40 American Shooting Journal // August 2019
could find. I went to my other profiles
and saw one that told me to add an
additional 1.9 MRAD. I knew this
would get me on target.
I used the excellent Hornady 4-DOF
app, which is incredibly accurate and
super easy to use. In fact it’s so easy
to use, I got complacent and made a
mistake. When I duplicated my profile
to build Manners’ profile, I didn’t
rename it so I pulled his up on accident.
That may explain my first wild shot.
This is what the time constraints of
competition can make you do.
After putting my faith in this profile,
I went to target one and achieved a
first-round hit after my SWAG of a
wind call since I got a risky call from
my cold bore. We got a few hits there
and were able to progress to all of the
other targets and get hits on them all
along the way. That run ended up as the
best that day and put me in first place.
That gave me a boost of confidence that
I would make the finale.THE CONDITIONS FOR day two would
be what decided my fate. When the
shooting began, there were definitely
some great runs. Paul Phillips, Derek
Rodgers, Bryan Litz, Walt Wilkinson,
Mitch Fitzpatrick and the othercontenders made good runs and all
placed within the top 10. They had
some great conditions and didn’t
waste any time making the best of it. I
knew I would have to perform on the
finale to be able to keep up.
On the final run, we still did pretty
good; we achieved a first-round
impact on target one with some
following impacts. We hit target
one more than any other shooters.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get on target
two within my allotted rounds; I had
to go into my 2-mile rounds to buy in
to proceed. We moved up from fifth
to a real close second place finish. Less
than the value of one target separated
us from the win. I couldn’t let myself
get too down as we at least crushed
our goal of making the finale.
Overall we were very happy withThe Manners Composite Stocks team and Brantley, winner of the 2018
competition, had another great run this year, ending up a close second.our performance and finish. Not
only making the finale but bringing
in a podium finish was icing on the
cake. Another thing that made me
proud was that most all of the top
ELR competitors were in the finale,
making it a run against the titans.
Many of them I look up to and
respect, so it was special to me to be
able to shoot alongside those guys. I
was also happy to give a respectable
finish to my sponsors. I run gear that
is not as popular in this discipline,
so it means a lot to show that it
is competitive in the field as well.
Along with our company, Manners
Stocks, we represented Bushnell,
Badger Ordnance, RCBS, Hornady,
Bartlein Barrels, Cutting Edge, and
Armageddon Gear. It is all gear I know
I can trust across shooting styles.