Decided to shoot a match with my actual carry gun this month, and honestly I was very happy with it. I’ve been carrying this same M&P Compact for ten years now and I always find it shoots like a full-size gun for me. I shot it the way I carry it, with the flush-fit 12 round mag in the holster and reloading to a 17 rounder. Here’s the match video, with my thoughts on the stages and my shooting below. (Please excuse the copious smoke. I was shooting some uncoated lead practice rounds and didn’t realize just how much more smoky they are than regular Blue Bullets.)

Stage 1

This was a deceptively simple stage. Do you turn and draw to the 8″ plate? Or do you shoot it as you leave the first position? Also, staggering the distance of the targets meant the transitions between them changed from each view. For being a simple 10 round stage, it tested a lot of skills and rewarded arriving in each spot with the gun up and ready to shoot.

This was the first stage for us. I played it safe and went for headshots on the middle target, dropping one point down. I had a mystery mike on the left target, although one bullet hole had a very dark grease ring so it may have been the most perfect double of my life, but I kinda doubt it. Watching the video, all the shots look good, so no idea what happened.

Stage 2

This stage was directly inspired by the “Random Shit” stage from the 2022 Finnish Brutality, simplified a bit. At each barrel you flipped a card to find out which barrel to move to and shoot from next. For being a 12 round stage, it really flustered a lot of people. (Unfortunately there was one scenario where you could end up back at the barrel where you started with both cards flipped up, in which case we told folks to just move to any other barrel and flip a card there. It was not perfectly fair, but it was interesting.)

I ended up winning the stage, in part by shooting one-for-one without makeups and only dropping two points on the challenging partials. My only edge was that the stage brief said you had to flip over the card before leaving the barrel, but once there was one card face-up, I could figure out what the card was going to be and be ready to go that direction as soon as the second card was flipped over instead of reacting to it. A bit of gamesmanship, but it worked.

Stage 3

By putting the shooting position pretty far downrange, this stage became all about wide, precise transitions, in addition to the barrel pickup and reload which always flusters folks who only train to reload off their belt.

This stage went pretty well, and I was right on the edge with some of the fast transitions and picked up two points down on penalties. But overall a good performance. Reloading to the 17 rounders is definitely way faster than the short carry magazines. I kept them loaded all the way to 17 (instead of leaving the mag loaded to only 16 which can make it easier to reload) to mirror how I carry, and I didn’t have any issues with seating on the reload on this stage or the next one.

Stage 4

This was a pretty straightforward USPSA-style field course. The goal with the front left and front right positions was to have an easy open target you could shooting moving into position, but then a harder shot you had to make sure you were controlled for. And at the front right, you either had to shoot right to left, starting on the tux, or shoot the open target first and then have to go right then back left or vice versa, or shoot the tuxedo from the back right corner. These are the kinds of “options” we don’t hear discussed a lot in stages because they are subtle, but I thought it made this stage more complex than it might seem at first.

I was happy with my shooting on this one. If I had been shooting with a dot, I might have tried to shoot the tuxedo on the move, but I definitely chose to play it safe and just shoot a simple right-to-left order in the final position, and be fairly slowed down and stabilized when I did.

Watching the video, it looks like I had a foot fault on the first shot, but I think it might just be a trick of the light. My foot was on the fault line, not touching the other side, but it’s definitely way too close. I picked up a foot fault at the Carolina Classic as well for a similar situation, and I need to make sure I’m not just technically inside the shooting area, but obviously so before I break the shot.

Overall this was great match. We had 30 registered shooters and aside from the one hiccup with stage 2, everything ran smoothly.

The post Match Video: TSA Action Pistol – October 2022 appeared first on Berry Shooting.

Coming into this match, I wasn’t feeling particularly trained up. I’d only shot about 5,000 rounds all year, and had no consistent dry fire schedule. To be honest, it was hard to summon the motivation to work hard at a sport that I saw as going so badly off the rails as the year went on. Since announcing my run for Area 6 Director, the motivation to practice has returned because it feels like there will hopefully be a future for the sport worth investing time in.

I was able to dry fire four times a week for two weeks leading up to the match, but even that was barely enough to get some basic gun handling smoothed out. It certainly didn’t hurt, and I shot as well as I could have hoped given everything.

