Had my lowest score since I started shooting it about 15 years ago, but I am not ashamed of it. The left (non-shooting) eye was lost when cataract surgery went bad. I had two more surgeries to try to recover some sight, but they also failed. The right (shooting) eye is continuing to go downhill with cataracts, but I can still see well enough to drive. I am NOT going to let anyone touch that eye until it gets so bad I cannot drive.
My son has never been to a J.C.Garand shoot. I had invited him several times, but he was always busy. One was coming up, so he asked me to go with him. He has a CMP Garand that I gave him about 10 years ago. I doubt that he ever shot it. I had, before I gave it to him. When we got to the range, my first problem was that I could not make out the numbers above the targets. I picked out a target that had a distinctive tree behind and a little to the right of the target. My son told me the number. Then I found the same number on the firing line and staked it out. I also could not see worth a darn when the black sat on top of the front sight. No longer was their a thin sliver of white between the ball and the sight.
However, I accounted for all my shots, on my target. In fact, I had one extra one during rapid fire prone from the guy to the left of me. I told him his shot was the one in the 10 ring. Anyway, my prone slow and prone fast firing scores were only about 5 to 8 points lower than before the eye was lost. The standing was downright bad, though, so the total score was only 181, about 45 points less than my lowest score up to this point. The tremor that has developed on my left hand probably has something to do with that. Naturally, my son did better, but I would have been very disappointed if he didn't. We both got our certificates for buying the new rifles that will be coming in soon. All in all, it was a good day.
I am still seeing well enough to clean my targets in CAS, although, I am about 10% slower than I was before I lost the eye. One thing that I have learned since losing my eye is how many other people at CAS have various eye deficiencies. Yet, they almost always hit their target. My wife says we are shooting by instinct now instead of using our eyes. She may have a point.
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