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thedrifter
10-21-08, 07:20 AM
PHOENIX — Imagine setting a new national record, shooting from 800, 900, and 1,000 yards without a scope on your rifle, only to find out that you must fire the course again. This is exactly what happened to Gunnery Sgt. Justin Skaret during the Arizona State Long Range Palma Championships in November 2007.

The Palma Trophy Match is shot in three stages of slow fire in the prone position using an iron-sighted .308-caliber rifle with a 155-grain bullet. Competitors aim for targets that have a 20-inch bull’s eye 800, 900, and 1,000 yards away.

On the first day of the three-day competition, Skaret, the recently appointed head coach of the Marine Forces Reserve Rifle Team and the only Marine on the 2007 United States Palma Team, had not dropped any points and was only down four X’s (center shots) going into the last stage of fire. Rain prevented the other relays of shooters from finishing the course, which resulted in the final stage being rescheduled for the last day. Skaret’s national record score of 450-35x for the 1,000 yd line was removed, and he would need to re-shoot that stage.

Skaret thought he had to shoot another perfect score to set the record and recalls, “About my third shot in, I shot a nine … that ticked me off, because I thought I had just lost the record, so I just started hammering rounds down range. When I was finished, I had shot a 149-10x which gave me an aggregate of 449-36x.” The previous record was only 449-20x, which meant that Skaret’s score of 449-36x, along with his determination and talent, would indeed secure the record in his name.

After the record was verified by the National Rifle Association, Skaret was presented with a Secretary of the Navy Trophy Rifle. When asked what it felt like to have shot the record twice and to have a rifle awarded, Skaret said, “It was frustrating [to re-fire], but I was happy to have set the record regardless, and I definitely felt it was an honor to receive the rifle, because it’s pretty rare for the Marine Corps to award someone a rifle.” The rifle was awarded during the National High-power Rifle Championships on the ranges of Camp Perry, Ohio, in August 2008.

Since becoming a member of the Marine Forces Reserve Shooting Team in 2000, Skaret, a Tucson Arizona native, has provided more than just good scores and marksmanship instruction, he has used his skills from his civilian occupation as a mechanical engineer to further the progress of the rifle team through his research and development of improved competitive ammunition and has implemented a system to better track individual shooter performance and training effort including a mentorship program for new shooters to the team.

Skaret has been competing in rifle competition for more than 13 years but was fortunate to be selected to the U. S. Palma Team through a series of difficult tryouts. “Tryouts were tough for me.” Skaret added, “We had to shoot against previous Palma Team members who were more experienced.” With tryouts being solely an individual effort, Skaret said, “My wind reading ability wasn’t up to par back then, and I ended up placing 21 of 28 people not cut from the 110 trying out.” With additional evaluations and in specialized training sessions, Skaret’s hard work paid off when he became one of 16 people selected as firing members on the U. S. Palma Team in October 2005. “Becoming a member of the United States Palma Team felt like an accomplishment for me because Palma is considered the pinnacle of long-range prone shooting.”

The World Long Range Championship is a quadrennial event. Team events are known as the Palma Trophy Match. Countries that have competed include the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Argentina, Peru, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Kenya, Natal, and Rhodesia. In team competition, the United States has won 13 of the 27 Palma competitions that have been conducted since the championship started in 1876.