I still have a fondness for Production and hope it can one day be a popular division again with some changes to the rules, but the writing was on the wall where the competition was at this match. Rather than excel in a relatively uncompetitive division, I committed to shooting this match in Carry Optics. So far, just putting a dot on an EGW dovetail mount on a Stock 2 has worked well and nothing has come loose, making this as close to a “stock” CO gun as it can be, no milling of the slide required.

I did have some issues leading up to the match with flat point and truncated cone bullets feeding out of the extended magazines with the Grams followers, but switching to round nose Blue Bullets cured that, and I honestly didn’t think about it once all match, and the gear ran without issue.

My magazines are a mix of Henning +3 and +6 basepads. I find the +3 basepads, which he makes for IPSC Standard, are faster and more consistent to reload (especially given my years of Production muscle memory), so I reloaded to them whenever I could. There were two stages at this match that I reloaded to the 23 rounder, but only when I needed the rounds and had a longer distance to move while doing it (stages 2 and 9).

Stage 7

Our first stage of the day. Normally I would be first on the first stage, but I had just gotten off two hours of running chrono for all the staff before the shooting started and needed a break to get into the mindset of shooting. This was a 20 round stage with all open targets not that far away, so the 6 charlies are a bit much. I decided not to take the shortcut from the middle position to the end as most shooters did, thinking I could shoot on the move out of that position and coming into the next one, but my run ended up about two seconds off the pace. It would probably have been faster just to hammer the close targets and then haul ass. One of the themes of this match is that my movement when not shooting is leisurely at best, which is definitely something for me to work on if I want to keep up in a fast division with very little time spent reloading.

Stage 8

Another stage where I would have been happy with the shooting if the points were better. But dropping 2 deltas for no reason at all was frustrating. I was three seconds off the stage winner as well, but that would be tolerable if the points were good. The only really “lost time” was the miss on the mini popper. Otherwise, my shooting is just lacking a general sense of urgency.

Stage 9

Delta on the first target, starting to move the gun as I break the second shot. The misses on the first array of mini-poppers were from pulling the trigger with my whole hand. I realized it and corrected it for the second array which is why I went one-for-one on them.

Stage 1

I knew I wanted a stage plan that let me avoid crossing back and forth across the shooting area, and settled on this one, thinking it would let me stay shooting the most. I visualized careful setup on the target right along the 180 to the right and the target right after it, and I got what I visualized. Careful but slow. When planning stages I tend to under-estimate how long it takes to hit a precise spot to shoot a target like those two, which I need to remember going forward. A more forgiving plan where you don’t have to thread a needle as finely is going to be a faster plan.

Stage 2

One delta on this stage, on a target I was walking in on, in this case the guy in the middle between the two tight walls. Similar issue with one of the deltas on Stage 8. Something with my timing and shooting on the move is leading to these un-called Ds. Something to work on.

Other than that, this stage went pretty well, and was my highest percentage finish of the match. This stage turned out to be more of a memory stage than I intended when I designed it, so I treated it like one. I picked a plan where I could just go to each position and shoot the targets I could see from that spot and minimize dividing up arrays, so it was easy to know when I was done with one section of the stage. I can’t say this was the best plan, but given the time I had on the stage, it worked.

Stage 3

This one went pretty much according to plan, with the exception of carrying too much momentum into the last position. I can’t say when the last time is that I’ve shot a box-to-box stage like this, but in my mind there was definitely more ground to cover than there actually ended up being. I knew I had picked up my foot before breaking the shot, but both ROs called the foot fault, which is just how it goes. Ultimately it’s on me for putting them in that position to have to make a tough call like that. If I’d planned to be more controlled entering that position, it never would have been an issue.

This was a stage that emphasized explosive, precise movements, which again I’m pretty lacking in. So just holding on and racking up alphas was the best I could do.

Stage 4

I was early on this stage and chose a fairly safe plan where I shot the bobber on the first exposure to avoid the chance of having to wait on it. I think the plan was generally sound. I shot a charlie above the A zone and a delta below the A zone, giving me 4 out of the available 10 points on that target, without any real idea where my shots went. Something I’ve definitely been struggling with this year are bad hits on movers. For whatever reason, I’m either behind or ahead of the target and shooting either bad points or mikes.

