Biggi,

     I am delighted to see you joining in the conversation here.  You have so much to add on a subject that has tantalized many of us for many years!  Please know that you are as welcome "as flowers in Spring" as we say here in the South Eastern US.

     I have a question about a zimmer that I would like to ask of you and your group, and that has to do with the parlor pistols.  I saw a little break top pistol at an auction, and it just seemed to follow me home.  It appears to be intended to shoot a round ball about the size of #6 shot (American sizing) using little or no powder and the ignition provided by a #10 or #11 percussion cap.  It is unmarked as to maker, but appears European since we never had that sort of thing here as far as I can determine.

     Would you or one of your organization be interested in discussing this piece with me with the idea that maybe I can someday figure out how to shoot it safely?  Thanks in advance for any help you may provide and again welcome to the ASSRA forum!

Regards,
Charlie Shaeff
aka Green Frog

Thanks for the quick response, Biggi!  Yes I do have this little pistol at home, but am at a shoot right now about 300 km away from there, so will have to wait until Sunday afternoon (our time) to shoot a picture and post it.

Thanks for gently reminding me about my English... I tend to use a lot of idiomatic phrases as I post, but that is not at all polite to our guests who speak English as a second language.  If we had to depend on my very poor German, I would take all night just to send greetings, I fear!  I am very grateful to have a German speaker to make it possible for us to connect with the classic information from the old European hot spots of Schuetzencraft. 

In one of your posts, you asked about the target we shot here, and I got excited about my question and forgot to answer.  Most of our shooting is done on a target series referred to as the "German Ring Target" which was standardized in its American version about 40-50 years ago and is printed under ASSRA control to insure that everyone associated with the association shoots under equal target conditions, at least.  If I remember correctly, they are available for 200, 100, 50 and 25 yards, simply scaled up or down in size as appropriate.  They have a white center ring valued at 25 points, then each ring out reduces in value by one point until you run out of paper, this value is 15 points on the full size paper.  Any hit on the paper but outside the scoring rings counts as 10 points.  The shooter puts 10 shots on the target usually, and extra hits are penalized by counting the lowest 10.  The Western edition of ASSRA, called ISSA, has a nearly identical target and scores it the same way, as does Wyoming Schuetzen Society and probably some others.

It seems from your statement that you have become a sort of "Mother Superior" to a bunch of shooting enthusiasts... bless you for your patience and willingness to serve such a function.  I'm out of letters now but will write more with the picture.

Froggie

A belated Welcome to this forum, Biggi.  We at the Redwood Gun Club and the associated Long Prairie Gun Club in far northwestern California have 6 or 8 Schuetzen matches a year, all offhand shooting and all using the ASSRA or Wyoming Schuetzen Union (WSU) target.  The WSU target differs only in the shade of red used on the colored portion.  We have 12 or 15 regular shooters and 6 or 7 of us use the old German rifles regularly.  We elderly shooters all shoot offhand, but sometimes we sit down between shots. Our oldest competitor is 82.  Our 200 yard matches are 30 shots.  We also shoot an all-day, 100-shot match in early October.

A few of us also have an informal practice each Friday at noon, weather permitting.  We shoot 22 rimfire Schuetzens at short range, 50 shots, with 2 shots at each of 25 targets.

Our range is 100 & 200 yards, but only about 200 yards from the sea.  Wind is often a problem.

Mike65 wrote on Apr 23^rd, 2010 at 11:42am:


Thanks Mike! Not perfect but gets the job done.  Now I'll never learn German!   

         Joe. 

Hello together!

First I have to thank the forum-writers, who gave me in the posts a lot of information to the ASSRA-targets with the circles and the different distances.
Perhaps it is possible to post some photos of your 200 yard target? (If I can get enough information about traditional shooting in US, I would create a new headline on my homepage with the facts of "Stutzen-Shooting in USA" or something like that...)  


If you have questions: ask me! I'll try to answer to all your questions.


But I have also a question to your shooting-practise: How do you check the shot into the target by the long distance? Do you have a telescop? Do you have "scorer-boys" near the target (don't know what is "Zieler" in English) who display the hit in any way? You have mobile targets on wires, which you can move to the shooter?

About ammo: 

We have only the already at-home-prepared ammo (bullet and powder in the jacket). An other kind of shooting is "Vorderlader", where you put bullet, powder and the primer separately into the rifle. 

For preparing the cartridges at home, first you have to make a preparatory training and take a examination, if you are able to make it. Then you have to apply for a license at the responsible authority of your city. If you are "clean" (not a known murder or bank robber or drinker... *big*grin*), you can get a few months later your "Pulverschein" for buying the powder. And you have to pay about 200$ for the powder-license.

Then you buy all components for the reloading-machinery, the jackets, the bullets and all you need - then you can start! But you need a lot of practise, until you have found the best adequacy of powder and plugging.

So long, have a nice day!

Biggi

Hello waterman!

Our shooting is always like this: one serial is 5 shots. Our target has 10 circles. So you can hit maximum 50 circles. Normally we shot 6 serials, this are 30 shots.

Our ranking depends on "best serial with five shot" and not the total 30 shots sum-up. So we have to change the target all five shots. On our 100meter/90yard ranges in Germany we have target holders on wires with an electric motor to pull in the targets for changing each five shots.

In Austria, there are those fantastic old historical ranges, where the "scorer-boy" is sitting under a safe-protection below the target. After the rifleman's shot, the scorer-boy checks the result and puts a special target signaling-disc into a board, so you can see what you hit. In the clubhouse behind the rifleman is sitting a "writer", who writes down onto your personally "scoring card" the hits you reached. So in Austria only the scoring-card is the valid voucher-document (called "Bolette") for your hits. You never see the target (telescopes are forbidden!) and you have to trust the scorer-boy what he shows with the signaling-disc.

You can see that on my homepage in headline "Wissenswertes" ("Worth knowing") in the chapter "Zieler-/Schreiber-Stände" ("scorer-writer-ranges"). There I explain the historical ranges, how it works.

In Bavaria, there are only two old scorer-writer-ranges left. All the other ranges are with wire to pull-in the target. In Austria there are still a lot of those historical ranges (about 10 or more I think).

Ääähhhmm, I hope you understand all this about the writer-scorer-ranges, what i try to explain...


Greetings from Bavaria
Biggi

Hi Bob.

Yes, I see some of you know the old regulations of historical shooting. *great* Thanx for explication of the former and nowadays regulations in USA.

Also in Germany, the old 1900's schützen-clubs (for 8.15x46R center-fire) were only for the high society. The normal worker didn't have any possibility to go there. The working class rifle was only the zimmerstutzen. 

In our competitions nowadays, we shoot on the one hand with Feuerstutzen (only 8.15x46R with lead bullets) and on the other hand with Zimmerstutzen (4 millimeters). Normally there are only two women who shoot there with Feuerstutzen. In Zimmerstutzen-competition there are about 10 or 15 women. 

After competition, the organisation-committee with his scoring-experts get the targets (when shooting onto paperboard-targets) or the shooting cards (when shooting with a writer on old scorer-ranges) for calculating the final scores and the ranking. Sometimes we have also a protest period, but only in Germany, unusual in Austria...

Biggi