doing pretty well especially with 53 guns to score.

The stages are nearly complete for Pirates 2013 and are looking really cool.

Don’t forget the shotgun match on the 30th, round count is 100 bird and 5-7 slugs..the extra two slugs are bonus shots.

LOST AND FOUND: A pair of non-electronic type earmuffs were left in Nightmare’s cart, email us if they’re yours.

Speaking of lost and found, we’re still missing one of the blue club timers.

In preparation for our Pirates match in February, we plan on having at least two and possibly even three carbine matches in January and that's why you see January 6th above for the next carbine match. We will be testing out possible Pirates stages at all of those so if you want an early look, come on out.

Finally, all of us at Texas Carbine would like to wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas and a safe, healthy, and happy holiday season.

December’s, and the last Tactical Pistol match of the year is finished and was a real success. Somebody needs to tell Mother Nature that it is Fall because it was pretty warm but, a nice day all in all.

We had 30 shooters come out and join in the fun, shooting five really cool stages. A big TC welcome to our three new shooters: Charles Sloate, Shawn Heisler, and Dennis Bosley, hope you will come back and shoot with us again soon.

The Beloved Maytag was informed of a stellar performance by SOMEONE but unfortunately, his acute Oldtimer’s kicked in since it happened and now he can’t remember who it was or, what they did. But, congratulations to whoever you are for whatever you did. (Grin)

Hold everything, he just remembered..

“Magic Juan” Munoz is the recipient of the award for figuring out how to get a shoot through on to a threat target. However, decorum prohibits me from mentioning that he had a TNH on the same stage. (Bigger grin)

Scores were up by 5:30pm and we’ll close by reminding everyone of our Carbine match on the 16th and R2 and Rick’s Shotgun match on the 30th. Also, as you will notice in our calendar section above, we have the January Pistol match as “TBA”. This is because we will be prepping stages for the Pirates match from this point forward and we may end up having two or even three Carbine matches in January so check the calendar from time to time for updates.

As always, thanks to everyone who shot with us today, we very much appreciate your support. We are closing in on our first full year of operation and even we are astounded by the level of participation we have been so fortunate to have in 2012, thanks to all of you.

Today, Texas Carbine in a show of support for our military, held a 4-stage rifle/pistol match and fourteen active duty Coast Guard service members came out for Morale Day. This provided an opportunity to refresh firearm skills in a low key, competitive setting. Everyone’s morale received a boost and they all said they would come back and shoot with us again.

A big thanks to Rick and Kim Lilly, The Whitemore Guy, and Chris Bixby for their help with setup today.

Scores were posted around 1830 and we opted to put them on the MultiGun section of the scores page since we used Multigun scoring.

We will still be putting on our monthly pistol match this Sunday, December 2nd, as well as the monthly rifle match on the 16th. Plus, again thanks to Rick Lilly and Roy Richter, we will be having a shotgun match on December 30th.

Thanks to all the Coast Guard folks who joined us, we hope you had a good time and look forward to shooting with you all again.

Another Carbine match just finished up and we had a very succesful shoot. Forty people shooting forty-six guns, came out and enjoyed a "beautiful South Texas day". It was so nice to shoot without drowning in our own sweat.

A big TC thanks to our new shooters: Gord "The Hercster" Thompson, Brian Addison, Nathan Mathews, Michael Salazar, Grant Permenter, and a belated welcome to Randy Bond who we missed after the October carbine match...sorry about that, Randy.

Also, once again, a really big thanks to all who stuck around and helped tear down and put up the equipment and target stands, it is VERY much appreciated. Scores were up by 5:45 which is a little later than usual but with five squads and 46 scoresheets, that's still not too bad.

Reminders for our December matches...pistol on December 2nd, and carbine on the 16th. And of course, a reminder for R2's Steel Challenge match next weekend at CCP&R.

Finally, the entire TC team would like to wish you and your families a safe and happy Thanksgiving holiday.

Thank you all for coming out today and joining our pistol shoot! Luckily we braved the weather, avoided the rain, and it actually turned out to be a really nice day.

We also once again broke our previous Texas Carbine turnout record with 35 shooters and 36 guns. Clearly, many of you are spreading the word among your friends and we greatly appreciate those of you responsible for bringing us new shooters. On that note, a special welcome to the 6 new shooters who joined us today: Jeff Vesley, Mike DeHoyos, David DeJesus, Clark Apusen, Jon Disalle, and Tyron Houseton. We hope you catch the bug and want to come back for future matches!

Maytag's side note: I had the pleasure of shooting with two of our new shooters, Mike DeHoyos and Tyron Houseton, both are veterans of the United States Navy, both are greats guys, and one of them can really shoot. <grin> Decorum dictates that I not say which one. <bigger grin> In all seriousness it was great to have them on our squad today. The beloved Maytag is still battling the cosmic vortec in Bay 3, see the forum for more details.

We were off the range right at 2pm and then a VERY large group hightailed it over to Catfish Charlies where we enjoyed some great food and wonderful camaraderie. Unfortunately, some of us had to come back to the house to do scores and we got started on that around 4:30 finishing it up and posting scores by 5:45 which we think is still doing pretty good despite the long lunch.

Pirates of Texas Match Note: We now have the match application posted on the website and there is an early registration discount so if you are planning on attending our second annual Pirates of Texas Carbine Championship match, jump on over to our match website:

piratesoftexasmatch.com

and download the application. The match will be on Sunday, February 10th and due to single day time constraints, we are limiting the maximum number of shooters this year so sign up early if want to be sure you get a spot.

As always, we'll close with a reminder for our next match which will be Carbine on November 18th.

Thanks SO much to everyone who joined us today and helped us break yet another TC attendance record. It means the world to us that you all choose to shoot with us and we promise to continue to give you the best matches we possibly can.