The mike on this stage was the last shot, into the barrel. I called it bad and got trigger freeze trying to shoot the makeup. In my head I was thinking that was too long to give up and so I didn’t try a second time to take the makeup shot. But on a 5 hit factor stage as this ended up being for me, a mike is worth 3 seconds. I could have take then .8 to shoot another alpha and still come out way ahead.

Stage 5

This one went pretty well, throwing the magazine on the reload notwithstanding. I definitely was shooting very controlled even on the open targets, with basically the same splits on partials and opens. Being able to throttle up and hammer the open targets harder would be good area to work on.

Stage 6

This stage also went fairly well. If I could do it again, I would draw to the paper on the right, transition to the paper in the middle, shoot the mini poppers, and keep the gun on the left side of the range for the two targets against the left berm. That would probably have saved a little time. Other than that, just being tuned up with the gun and confident shooting faster would have been the only real improvement I could make.

Summary

Interestingly, as often happens with me, my final finish percentage was higher than all but one of my stage percentages. I didn’t do particularly well on any one stage, but was relatively consistent across the match. My focus this year, in what limited practice I have done, has been on gripping the gun harder and being able to return the gun faster and shoot follow-up shots with more confidence. I saw moments of that in this performance, but I was definitely not as prepared as I could have been for shooting this. In many ways, this match is actually very motivating to get back to practicing more and be prepared for some of the matches in the spring.

The post Match Video: 2022 Carolina Classic appeared first on Berry Shooting.

The one new piece of gear for this match was a Vice holster (yes, spelled like a crack pipe, not like the workbench clamp) from GX Products aka Lafe Kunkel. It took something like 4 months to get after ordering, because I’m pretty sure Lafe is still making every single one by hand. But the quality is impeccable. I was able to leave off the hair tie I usually keep on the holster mount for securing the gun during full-speed walkthroughs. The lever lock does the same thing, but you feel like way more of a badass when you flip it off and the magnet makes that cool snik sound. But I digress.

Stage 1

This was a 32 rounder that started with an unloaded gun and all mags on the barrel. I eventually decided there wasn’t any point trying to dance around it: just stuff three mags in your belt, load the gun, and shoot the stage like normal. Some folks talked about trying to move back to the barrel to pick up a mag as they left the first position instead of stuffing the mag at the start, but that was enough of a movement that it seemed like a wash at best. I did five minutes of experimentation in the hotel room the night before and what felt the most effortless to me was grabbing two mags with my left hand (basepads interlocked) and one with my right hand. Left hand stuffed a mag into pouch #2 while the right hand stuffed a mag into pouch #1. Then the left hand stuffed the other mag into pouch #3 while the right hand picked up the gun. Left hand grabbed a mag off the barrel, loaded while moving to the back corner, and that’s it. Went well, and I wouldn’t really do it any differently.

This is one of the situations where theoretically a magnet would have helped now that they are allowed in Production, but I can’t say I felt like I missed mine. Magnets are extremely fast to put the magazine on, but don’t hold the magazine in a consistent spot the same way a pouch does. (This is one place I find the DAA Racer/Racemaster pouches very easy to use: their funnel shape makes them very fast to stow mags into compared to something like the Ghost pouches I used previously.) And obviously, having to stow three mags, I would have needed a lot of magnets. Now, if it were a 26 round stage instead of 32, and we had 15 round Production, perhaps then it would be more tempting.

At that first shooting position, you had 9 rounds to shoot, three paper on your left, with a long paper and a popper on the right. The three paper on the left were interesting because the third one, which normally you would want to shoot as you moved forward, actually disappeared behind a barrel only a few steps forward of the first shooting position. The second paper was available perhaps five or six steps forward, and so most folks chose to skip the second target and come back to it and shoot it while pushing out of position. One strategy choice I maintained throughout the match was trying to avoid skipping targets I would have to come back to later, and I think it mostly served me well. In this case, I took what on paper seemed like a risky plan: shoot all 9 shots left to right, starting on the close paper and leaving on the big popper. The first target was actually the most restrictive instead of shooting angles, so I knew once I was set up to shoot it, I was in position for everything else.

