coolhd,
Again, I agree with you.
For myself I find it takes about two weeks of shooting almost every day with iron sights to get the "hang" of them again every Spring. Scopes of course have there own problems but, for me seem to be easier to get up to speed with.
Never having shot out of a shooting house I can't give an opinion on if it would be easier than shooting in the open or not. Like you I like to feel the air move around me as I feel that air movement closest to you has the greatest effect on the bullets flight. But I'll bet, like me, you've shot in conditions when you wished you had some protection from the wind.
As I mentioned in my last message scopes were still a controversial issue in 1903, but from what I read they had been in match use for a few years prior. Always with a lot of pro and con. Sometimes they were allowed, sometimes not. The problem as seen by it's detractors was that it gave an unfair advantage. The supporters felt that, like today, a scope allowed the older shooters to keep on shooting after their eyesight started to fail.
You might have trouble finding the source I used for the Hudson match. It was completely covered in the Nov. 12, 1903 issue of Shooting & Fishing. A very complete writeup with every shot fired by every competitor. There must have been quite a bit of interest in the gun and load Hudson used as a picture and description are in the Nov. 26 issue. If I recall right I posted the latter here a while back.
If you, or anyone else that's interested, can't obtain the article I can type it in as a message on here. It's kind of long, but very interesting. I can also enter in the individual shooters, where from, guns, loads, and total score, but think I'll pass on entering each individual shot. Probably gonna take two or three messages as it is!
One of the things that intriqued me, until I just re-read the article, was why was it called the Election Day match when it was shot in Oct. Apparently, from it's enception ten years previous to 1903, the match was held on Nov. 3rd at Armbruster's Greenville shooting Park in Jersey City. Due to a misunderstanding in 1902 the match was taken over by the Zettler Rifle Club in 1903.
PETE