When sign-up was complete, all we could say was "WOW, what a turnout!" FORTY-SEVEN shooters who shot forty-NINE guns and we broke our previous all-time record of forty-five which is just incredible so we want to express our MOST sincere thanks to all who attended. Your support is what keeps us going and today that support came through in spades so thank you, thank you, thank you.

Among those forty-seven folks were seven new shooters: Byron Hough, Sam Vester, Trevor Mireles, Christian Kritz, Lucas Tower, Robert Bruce, and Rob Myers. Again, thanks so much for coming out to see what a Texas Carbine match is like and we hope we'll see all of you again soon.

The four fairly large squads were a good practice run for our upcoming Pirates of Texas Carbine Championship in February, too and despite the very large number of shooters, we finished the match in just about four hours so we got a good look at real-time "squadding" which we may go with for the big match.

Thanks to those who helped tear down their last stage and to those who hung around even longer to help us store the gear. That means a great deal to us and we truly appreciate the help.

We hope everyone enjoyed the stages today and we think we did a pretty decent job of evening out the round counts and times as the squads seemed to all be finishing in nearly the same amount of time. Scores were up by 5:30 too which we think is doing pretty good considering the large number of shooters.

So again, thanks to everyone who joined us today and the usual reminders..Steel Challenge with R2 and Rick next weekend at CCP&R, TC Pistol on November 4th, and TC Rifle again on November 18th.

Our inaugural Texas Carbine MultiGun is complete and Maytag gives his SWHUA award to himself for shooting not one, not two, but three birdshot plates with slugs on Stage 3. What a dumb A–. Other than that bit of drama, all of the twenty-six shooters seemed to have a great time on our first MultiGun match. But, being our first endeavor with this, if anyone has any comments or suggestions to improve our future MultiGun matches, please let us know.

Welcome to our three new shooters: Phil Stewart, Bryan Longoria, Don Springer, and Gilbert Cuellar, thanks for coming and we look forward to seeing you again in the near future.

Kudos to R2 for his swinging steel slug target, it worked like a charm and the valve springs were a way kewell nice touch. :-)  Maytag says he wishes he could have had a shot at it. HUGE thanks to R2 and Rick for stepping up to MD our first MG match, it was a lot of work getting ready for it but that's behind us so we'll be much better prepared for the next one.

More thanks to Ben 1 for the loan of the Pepper Poppers and a big thanks to all who helped tear down and stow the gear. It was a bit longer day than usual and I know most of us were pretty tired so the extra help is much appreciated. Scores were also up a bit later but we didn't get started on them until almost 1700 so getting them up by 1745 or so is still pretty timely.

We certainly hope everyone enjoyed this first endeavor of ours and based on the turnout and positive comments, odds are we'll be doing it again in the future. Don't forget, next Sunday is Carbine and we hope to see many of you at the range next weekend.

Another tactical pistol match is in the books and we did not hear anyone complain about the heat..probably because it was almost cold at the range this morning. Twenty-three folks shot five good stages today, all designed by HAL9000. We heard lots of compliments about the stage design, too so you did good, Hal.

A big TC welcome to our four new shooters: Daniel Garcia, Pete Loffredo, David Reckart, and Bill Curtis..we’re very happy you joined us and hope we’ll see you at another match soon.

Round count was up a little bit more once again now that the weather is cooling off and you can expect that trend to continue. We also want to make sure we remind everyone about R2 and Rick’s MultiGun match next weekend. The stages will be posted early this week so if you’re not a forum member yet, you might want to sign up so you can get a preview of the match.

As always, a big thank you to our Saturday helpers, Wild Bill, Numbers, and Rick the Lillymeister..we very much appreciate the assistance.

Scores were up by 4pm, congrats to those who found themselves near the top of the list and a great big thank you from all of us to all of you who joined us today.

30SEP

Yayyyyy..it wasn't hot or rainy and twenty-six folks came out and enjoyed five stages of shotgun fun. Welcome to Blaine Lee, Cameron Lee, and Lee Dowdy (no relation to the other Lee's,) and welcome back to our two prodigal sons, John Hornsby and Doc Ellis.

Blaine and Cameron were doing RnD for their new line of shotgun accessories but unfortunately, we can't divulge too many details before they apply for patents other than to say it involves duct tape and cardboard shotshell boxes.

Betsy learned a lesson about front sights, window openings, and why you don't mix them together.

Thanks to Wild Bill, The Whitemore Guy, and Brass Catcher for setup help on Saturday and a big thanks to Ben 1 for volunteering to MD the match. Plus we want to thank Betsy P., Marian K., and Lee D. for making the long drive from The Valley and San Antonio respectively.

Don't forget, next weekend is our monthly pistol match and two weeks from today will be our inaugural MultiGun match which you can shoot 3Gun or 2Gun if you don't have (or want to shoot) a shotgun.

Scores were up by 4:15 and that's because all four squads were efficient and especially because we had so much help tearing down the stages so thanks to those who gave us a hand and of course, thanks to all of you who joined us today. I know we say it a lot but we mean it from the heart when we say we appreciate your support.

16SEP

Hello again, we have successfully completed our September Carbine match. The weather mostly cooperated with us, sorta cloudy, not much wind, slightly lower temperatures, and a light shower right at the end of the day that felt really good.

Thirty-six shooters joined us today, three of which shot two guns. We also had three new shooters: Ryan Miller, Jeff Prenzler, and E.M. Two folks came from San Antonio and one from the The Valley so we would very much like to thank them for the effort to make our match today, that's a long drive from either area. We also had a couple people attend the match that we haven't seen in awhile and we were obviously glad to have you join us once again.

We would also like to extend our thanks to Rick and R2 for volunteering the use of their brand new AR500 steel targets and I think everyone at the match today enjoyed shooting them.