In theory, leaving on the steel target was risky, but in practice you could see the whole target for the same five or six steps that you could see the second paper target on the left. If I had missed the popper as I started to shift my weight to leave position, I could have taken another one before getting up to too much speed. And I knew the magazine after that was only 8 rounds, so going to slide lock leaving the first position wouldn’t be an issue. Of course, as you can see, it went fine. I liked that sequence and would do it again.

The rest of the stage was mostly go-to-the-places-shoot-the-things. The only other two interesting notes were on target sequencing. First, going into the third magazine, I deliberately reloaded moving up to the spot to see the right tuxedo in the back of the stage, since that was the most precise position to hit. Once that was done, I could start shooting while walking toward the next two closer, open targets, before reloading for the last 7 shots of the stage. The target I took second to last was often taken by other shooters around the same place they took the two mini-poppers. But doing that meant transitioning right past it later in the stage, which as I mentioned, I was trying to avoid. And leaving it to the end also put it into a magazine of 7 where otherwise it would have put my mag #2 at 10 rounds as well, which was too risky.

The only real execution hiccup was the trigger freeze on the third to last target, which cost me a few tenths. But otherwise, very happy with the outcome. I put a lot of emphasis on letting the gun settle on the longer shots, and managed to only pick up 3 charlies total. I was the first shooter (as always) at 7:30 in the morning, so it was a good kickoff to the day.

Stage 2

This was a very plain-looking stage that had more going on than was obvious. The first two positions offered meaningful risk/reward tradeoffs on how aggressively to move into and out of position. The second two positions required precise movement to avoid going deep into each port. And then the final position was just a straight up test of settling back down and getting points at distance.

Leaving the first position, drawing to the partial and rolling out on the open target was a no-brainer. However, coming into the second position, most folks took the middle target, then the left one and the right. Trying to keep things simple and not skip targets, I took the same approach as the first position of the first stage: start the array on the tight target so I know I’m in position when I can shoot it. I definitely gave up some ground with that choice, and shooting major, taking that target on the move would have been required. But playing it safe there let me just hose right across the array, and start to roll out on the last target. The rest of the stage went exactly as planned.

The main execution mistake was not quite having the footwork and positioning visualized well enough, so that as I was moving through, I was slinging quite a few charlies. Once I got to the end and lasered in on the points for the last three targets, things were fine–although I did choose to play it safe and just eat two Cs on the far horizontal hard cover target. There was so little A-zone available, the target was relatively far, and the rest of the stage was pretty fast, meaning the points weren’t worth taking too much risk.

Stage 3

This stage boiled down to four positions: the lean around the left wall, the low port with two targets, the front middle with four targets visible from either opening plus the drop turner, and then the back corner. You could go to the middle right opening and get an easy view on the swinger, but the extra movement wasn’t really worth it.

The best four hits on the drop turner were scored, presenting the question of whether to shoot it or not. Videoing the timing and watching it on my phone the day before, I reckoned it took about a second for the turner to expose, you had about a second to shoot on the first exposure, a second of it hidden, and a second of the second exposure. So somewhere between 3 and 4 seconds if you wanted to shoot both exposures. I didn’t want to just give up all those points, but didn’t want to stand there the whole time either. I’m reasonably happy with the plan to shoot while backing up, but I did not get very good exposures of the target being at the angle I was at. To be honest I’m not sure where the misses went. Not sure if I had two shots on one pass and none on the other, or one on each.

On the other hand, Tyler Turner won the stage with a time two seconds faster than mine, by just posting up and shooting four shots on the first exposure. That lines up with the idea that the second exposure added about two seconds of time overall. Given the ability to basically be at “Can You Count” distance from the target and throw .20 splits to get four hits in under a second, I think that way was probably overall the best.

Stage 4

A pretty straightforward 24 round hosing section up front, with a little box-to-box shooting to start for 32 rounds total. Not too much to say about this one, since the front section in particular presented a very obvious short path where you could see all the targets from.

The 7 charlies I racked up hurt, especially because two separate targets (the last two of the third magazine) had a nice group with both shots in the c-zone. I just didn’t quite get the gun to the right spot on the target before touching off the shots. And of course the trigger freeze that cost me a good six tenths. I’m not sure where I gave up the other second and a half to Tyler, but some of it was coming into the second shooting box too hot and having to spend some time letting the gun settle. Not a disaster of a stage, but definitely some room for improvement.

