Ben Baker, a longtime and former resident of Ellenton, won the Rookie of the Year Award at the Fifty Caliber Shooting Association’s International annual tournament.

Rookie of the Year is given to someone who participates in the event outside Raton, N.M. for the first time. Once a person shoots in the tournament, they are never eligible for the Rookie of the Year award again.

Baker scored the highest in the rookie class this year.

“I had the best coach, Ed George. I shot his rifle and he loaded the ammo for me. He was there advising me, but he also let me make my own decisions on how to aim and where,” Baker said. “I was just happy to be there shooting. To win the Rookie award just flabbergasted me.”

Shots were taken at 1,000 yards. At that distance seeing the 6-foot targets with the naked eye is hard to do.

Shooters shot 12 groups over two days. Before each scoring round, shooters could fire as many rounds as they wanted during the sight-in period. During the 10-minute scoring round, each shooter fired five shots. This was done three times on Saturday and three times on Sunday.

Friday was formal sight-in day. On Friday, Baker fired four shots at 1,040 rounds at a paper plate. The first two went wide, as expected.

“George told me the first two bullets didn’t load right and he was not sure where they might go. The third shot hit the paper plate, about a foot across. I look at the plate and said to myself ‘I want to shoot the stick in two.’ I did. I watched the plate slowly fall over. That made my tournament no matter how I did in the rest of the event,” he said.

In the scoring rounds, Baker shot two 5-shot groups under a Minute of Angle (MOA). At 1,000 yards, an MOA is 10 inches across.

“My best group was 6 7/8ths. In the FCSA, that is called a screamer. I didn’t scream, but I certainly did the Baker Shuffle on the firing line,” he said. “Later, I got the scoring results and a target marker. I had four shots in a circle of about four inches. Whoa.”

The tightest 5-shot group this year was a bit over three inches.

“When you consider the wind we had to shoot in, that makes these shots even more impressive. In one shooting round, my crosshairs were more than two feet from where the bullets hit the target. That’s called holdover,” he said. “Wind sometimes came from the left, sometimes from the right during the same 10-minute shooting period. It is a challenge to get on target.”

Baker shot in the unlimited class, meaning the category had no weight limit. The heaviest gun in that group was shot and owned by Roy Thompson and had a total weight of more than 500 pounds.

Baker’s overall performance was in the middle of the unlimited class which had 38 shooters.

“I was competing against veteran shooters, some of whom were world champions. Some of those people also shoot out to two miles. I fully expected to be either last or close to the bottom,” he said.

The tournament featured several former World Champions. Craig Martin, from Louisiana won the World Champ title for the second year in a row.

Baker is the editor of Very High Power, the official magazine of the FCSA. Visit 1MOA.org for more information.