Once again, thanks to all who helped setup on Saturday and tear down on Sunday. With your help, we "The TC Guys," very, very much appreciate all that everyone does to help with setting up matches, it really makes our job easier.

Scores were up a bit later than usual but we had a problem with one scoresheet and it took us awhile to resolve the issue..

Finally, we'll close with the usual reminders..Steel Challenge at CCP&R next Sunday, 23 September; Tactical Shotgun on September 30th; Tactical Pistol on October 7th; and our first ever MultiGun match on October 14th.

A huge thanks to everyone who came out to shoot with us today and we think the turnout was especially good considering the weather forecast. Hope to see you next time.

02SEP

Another one for the books and no it has NOT cooled off yet but even with 28 shooters, we managed to get through in record time. Thanks to all who stuck around and helped pick up the equipment and target stands so that Elvis could leave the building by 12:50 and we managed to get the scores posted by 3:45.

Welcome to our six new shooters: Tim Lowder, Herb Puryear, George Brown, Greg Rodriguez, Mark DiMarco, and Rick Gonzalez. We’re very glad you came out and shot with us, hope you had a bang up time, and will want to join us again in the future.

Maytag’s special award for this match is the “Martin Riggs Lethal Weapon” award for rolling between the two low ports on stage 2. The recipients of this prestigious honor are: Stacy “Thunder” Jorgensen, Gerald “Conejo” Thompson, and Rick Gonzalez.

Our next match is the 16th and it is our monthly carbine match followed by our quarterly shotgun match on the 29th. Ben 1 has informed us that he and Todd AK are planning on having the usual five stages plus a side match which will be a winner take all, slugs-only stage with bowling pins. Finally, our next pistol match will be October 7th and most importantly, our first ever MultiGun match, thanks to R2 and Rick L, will be on October 14th for which you will also need a handful of slugs so if you plan to shoot either match, grab some slugs now while supplies last.

As always, thanks to every single person who chose to shoot with us today, we truly appreciate your support and sincerely hope you’ll join us again in the future.

19AUG

We just completed our monthly carbine match for August and yes, it was hot..again but, at least we got rained on a little today. It didn't rain enough to cancel the match and, it felt good as well as cooled things off a little.

A big Texas Carbine welcome to our NINE! newest shooters: Mike Davis, Peter Aguirre, Gabriel Flores (from San Antonio), Jacinto Perez, Johnathan Rhoads, Craig Hebner, Phillip Gagnon, Court Flato, and Alex Mayr. We REALLY appreciate your interest in Texas Carbine, we very much enjoyed having you all shoot with us today, and we certainly hope we'll see you again at a match in the future.

Our next Tactical Pistol match is September 2nd, with our next Tactical Carbine match on the 16th, and our third Tactical Shotgun match on the 30th. We would also like to remind everyone about our first ever 3Gun match on October 14th. R2 and Rick Lilly are working hard to put on an awesome match and we'll have more info both on the website and on our Forum as that date gets closer.

Maytag has two "All In Fun" awards to present..first, Austin Smith gets the "A Downpour Doesn't Stop Me" trophy and David Cruz is presented with the "Most Accessories on an AR Shorty" award. Again, just ribbing you guys..really. :-)

Scores were up by 6:30 which considering the huge crowd at lunch not to mention 44 scoresheets to process, that's pretty good. And speaking of a large lunch gathering, we had 19 folks get together for the post-match lunch festivities which is a new TC record. It was a fun time and we think everyone enjoyed the food and the camaraderie very much.

So, thanks to EVERYONE who came out to join us this morning, a big thanks to those who came early and helped, and a HUGE thank you to Wild Bill, Numbers, and The Whitemore Guy for gutting it out in the heat on Saturday to help with setup. We say it all the time but it's worth repeating regularly..we truly could not put on these matches every month without the extra help and we're very thankful we have such generous and hard-working helpers.

05AUG

The clouds came out and shaded 26 intrepid souls who came out to challenge 5 pistol/rifle stages. As you can imagine it was warm but it was fun. With some stages you had to navigate hallways or borders, while some required you to stand still and just to add a little imagination to it. At one stage you got your choice of sitting or standing to shoot at targets with T-shirts on them, too. We kept the round count at 75 so it would go a little faster but nobody complained because of the very warm temp and humidity. Did we mention it was HOT?!!!!! Being it was all paper stages we let everyone shoot whatever they wanted and we had centerfire and rimfire rifles and pistols, just no shotguns.

Welcome to our 8 new shooters, Frank Juarez Jr., Alex Castillo, Ryan Nunn-Gage, Gabriel Ramirez, Austin Smith, John Crawford, Darin McCain and Joseph Walker. Thanks for coming out and we hope to see you at our other matches.

A big thanks for all the folks that helped set up and tear down, we really appreciated the help greatly. It makes it a whole lot easier on everybody when we have more folks helping.

Reminders: Don't forget August 19th for our next carbine match. Also, thanks to the generosity of Rick Lilly and R2, we'll be putting on our first 2Gun (or 3Gun) match on Sunday, October 14th. So if you don't have a shotgun you get to shoot more pistol rounds. Also, one stage will require a small number of slugs so stock up if you don't already have some.

29JUL

Nineteen folks joined us to exercise their scatter guns on five, super-fun stages. Thanks to Ben 1 and Todd AK for volunteering as match directors.

Welcome to our newest shooter, Michael Jack, thanks for coming and we sincerely hope you enjoyed your first match with us. It was also good to see Bill "no beard" Luick and LT Dan again. LT Dan was involved in a major on the job auto accident about six weeks ago but fortunately, he was not seriously injured.

This match featured another top-notch creation from our mechanical genius, Todd AK. For those of you who weren't there today, it's a giant pendulum swinger holding two clay pigeons. Todd AK's devious plan for this stage included two non-threat clays to interrupt your concentration on the swinging clays. This stage also had five of his "duck" steel targets in a close cluster and surprisingly, some folks were able to get as many as four of them with a single shot.