Stage 5

I took a pretty different approach to this one than most folks I saw. The typical stage plan was to load, shoot the first four targets right to left or left to right, then turn and run uprange and shoot stuff from further back. (Sorry there’s no hat cam on this one. The GoPro started having a case of the Mondays for a few stages until I figured out what to do with it.)

Instead, my idea was to focus on getting the starting load done, then set up for the fairly specific leans for the left and right targets. Then start backing out of position, shooting the open targets dead ahead (shooting on the move at stuff right in front of you is always the easiest). Stick a reload while maintaining momentum, and then the next four shots on the left and two on the right will roll into view. I got to walk it through at full speed just once but it was enough to convince me the timing would work out, so I went with it, and I think it was fine. Even shooting a high cap division without the reload, I’d probably just gas the rearward movement a little more and keep the same plan. Turning your body uprange and then back around takes longer than you think, and so if you can just carry rearward momentum for three or four steps, you’d be surprised how efficient it can be. Supremely un-tactical though!

The rest of the stage went pretty well, with a few issues by an inch. The first was just barely a full diameter barrel hit on the last shot in the third position, and the second was a no-shoot on the perf on the second to last shot, which I made up in case it wasn’t touching. Tough to have two penalties on what had otherwise been a clean match, but I knew otherwise it was a great stage run with one charlie, so I let it go and kept going.

Stage 6

This was a pretty straightforward stage, with the only real choice being where to shoot the option target that I took from the start position. I paced off the distance and it was about the same from the start as it was from the middle of the shooting area, and taking it earlier saved setting up for a far target. Shooting it at the start let me get all the long shooting out of the way at the beginning, then just have the middle section of close hosing and launch to the end.

Once again, I took the approach in the last position of moving until I saw the tight target behind the barrel, and knew I was set up for the partial that was the last target of the stage. (I was not feeling lucky enough to shoot the partial on the move.) Obviously I over-cooked the movement a bit and had to do the one foot thing since my center of balance was slowly teetering out of the shooting area. But it worked out okay.

Stage 7

Everyone was talking about this one “Holy Monkey” swinger, but the verdict of the NC crew I was shooting with was to just be waiting on first pass, put two on it, and be done with it. The unpredictability past the first swing made it very risky, and each swing added an easy two seconds to your time, which was not worth it for a few extra points as long as you had two on the cardboard.

Unfortunately, somewhere in the first four targets, my GoPro decided to beep at me and shut off, which completely threw me off. I point-shot the third and fourth targets, resulting in the one D of the match, which was only barely on the paper. My target order in the second position also got thrown off, because I was thinking about the camera and then not seeing my sights. This camera has been very reliable for years, but something about it recently has made it stop recording after 20 or 30 seconds. After it happened again on stage 8, I figured out to just start the camera going way before I get the “Make Ready”, and that way if it turns off, I can just restart it.

Anyway, after hosing through the first two positions, I tightened everything else up, and managed AC on the swinger which I was more than happy with. I was not looking to do anything heroic on this one, just get it done.

Stage 8

The only real strategy choice on this stage was on the first four targets. In retrospect, this is a place where trying to shoot backing up on the second target did not really pay off, I don’t think. If I had to do it again, I’d take that target after shooting the back left outside target. Come back to the middle, shoot the two targets available from the back middle, then reload and run up to the front of the stage, where you had 20 rounds exactly, so no room for errors.

Other than that, went as planned.

Stage 9

I was feeling good about this one. The main thing that I did differently on my stage plan was after the third position with the two no-shoot partials. Most folks turned to the right and shot the open-and-partial double stack as they walked to the right. I chose to reload moving towards them, which meant by the time I got there and settled in, I could shoot them as fast as I could pull the trigger, and then shoot the three long targets. Shooting them from where I did had the effect of making the shots a few yards farther compared to moving to the front of the box while reloading. But I made sure to give myself permission to get a nice stable stance and just let the gun float to each target. Then I loaded, cut the corner slightly, shot the open target coming into position, and took the two double stacks from another stable setup.

I was especially pleased with the points on the far targets and partials throughout the stage, and knew this was a solid run as soon as I was done.

