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Alvin York Memorial Shoot
The Alvin York Match is the big event for the fans of extreme muzzle-loading. Chunk Gun Competition is shooting for the tightest groups with hand made rifles that can weigh up to 60 pounds! They’re called Chunk Guns because they are shot prone, rested on a block of wood or a log. It’s a shooting tradition that dates back to the life and times of Sergeant Alvin York, America’s most honored hero of World War One.
Chunk guns are traditional muzzle-loading rifles, either flintlock or percussion. Any common round ball caliber is allowed in chunk gun shooting. Many competitors shoot a rifle of .60 caliber or more. Traditionally, chunk gun shoots were for meat. The winners would feed their families for weeks with their marksmanship skills, taking home a side of beef as the grand prize in a weekend shoot. Today the matches award steaks to the top shooters who cut the tightest groups.
Alvin C. York Memorial Match is held on the property that was once his family farm in the East Tennessee Hills. Alvin York is better known as Sergeant York, the most famous and decorated American soldier of World War One. He received the Congressional Medal of Honor and dozens of other awards and medals for his bravery in the Battle of the Argonne Forest in France in 1918.
York’s unit was pinned down and being cut to pieces by German machine gun fire. But Alvin braved a hail of bullets and gained position above the German machine gun nests. He picked off the gunners one-by-one, using the shooting skills he’d learned as a boy hunting deer and turkey in the Tennessee hills. Sergeant York is credited with killing 25 Germans that day and, with his squad of seven men, capturing 132 prisoners.
The York farm in Pall Mall, Tennessee is now a State Historic Park. His son Andy York has been a park ranger for more than 30 years. And once each year, there’s a shooting match on the farm that brings in the nation’s best chunk gun shooters. They come to compete on the shooting ground where Alvin York once shot and they come to honor an American hero.
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