A BIG thanks to Donna "Numbers" and "Wild Bill" Lowery, Diesel, and The Whitemore Guy for taking the time to come out and help us set up most of the stages in the Saturday heat. Another BIG thanks to Ben 1, Todd AK, and Brass Catcher for coming out later on Saturday to set up the remaining props and stages. Two or even three matches a month doesn't sound like much but we can assure you that it is an enormous amount of work so when dedicated folks like these step up to lend a hand, (and a whole bunch of sweat equity,) it is very much appreciated.

Scores were up pretty early this time at 1530.

On another subject, the DILLIGAF Crew have volunteered to put on a 3Gun match for us and as of this writing, will PROBABLY occur on the second Sunday in October. This is still tentative though so check the website in September for any possible changes.

Finally, a reminder that our Tactical Handgun match is next weekend and our regular Carbine match will be on the 19th, hope to see many of you at the range.

15JUL

Twenty-eight brave souls ventured out into the South Texas heat to shoot five new courses of fire. Welcome to our two new shooters; MC “The Hammer” Smith and Gavin Harrison, thanks for joining us and we sincerely hope you enjoyed yourselves.

Our shorter summer stages worked well but may still need a little reduction for next month’s OMG anticipated heat. Even so, we had everything put away and were off the range before 2pm.

Remember this is a five-Sunday month so we will have a Ben 1/Todd AK shotgun match on the 29th. They will have five original courses of fire with a total round count of 75-80 #6 or smaller birdshot. Also Todd has a way kewel new shotgun prop to debut.

Scores were up by 5:30 and considering that we went to one restaurant first only to learn that we couldn't move the tables to get everyone together and then went to a second restaurant, 5:30 was doing quite well.

It was absolutely, positively hot and humid today and we can’t thank those who hung around to help tear down and stow the props enough..thank you, thank you, thank you. Hope to see many of you again at the shotgun match and thanks to everyone for your support of Texas Carbine.

01JUL

For all of you who were afraid of the rain and mud, you missed a fun match with cool temperatures (compared to the last match,) and dry days.

Welcome to our five new shooters: Shaun Mealing, Seun Abegurde, Willee Lee, Jay Christiansen, and Shane Brady who joined us for five fun stages. (many thanks for checking us out guys.)

In keeping with our summer plan, the round count was lower but the courses of fire were still challenging. Thanks to that, we were done and on the way to lunch by 1:15pm.

Don’t forget this is a 5-Sunday month, so in addition to the carbine match on the 15th, we will have a shotgun match on the 29th. Ben 1 and Todd AK are planning some big fun with your scatter gun and it will include a brand new shotgun prop, compliments of our co-match directors.

Scores were up by 3:30pm, maybe a record, we can’t remember, but still very early even for us.

Thanks to everyone who braved the weather and made it out to join us today, we very much appreciate your participation.

17JUN

Correction on last match's after action report, it was not "hot" as reported..TODAY was HOT (OMG Hot).

Welcome to our new shooters; Reuben Gaytan, Donna Lowery, Shane Bertrand, Ronnie Montez, and Eddie Hernandez..thanks a bunch for joining us.

Thirty-one souls braved oven-like heat to conquer five stages with a total round count of 142. Despite the heat, everyone had a good time and the help tearing down and stowing the props was definitely appreciated.

After the match, a large group of shooters retired to Jason's Deli for some much-needed refueling and socializing.

Scores were up by 5:15 which isn't too bad considering.

Weather note: We are going to reduce the complexity of our stages somewhat for the summer months to mitigate the effects of heat and humidity. Don't worry, they will still be fun and challenging, just less complex.

Our 22LR experiment was a resounding success with ten guns in the 22 ranks so obviously this is popular and we will definitely look toward more paper-only matches in the future.

And that's it for this match, hope to see you next month where we have five Sundays so we're planning on the two regular matches as well as a shotgun match on the fifth Sunday.

Thanks again for everyone's support..

14JUN

Another tactical pistol match is in the books and 15 shooters braved the heat to shoot 5 challenging stages. There was a nice breeze and surprise surprise the Texas State Bird (mosquitoes) did not make an appearance.

Welcome back to the Rio Grande Valley shooters and a big thank you to our local shooters for coming out. It was great to see everybody again. Thank you all for helping tear down and stow the props.

Welcome to our newest shooters, Joe Vollmer, hang in their guy and Paul Borrego, thanks for joining us, guys.!

Our condolences go out to Nightmare and Jennifer on the loss of their family member. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

Oh by the way it was HOT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reminder: Our next Tactical Carbine Match is Sunday, June 17th. Yes that is Father's day.

20MAY

Based on how hot it felt out there today, summer is obviously just around the corner and the heavy rain we had a week ago provided lots and lots of skeeters to add to the equation. Nonetheless, we had a near record turnout for our One Year Celebration match with 40 shooters, 9 of which were shooting their first TC match. So, a big Texas Carbine welcome to Christan Smith, Deanna Wooten, Ryan Moore, Jon Garland, Rafael Gutierrez, Josiah Barcroft, Roque Rodriguez, Taylor J. Latham, and Patrick Vamosy. Thank you all for joining us today and we hope that you not only enjoyed the match, but will come back and shoot with us again in the future, and bring a friend.

We also want to say how happy we were to hear that Yarek's recent medical situation turned out so well and we're glad to have you back shooting with us, Yarek.

We would also like to thank Matt Morrow for generously providing celebration cupcakes for everyone this morning at the shooters' meeting. We appreciate the thought very much, Matthew.

Reminder: R2 aka Roy will be out of town shooting Prairie Dogs next weekend so Rick and Kim Lilly will be putting on the monthly Steel Challenge match at CCP&R. Kim will actually be the Match Director and we hope many of you will join us next Sunday.

