Steyr HS.50 Shooters Take First and Second in Hunter Class at the FCSA World Championships
OutdoorHub 07.22.14
Walter Wilkinson and Eduardo A. de Fontcuberta proved once again that the Steyr HS.50 is the world’s most accurate factory production .50 BMG bolt-action rifle by placing first and second, respectively, in the Hunter Class at the Fifty Caliber Shooters’ Association World Championships held July 3rd through 5th at the NRA Whittington Center near Raton, NM.
This marks the third time in four years that a shooter behind an out-of-the-box HS.50 has won the Hunter Class Score 1,000-yard World Championship, where competitors engage their targets with bipod-mounted rifles from the prone position. The three other FCSA World Championships classes are contested from rests atop solid concrete benches. It is also the first time HS.50 shooters took the top two places, ahead of a class filled with—and once dominated by—custom rifles.
Fontcuberta, the 2011 Hunter Class world champion, used his new five-shot repeater HS.50 M1 to shoot the smallest group in Hunter Class with a 5.313-inch five-shot group at 1,000 yards. That was followed closely by Wilkinson’s 6.313-inch group, but it was 2012 champion Wilkinson who would go on to recapture the Hunter Class score world championship this year with a total score of 283-7X to Fontcuberta’s 281-5X over the entire 1,000-yard course of fire.
Fontcuberta would go on to win the International Shooter World Championship title with his score, as well as Group Aggregate and Smallest Group.
In the Team World Championships, Wilkinson and Fontcuberta helped propel their teams into first- and third-place finishes, respectively. Wilkinson’s Ten-X Ammo team took the world championship with an aggregate score of 1121-24X and a team combo average of 16.508. Fontcuberta’s Thunder Ammo team finished third with a combined 1111-27X and a team combo of 16.886. Teams were comprised of one shooter from each of the four classes the championships: Light, Heavy, Unlimited and Hunter.
“Eduardo and Walter are no strangers to the top of the podium, but this year, their performances at the FCSA World Championships blew me away,” said Scott O’Brien, CEO of Steyr Arms. “Eduardo’s screamer (smallest size) group from the prone position using a bipod placed him sixth overall in a field filled with benchrest shooters, and Walter finished 12th in that pack as well on his way to his second Hunter Class Score World Championship in three years.
“On behalf of Steyr Arms, and our parent company, Steyr Mannlicher, I offer our most sincere congratulations to Walter and Eduardo for their amazing long-range-shooting accomplishments and their resulting championship titles,” O’Brien concluded. “It’s absolutely unbelievable what they could do with our rifles.”
