And now, the results you all have been waiting for! Drum roll, please.

San Saba County 4-H Shooting Sports Team’s scores in the Texas 4-H Extravaganza! The biggest annual Texas 4-H Shooting Sports competitions are held every year at the 4-H center in Texas. Teams from every county in the state visit for a weekend to participate in this extraordinary event. This year’s event was held Saturday, April 18th. Entering from our county was the Shooting Sports team’s finest: Wyatt Deans, Seth Bishop, Caelob Hardman, Ron Gerhart, Sara Hedley, Melanie Hedley, Brendon McDuffee, and Anthony Montalbo.

Four shooters entered in the light rifle competition. In this competition shooters are required to shoot a target 50 ft. away in the standing position. Four rounds are entered into each bulls-eye. The target has 6 bulls-eyes about the size of a 12 oz. soda can, 5 regular and one sight in. There are 4 rings on each bull; six points on the outermost ring and ten on the innermost ring, X being the center.

The shooters are given 20 minutes to shoot four shots in each bull. A shooter’s score is a ratio of how many points they earned out of a possible 200. Ties are broken with the shooter with more X’s getting the higher score. Shooters are allowed rifles with both open sights and metallic sights, otherwise known as scopes.

Caelob Hardmann, an intermediate shooter, placed 12th in the C class using a rifle with metallic sights with 114 points. Results:

Melanie Hedley, an intermediate shooter, placed 1st in the B class using a rifle with metallic sights with 148 points.

Ron Gerhart, a senior shooter, placed 6th in the A class using a rifle with metallic sights with 170 points.

Sara Hedley, a senior shooter, placed 4th in the A class using a rifle with metallic sights with a score of 176 points. Placing is divided into classes at random. After a certain number of placements in the beginning class, the placing starts over in the next class.

Seven shooters participated in the 3-D archery competition. The 3-D archery competition is a course with ten animal targets stationed around a path. Each animal is carefully positioned where the shooter must gauge distance and arrow placement carefully due to incline, decline, and shrubbery. Three rings are indented into the foam animals marking the kill zone.

Using the Fred Bear rules, the outermost ring (the largest one) is worth 5 points. The two inner rings are both worth 10 points. Any arrows outside these rings are considered an unethical shot and are minus 5 points. A complete miss neither adds nor takes away from the shooter’s score. If a shooter didn’t think they were able to make an ethical shot on the target, they could pass and receive one point in doing so. Two ethical passes were allowed on this course. Last year’s challenge was tough, and this year’s was tougher. The animals may not have been hidden as much in the shrubbery, but the inclines and the declines made it difficult to compensate.

Wyatt Deans, a junior shooter, placed 11th in the A class division using a compound bow.

Melanie Hedley, an intermediate shooter, placed 2nd in the C class division using a compound bow. Results :

Caelob Hardmann, an intermediate shooter, placed 3rd in the B class division using a compound bow.

Anthony Montalbo, an intermediate shooter, placed 5th in the C class using a compound bow.

Brendon McDuffee, an intermediate shooter, placed 7th in the C class division using a compound bow.

Ron Gerhart, a senior shooter, placed 7th in the B class using a compound bow.

Sara Hedley, a senior shooter, placed 4th in the A class using a compound bow.

Seth Bishop, a junior 4-H’er, competed in the field archery competition. Target sizes range in this competition from 20, 35, 50, and 60 cm. Targets are scored with the inner most ring 5 points, the second 4, and the third (outermost) ring 3 points. The inner ring on the 5 zone is counted as a center shot (X). In field archery all shooters will shoot a course of fire including ends of 4 arrows each at 14 targets from the indicated shooting positions including at least one walk-up target at distances from 5 to 60 yards. Stakes mark the shooting points for each age class or equipment class, and distances from each stake will be posted.

Seth placed 3rd in the A Class using a compound bow with a total of 111 points. Way to go Seth! Seth is our youngest shooter on the team and our team is very proud of his early success!

This year was the 25th anniversary for the Shooting Sports Extravaganza. Wow! Happy Birthday Extravaganza! For the past twenty-five years 4-H’ers have been participating in air rifle, air pistol silhouette, air pistol, archery, 3-D archery, 5M BB gun, silhouette, 3-position, running target, hunting, light rifle, and shotgun competitions at this event. Extravaganza has seen many talented young shooters compete and have fun over the years and was happy to see the 4-H’ers from San Saba do the same.