So, to close up our first year, we were off the range around 3pm and scores were up by 5:45 which was pretty good considering the large number of shooters. We sincerely hope everyone enjoyed themselves today and most importantly, we want to again thank all of you who have supported us during this first very successful year for Texas Carbine.

06MAY

Scores were posted by 5pm which was pretty good since tear down took a good bit longer than usual today and we didn't get off the range until 2:15. A big thanks to everyone for handling tear down duties on their final stages, to Phil Day and The Whitemore Guy for coming out early to finish set up this morning, and to Rick and Kim for hanging around until we got everything put away. Unfortunately, just as we were finishing the set up, The Whitemore Guy had to pull chocks so he could fly up to San Antonio to pick up his boss. Better luck next time, Rick..we'll make it worth your while, trust us. [grin]

We had a lot of very positive comments about the stages today and quite a few of those were directed to HAL 9000's Stage 1 so it sounded like everyone had a great time.

Reminders..

First, if you aren't on our mailing list or a Forum member, you may not have heard about our One Year Celebration Carbine match on May 20th. If not, you probably want to put that date down on your calendar because we have decided that one of the best ways we can thank all of you for supporting us during our first year of operation is to give you a really good discount on a match. So, everyone who shoots the carbine match on May 20th will shoot for just ten bucks..that's right, half price which doesn't even cover our costs but we feel our loyal customers deserve it.

29APR

Our match attendance continues to grow and surprise us nearly every month thanks to the steady stream of new shooters and this match was no exception. Two of those folks came all the way up from The Valley today so, a hearty Texas Carbine welcome to Betsy Price and Bill Conner. Additionally, Betsy is more than a little Web-savvy and has her own blog, Metal X Works Divas, AND, even thought our match was worthwhile enough to write about us! Click here to read what she had to say and thanks a bunch, Betsy we really appreciate the compliments!

We would also like to extend a warm welcome to our new shooters from the local area; Gary Jonas, Rorie Hill, Deanna Smith, Steven Shotts, and Heath Hazelip..thank you all for joining us. And of course many, many thanks to those who have been regular Texas Carbine match attendees, your show of support means a great deal to us.

Scores were up by 4:30pm and we'll close with a few reminders:

- Tactical Pistol is next Sunday, May 6th,

- The ATSN broadcast of our Pirates of Texas Carbine Championship match will be aired on Friday, May 18th, at 8pm on DirecTV channel 608, Dish Network channel 240 and also on the ATSN website at ATSN.TV,

- Our next Tactical Carbine match will be Sunday, May 20th.

15APR

Welcome to all our new shooters; Peyton Patterson, Chris Anda, David "Big D" Graham, and Jose Ortiz. We'd also like to give Jeremy Hawkins a new shooter welcome since we accidentally forgot to mention him last time. We can't thank you enough for coming out to shoot with us and we not only hope you had a great time but, we hope you'll come back again.

As a bonus, Todd "AK" Garland and Ben 1 brought new whiz bang shotgun plate targets which feature a steel plate that drops when shot and while falling, launches a clay target. These are truly awesome inventions and we want to extend our sincere thanks to both Todd and Ben for not only providing them but for bringing them out today for folks to try out. We will absolutely be using these targets on a stage at our shotgun match on April 29th so we hope many of you will come back out in two weeks to join us for some fun shotgunning.

We would also like to offer a really big thanks to those of you who make the long drives from Laredo, San Antonio, and the Valley just to shoot one of our matches. We really do appreciate the effort.

Last but certainly not least, a big thanks to Donna Lowery for being our squad's sole scorekeeper for the entire match.

Scores were up at 1845 and we think that considering the LARGE number of shooters, is doing pretty good. We know that along with the camaraderie, shooting practice, and plain hobby fun, scores are very important and we work very hard to get them out on the Web just as soon as humanly possible. Many of you have complimented us on this as well and we sincerely appreciate it.

Finally, just a reminder that Roy will be putting on his monthly Steel Challenge match next weekend at CCP&R and we encourage all our TC match customers to join us there.

01APR

As usual we had five original courses of fire, all allowing the shooter to "shoot ‘em as you see ‘em". One stage featured all steel plates that had the pesky habit of moving after you pressed (read "jerked") the trigger as some of us did and Stage 5 featured two narrow slots that took their toll on more than a few front sights.

On an important side note and in the strong tradition of Texas Carbine nicknames, Danny Garcia, even without magic legs, has resigned himself to be known from this day forward as "Lieutenant Dan".

Scores were up at 4pm which is on par with our usual timely posting. Thanks to everyone who joined us today and especially those who stayed around to help tear down and stow the props.

18MAR

Once again, we want to thank everyone who joined us for the match today. We had 29 shooters five of which shot two guns. A big welcome to our two newest shooters, John Navar and Jake Groves.

Some of the stages really made you think about what you were doing but in a fun sort of way. As usual, they were very interesting stages with overlapping target arrays that required either moving while shooting or, moving from shooting position to shooting position.

The weather cooperated and based on all the positive comments we received throughout the day, it sounded like everyone had a really good time.

The scores were a little later than usual today coming out at 5:15pm but since we didn't get back to the house after lunch until 3:45, that's doing pretty well.

As always, thanks to those who helped set up on Saturday as well as everyone who stayed around this afternoon to help us stow the gear.

One other thing, two of us found ticks crawling on us after the match so be sure and check yourselves, especially if you have dogs.

We would like to remind all our site visitors that Roy Richter's Texas State Steel Challenge Championship will be next weekend, March 25th, at the Corpus Christi Pistol & Rifle Club. If you haven't signed up yet, please head on over to their website at ccsteelchallenge.com where you can get an application and all the match details.

