Why we love the Garand.

Someone asked this not too long ago , but it turned into a Jaws discussion.My shooting this weekend on the fourth gives a good answer.
We were out shooting . A cold front had moved in late last week , and most of the morning was calm , dry , and well under 100. Around 11-11:30 we were starting to pack it in when the wind picked up to 30-40 mph. I took advantage of it and called for an off-hand shoot. We quickly ran out past 100 yards and set up a bunch of those 500ml water bottles full of old , dark tea. The color matched the ground real good , making them hard to see. Thier 8 X 3 size does a good job replicating a 40 X 15 upper torso at 500 yds . We then grabbed our " truck guns" , mostly iron sighted , semi auto , combat style rifles and shot as fast as we could , but as slow as we had to , to put down the targets as quick as we could.
I was the only Garand shooter that day. Everybody else was AR15/M16 types or HK /or simular .308s. I fired 6 clips ( 48 shots) and hit 10 bottles. That was the most. The next best was an AR shooter with 8 , but he fired 100 rounds. Everyone else fired between 80 and 120 rounds and hit 3-4 at most. Now these people are all fairly good shots , but I was the oldest ( some were half my age) , prob'ly the fattest ( most were fit , GI types) , shooting a rifle a little older than me ( the oldest there , too) and , well , gave them some humble pie.
As I've been thinking after this happened , here are some strong points the garand offers. First , it's semi-auto , so it can be fairly rapidly fired when needed. The 8-round clip is small enough to make you want to make every shot count. The method of fuctioning allows rapid reload so you can lay down a lot when needed. It has excellent sights , I can only name one that has better. It balances well , light enough not to be tiring but heavy enough to be steady. The round bucks the wind well and is big and fast enough to be effective on target , but not too punishing. It is built like a tank and hardly ever gets out of whack ( this one , an H&R, I've had for maybe 30 years and have shot several thousands of rounds through. The only problem it's ever given me was this shooting here where it was tring to eject the clip early , time to get a new latch or spring).Finally , it's sleakish design allows it to go through brush and such with narly a snag. As a matter of thought , during this shoot , with the wind gustting between 30 and 40 at 3 o'clock , I wonder if my not havind a 20-30 round "sail" beneath my gun might have helped a bit ?
Anyway , this is my .02. Chris