A new year begins for the DeSoto Airgunners and 2012 looks like it will be an exciting one. We held our first match of the new season today, a 40 shot Winter Tune-Up event. Conditions were superb for this club shoot. A Southwest Florida Winter chill ( 46 degrees) quickly warmed to about 60 by the time sight-in began and up to 70 degrees when the shooters meeting was called at 10:10AM. By the end of the match we were all in shirt sleeves enjoying the 80 degree weather and getting a little tanned. We'll be sure to use our sunbrellas at the next DeSoto Gun Club event which will be our first Florida State Championship Match on Saturday February 11. I told you 2012 will be exciting.

At today's sight-in we were thrilled to find two new air rifle shooters; Colin & Jack from the Lake Placid area. As new members of the DeSoto Gun Club they learned about the “Airgunners” activities from the Club website and its links to the DeSoto Airgunners web pages. Colin is an Australian transplant and both he and his buddy Jack had some experience with air rifles years ago. Their plan today was to just observe but in no time they were accepting our invitation to shoot the match. Admittedly they were rusty. And while they had almost no Field Target shooting experience; no elevation numbers for their guns, not even a bum bag to sit on they were enthused. So with a borrowed shooting stick and minimal coaching they shot in modified Hunter style. Colin and Jack battled for last place on today’s scoreboard with good humor and camaraderie. They also joined us for lunch at a local restaurant. These guys were great sports in the very best sense of the word and DeSoto Airgunners welcomes them with hopes they will become regulars at our Field Target matches. Congrats to Roger Gulmette and Cliff Smith for finishing First in their respective divisions. It was also good to see Dick Otten shooting well today too. He had been shaking a cold for two weeks and todays sunshine vitamin D may have worked wonders at least for his shooting.

Name	Rifle	Scope	Pellet	Score
PRECHARGE:
Roger Gulmette	P-70	NightForce 36	Cometa-H	37
Dick Otten	USFT	Leupold 30X	JSB-H	34
Ron Zeman	LG100ZM	Nikko 10-50	JSB-H	31
Jim Baumann	Huntsman	Bush Elite 8-32	CPH	30
Bill Shade	USFT	Sightron 10-50	Cometa-H	25

PISTON:
Cliff Smith	TX200	Bush Elite 6-24	JSB 8.4	28
Freddie Poole	TX200	Bush Elite 8-32	JSB 8.4	27
Harry West	TX200	Bush A200 8-32	CPL	25
Colin Pilkington	HW77	RWS 2-7	RWS Dome	2
Jack Rainey	TX200	Leupold 6-20	CPL	1