We'll close with a reminder for our next pistol match on April Fools Day, Sunday April 1st which, as it turns out, is not Easter Sunday as we thought. Then, later on next month on Sunday April 15th, we'll be having our monthly Tactical Carbine match and, since April is a 5-Sunday month, we will be putting on our second Tactical Shotgun match on Sunday April 29th.

12MAR

04MAR

It was nice to shoot a pistol match again after all those carbines. Once again we had five original courses of fire which proved to be deceptively challenging but fun.

On a side note, The Whitemore Guy got his rightful Pirates of Texas Carbine Championship 3rd Place Real Carbine trophy from the beloved Maytag and Master Blaster got his 1st Place Tactical trophy.

Again, thanks to everyone who came out to shoot with us today and based on the fact that we nearly doubled our previous maximum attendance record at a pistol match, we must be doing something right.

Maytag and I would also like to thank HAL 9000 for joining us during the Sunday scores session and taking the time to learn the ropes. We're pretty sure he has a new appreciation for those stage scorekeepers who do a really good job. And, we would be remiss if we didn't thank 9000's daughter, Jessica, for her photography efforts today. I'm told she grabbed over 600 frames during the match and HAL will be putting some of those on Facebook and I'll be posting them on our site (eventually.) [grin]

Our next carbine match is on March 18th and we hope you will be able to come out and shoot with us again.

Here are some of Jessie's photos from the pistol match.

02MAR

24FEB - It has taken a few days to go through the nearly 2000 photos shot by our two photographers but I finally culled the list down do a manageable number. Then, each of those got a little Photoshop treatment and finally, they were put into a Web gallery..<click here>. (You can also access the gallery from the PIX & VIDS menu above.)

The American Trigger Sports Network folks have already posted our match on their website and they took quite a few photos themselves which can be seen in the "Pirates of Texas" section on the main page. (scroll down until you see the "Pirates" header.) We will put a post here when we learn the date that the ATSN film footage of the match will be available on the Pursuit Channel, too.

21FEB

29JAN

We had 28 shooters come out and exercise their bird blasters/bump in the night guns, five of those being new shooters with us, Gary and Joshua Curry, Preston Stofer, Todd Mastropole, and Chris Smith. Thanks for coming out to see what a Texas Carbine match is like and we certainly hope you enjoyed the match enough to want to come back and shoot with us again.

AK and Ben 1 put on five great stages of shotgun blasting. They built new steel targets, one of which representing the endangered Purple-Footed Yeller Header Duck. (grin) The stages combined the need for speed and accuracy plus some actually made you THINK.

Everyone we spoke with had a great time and wanted us to do more of Tactical/3Gun-Style Shotgun matches in the future and hopefully we will be able to do just that.

Scores were up by 1630 and as always, we're proud of that.

In closing, we would like to thank Todd and Ben again for ALL their hard work and we of course would like to thank all our match customers for choosing to shoot with us. Unfortunately, today was the last match until our Pirates of Texas Carbine Championship on Sunday, February 29th and we certainly hope many of you reading this will join us for that match.

22JAN

15JAN

Welcome to our new shooters, Jerry Garland, Ryan Feikls, Dylan Feikls, Raul Salinas, Sergio DeLeon, Kyle Mueller, and Kyle Ellis. Great turnout, great time, the day was a little long but thanks to everyone who stayed to help tear down, we got off the range at a reasonable hour.

With today's match we have finished tweaking props and concepts for our upcoming Pirates match. We do plan to post the stages for that match in advance and hopefully, that will happen around the first week of February. Speaking of the big match, there are less than two weeks left to qualify for a free t-shirt so get your applications in soon because the shirts will be way kewel.

For those who are not on the ccsteelchallenge mailing list, we want to remind everyone that Roy will be putting on a sanctioned, full-scale Steel Challenge match the weekend of March 24-25 so head on over to ccsteelchallenge.com for details.

We also want to remind everyone that Mike Merkler is holding a Safety Officer class on Sunday, January 22nd. It will be after the Steel Challenge match at CCP&R starting around 2pm. This class is open to anyone who would like to attend and there's no charge. If you're interested in attending the class, please contact Mike via mlmerkler@yahoo.com.

In closing, we would just like to say thanks to all our customers who helped us set a new attendance record today. For such a young organization, having that many folks interested in your match meant a great deal to us. And don't forget, our first Tactical Shotgun match is coming up on Sunday, January 29th followed by the Pirates of Texas Carbine Championship on February 19th.

08JAN

A BIG welcome back to Todd “AK” Garland who made his first appearance since he injured his hand..GREAT to have you back!

We are still refining our props and concepts for the Pirates of Texas match however we had very few problems today and we will be posting the final stages probably the first week of February.

Speaking of Todd, he and Ben 1 are the co-Match Directors for our first Tactical Shotgun match on January 29th. So, bring out your favorite gauge, some bird shot..Ben 1 says about 100 rounds should do ya (but we’ll give you a more exact number soon,) and #6 shot is best.

Remember the cutoff for a free Pirates of Texas match t-shirt is January 27th, so be sure and get your applications in early because the shirts will be Way Kewel.

We know it was a much longer day than usual but then, 170 rounds was a lot more than usual too but, we want to once again express our sincere thanks to everyone who helped set up and tear down..we needed that help more than ever today.

18DEC

To close out our first year, Texas Carbine would like to express our gratitude to all our match customers from 2011. We realize you have a choice on multiple weekends each month and we sincerely appreciate those of you who have chosen to shoot with us. We of course want to wish everyone a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season and we are very much looking forward to an even bigger year in 2012.

20NOV

Unfortunately, we had an our first injured shooter today when Todd Garland slipped while moving on Stage 5 and fell to the ground and was unable to finish the match. We certainly hope it heals quickly, Todd and do let us know when you're back at a hundred percent.

Harold Carter generously volunteered to skip shooting bullets and instead, shoot photos for us so those images will be in a gallery Real Soon Now. (Of course, I haven't had time to get Ian's sister Alyson's images up from a while back either but I promise I'll get all of them in galleries soon.)

Harold has also put Texas Carbine on Facebook so we'd appreciate help with "Likes" from any other FB users who shoot with us and thanks in advance.

Sorry the scores were posted considerably later this time but, it was a high round count match with complex stages so we finished about an hour later than usual. And, we had about a dozen folks at one big table at lunch and that took awhile, too. Anyway, we managed to get them up by 5:10 which isn't too bad.

OK, one quick reminder that there are only 10 days left to take advantage of the discounted match fee for the Pirates Match so if you haven't signed up yet, now's the time.

And finally, as always, thanks to everyone who attended the match, to those who helped set up on Saturday, and to everyone who stayed around to give us a hand putting the gear away. Hope everyone enjoyed the match and we'll see you next time.

Maytag and Nightmare

05NOV

As always, we want to welcome our first-time TC shooters: Ryan Ware, Harold Carter, Allen Ricketts, and Sean Benners. We very much appreciate your patronage guys and sincerely hope you enjoyed the match enough to come back and shoot with us again in the future.

Congratulations to Rick Lilly for taking 1st place in the Open Division and to Allen "Diesel" Ricketts for topping the charts in the Revolver Division. [grin] No surprise Master Blaster turned in the best score overall but equally impressive to being fast, JK also had the fewest penalties so it would appear his regular chant of "A Zone Hits" worked out very well today. [another grin] And of course, congrats to the other Division winners; Mike Merkler and Peter Callo.

Last but not least, a BIG thanks to everyone who came early to help finalize the stage setups and to those who stayed after to help stow all the props. It may not seem like a big deal but believe me, it means a LOT to us at Texas Carbine.

Finally, a reminder about our upcoming Pirates of Texas Carbine Championship on February 19th. The applications are up on our match website and we'd like to have anyone who has volunteered to work as match staff to please fill out the app and email or mail it to us soon because we need to get shirt sizes, contact info, etc. Thanks in advance.

So, thanks again to everyone for attending, we sure appreciate your support and we hope to see you again soon. Speaking of which, we'd like to remind everyone that our next match will be Carbine/Pistol on Sunday, November 20th..

Nightmare

16OCT

The scores were up at 4:30 and considering we had 32 shooters, we thought that was doing pretty good.

Today’s stages made you watch your angles with non-threats but fortunately, most were reasonably close. <smile> Look for a little longer distances next month though.

Congratulations to Thunder who remains Pistol Champion (even with other pistol shooters this time.)  <bigger grin>

Spider’s sitting here telling me to make sure we thanked everyone for sticking around to help tear down and put the gear away and he's right, we really appreciate that each and every time. Also, a big thanks to Danny Garcia for tearing one stage down on his way home even after working all night! That is definitely above and beyond..thanks, Danny. Oh yeah, I almost forgot..a big thanks to Merlin for picking up the tab at breakfast this morning, especially considering the large number of guys at the table..really appreciate that amigo, and very happy to have you back in South Texas.

Finally, we are asking everyone who has volunteered to work as staff for our Pirates of Texas match to please fill out page 1 of the application and email the PDF file to us or mail us a printout so we can get to work on shirt shirt sizes, contact info, etc. Thanks in advance.

So, thanks again to everyone for attending, we sure appreciate your support and we hope to see you again soon. Speaking of which, we’d like to remind everyone that our next pistol match is on Saturday, November 5th and the next carbine match is on Sunday, November 20th.

01OCT

Equally good was that we set a new record for scores posting..3:45pm and that was with a long lunch break at Rudy’s. We're getting better at it..finally. [grin]

We also had our first award ceremony this morning which was given to The Whitemore Guy following Maytag’s previous challenge of M1 Carbine skills at the last match. Unfortunately for Mike, The Whitemore Guy came out on top and for his excellent skills he was awarded a free TC ball cap so congrats to Rick.

We'll close with a reminder for our carbine/pistol match on Sunday, October 16th. Hope you can make it and bring a friend, we love new shooters.

A BIG thanks to everyone who shot with us today and we''ll seeya next time,

Maytag and Nightmare

18SEP

Scores were up at 4:15pm again so we tied our previous record.

More good news..we got to break our OMG "it's hot" record string of baking days. It was a darn nice morning and early afternoon thanks to the overcast skies and a little breeze.

Speaking of which, with the weather continuing to cool, our plan is to step up the complexity of our stages, (at least a little,) and we have been thinking about some ideas for new props to make the matches even more fun. On that subject, we would very much like to hear from any of you, especially if you have fabrication skills that lend themselves to this sort of thing and of course, we're open to any ideas you might have for way cool props.

Hope everyone had a good time and enjoyed the five new courses of fire today and we hope you will come back again soon for another Texas Carbine match. Speaking of which, our next Defensive Pistol match will be on Oct 1st, (which just happens to be Maytag's birthday..he'll be 27..again,) and the next Carbine/Pistol is on October 16th.

Thanks again,

Maytag & Nightmare

03SEP

The scores were on the Web at 4:15 which I think is the new TC record. Spider had his first ever encounter with post match scoring duties and he did a heckuva job..thanks, Terry.

Congrats to Master Blaster for taking first place on four of the five stages but unfortunately, Michael M. and Sam M. (the famous "M" squad from Sinton,) both beat out the ace of the base on Stage 5. [smile]

OK, hope you all enjoyed the match today and that you will come back for another Texas Carbine shoot real soon. Speaking of which, this month's Carbine/Pistol match is coming up in two weeks on Sunday, September 18th.

From all of us at Texas Carbine, thank you for your patronage, it is very much appreciated and we will leave you with a couple snapshots compliments of Thunder's better half. Talk about a BIG helper (and thanks, Mel!) :-)

Regards,

Nightmare

31AUG

And, for those who are not on our mailing list, we have a couple favors to ask. The first favor is, if you have any old t-shirts that you don't really need any more, please bring them to the match. We no longer have access to the shirts many of you donated in the past so we need to restock because we'd like to be able to use them in future courses of fire. And, they need to be size Large or bigger to fit over the targets. The other favor is, (and it will be a standing request for at least a few months until we get our financial heads above water,) please bring your shot timer if you have one to any of our matches. Thanks in advance for both.

Maytag is on a little vacation that will eventually include a wedding in Boston but he's walking around the Wright Patterson Air Force Base Museum today. Und zo, I will be the MD for this match and for anyone bored on Friday morning, I'll be doing early setup at Starry around 0900 with regular setup Saturday at 0800. Email me if you feel like braving the heat Friday morning.

21AUG

Congratulations to Stacy "Thunder" Jorgensen for his overall win in the Pistol Division. Yes, "Thunder" you're winning! (grin)

On a very sad note we say goodbye to Izzie and Jerrie Garza who are moving up north and on behalf of Texas Carbine, thank you Izzie for your service to the country in the USCG.

And a VERY big thanks to Ben 1 for the donation of a trailer to use at the range. That was extremely generous and it will come in very handy for setup and tear down.

On a personal note I will miss the September pistol match as I will be in Boston attending a wedding, but "Nightmare" and the guys will be there and I am looking forward to seeing everyone again at the September Carbine match so come on back and bring a friend.

17AUG

06AUG

We also managed to get the scores posted by dinner time which is always a good thing. And, speaking of good things, we'll leave you with the "photo of the day" and I think it speaks for itself.

17JUL

Even better than that is we all survived another scorcher of a day and everyone seemed to have a good time. Apparently our plan to keep the stages fast paid off and based on previous experience, getting off the range before 1:15 for a rifle match is better than average. So, since the plan worked today, we're going to keep this formula of fast stages throughout the Dog Days of Summer and wait for cooler temps to prevail before we go back to more complex stages.

Obviously, finishing at such an early time was also due to the fact that so many of you stayed to help tear down and put all the gear away so thank you, thank you, thank you for that. More thanks to the seven shooters who came early to help set up, that REALLY means a lot to us and we truly appreciate it.

Don't forget, our inaugural Defensive Pistol match will be in three weeks on Saturday, August 6th. It too will consist of five original courses of fire with a round count in the 100-120 range and as soon as we have them all drawn up, we'll post them on the forum. As we mentioned in a recent mailing list message, we're diverging some from the typical IDPA match and one of those changes will be that concealment is not required. If you would like to see the other differences, go to the FAQ page where we have them all listed. Again, this is a work in progress so if you have any suggestions regarding rules, please let us know.

Finally, a quick reminder for our second match in August which will be Carbine/Pistol on Sunday, August 21st. Thanks again to everyone for supporting our new endeavor and we hope to see you all again next month.

19JUN

Thanks to everyone who not only came early to help setup but also to everyone who stuck it out in the heat to help us tear down. A special thanks to Terry "Spider" Panknin for ALL his hard work on the new steel and barricades.

Our next match is July 17th and we will again have five new courses of fire but we will try to design them so as to make them more weather-friendly.

Finally, don't forget our defensive-style pistol matches starting Saturday, August the 6th and be sure to check the website for any updates on these matches as well as our regular carbine matches.

14JUN

Great news!  We are expanding our match calendar and starting in August, we will be holding a Defensive Style Pistol match on the 1st Saturday at the Starry Range.

17MAY

Thanks to all those who attended our first match I believe everyone had a good time. For those of you who missed it check the photo section for highlights.

Our next match is the 19th of June. That match will have some longer range targets for the carbines.

I want to express my thanks to Terry "Spider" Pankin, J. K. "Master Blaster" Rowzee, and Rod Henderson for their work on the stands. Thanks to Ben Crabtree for allowing us to use his wall and for his other contributions to the cause.

As I told everyone at the match brief we are a work in progress. If you have any suggestions to make the matches better please let us know. We encourage everyone to submit COF and to volunteer as MD. Thanks,Maytag

16MAY

The photos from yesterday's match are now available from the Photos menu.

15MAY

Our first match is behind us and based on the large number of compliments we received at the range today, I think it's safe to say we are on the right track. There were too many generous setup helpers to mention you all by name but please accept our sincere thanks for lending a hand and we hope you will all join us again next month for five more original courses of fire and the camaderie that those of us at Texas Carbine believe is so important.

Additionally, we were able to do a little bit of photography for all three squads and I'll do my best to get them posted this week.

12MAY

Those of you who know us will not be at all surprised by this news. For those folks who do not know us, we are a group of individuals that were members of another club for many years but recently decided that we would like to start fresh with our own organization.

Collectively, we have an enormous amount of experience in course of fire design, match set up, and putting on major matches, so we are very confident you will be pleased with what we have to offer.

Our goals are to give you challenging, and enjoyable matches but most importantly, strive to ensure that everyone has a good time.

Also, do not be misled by our club name. We plan to have stages that are short range and fast so we welcome and encourage handgunners to join us if they do not as yet own a black rifle or simply prefer to shoot their pistols.

Our mission is simple, we want all our match customers to enjoy themselves and we will do our very best to put a smile on your face at least once during every match. And, if you want to be kept up to date on our events, go over to the Contact page and sign up for our mailing list.

So come on out and give us a try, we guarantee that you will be made to feel welcome.

09MAY

So, be sure to sign up for our mailing list or at least make a habit of checking the site regularly and we hope to see a whole bunch of eager shooters this Sunday.