Stage 10

I thought this stage was going to be a dumb gimmick, but it actually turned out to be a pretty fair test. The activators were available from two different spots, and the bobbers were open targets that were not too far away. You had every chance to do well on this stage, if you could put it together.

When the bobbers first came out, each pair of targets were exposed at almost exactly the same time. But as they cycled in and out, one got ahead of the other, which I thought would be advantageous for shooting them without downtime. Shoot the first one to appear in each pair, then the second one, instead of rushing to shoot them in the same window of time.

As you can see though, I missed the key element of shooting the second activator before the right inside double stack. I recovered fairly well from the mistake, and amazingly enough was able to get four alphas on the two right targets on their first, synchronized exposure. But that threw me off my plan enough that I rushed shooting the left bobbers, and had to take two passes at each one, and racked up a miss on my first shot on the pair.

My raw time on the stage still ended up being the fastest by a little, but the profuse charlies and the mike made this an 89% finish. I knew from looking at Practiscore Competitor that I had a chance to win the match if I could snatch the stage win on this last stage by a good margin, but that wasn’t going to happen. Still, I’m happy with the recovery and how the stage went.

Summary

Overall, I shot way better than I expected given the limited practice. Shooting 10 stages in 6 hours thanks to staff reset was amazing as always. I was genuinely not really looking forward to this match due to my lack of preparation, but it’s now given me quite a bit of fire in the belly to get back into things and keep building on what’s clearly a more solid foundation than I gave myself credit for.

This is the second year that Belton has put on the match and they are doing a great job. The stages were a good mix of shot difficulties (tight and open targets; near, medium, and far shots), and even the three unloaded starts I didn’t mind. Making the low-capacity shooters stuff 3 or 4 mags on Stage 1 was kinda lame, and could have easily been designed differently. In general, the round count on most stages was higher than it needed to be, and every stage could have had at least one target deleted with no real loss to the stage in my estimation. Having more variety (more than 27-32 rounds) in stage design is a good thing, but for being a typical high-round count American match, this one did not disappoint.

The post SC Section 2022 Wrapup appeared first on Berry Shooting.

It was a good day out at the range with friends, and surprisingly warm if a little muddy in places. SC Section, Area 6, and Production Nationals are all coming up fast, so this is the first match of my 2021 season and it’s a good start.

Scores are here.

Since the last two matches, when I was shooting my M&P Pro, I had taken a few weeks off over Christmas and gotten back into dry fire with the Stock 2, putting in two sessions the week before this match. For the most part, it all came right back, although there are a few things that just take reps to get back in the habit of. My grip was a little off on the first few stages but by the end of the day everything was back to normal.

Breakdown by Stage

Stage 8: My grip was off from the start, which meant having to work a little harder to find the front sight, and the gun was just generally moving around in recoil much more than I like, thus the slow splits up until the last magazine. (Ironically, a good grip on the plastic M&P probably would have been easier to control than this bouncy metal gun. But obviously the solution is to fix my grip now that I’m back on the Stock 2.)

The good news is that I was waiting for the sights and calling shots as I was shooting, thus the makeup shots on targets 3 and 4.

After the first reload, my grip was still wrong, particularly the weak hand being out of place. So, I was pulling the trigger very carefully (slowly). It was the best I could do in the situation.

After the second reload, everything started to come together. You can see the gun jumping much less in my hands as I finally got the grip right with both hands. Unfortunately, I was thinking about my grip and was a little late moving forward to see the last target, but it didn’t end up costing me too much time.

(Third-person video quality is lower this month due to leaving the camera on the wrong setting.)

Stage 1: My natural inclination on a stage like this would to be go full turtle and aim hard for each shot, and I knew that would put me way behind on raw time. Instead, my intent going into shooting this stage was to not spend too long confirming my sights, just break the shot when I see a good picture, and shoot a makeup if I need it.

That’s exactly what happened particularly in the second position, where all three targets ended up getting three shots each. I was just not gripping hard enough with my left hand, and so each target had at least one shot I wasn’t happy with.

The swinger really bit me, because I called two… I won’t say “good” shots, but I called two shots on paper. One ended up being a delta 2 inches from the edge, and the other was a clean miss. I was pushing my luck and should have put another shot on that target.

Stage 2: I knew this stage would come down to moving aggressively, but aiming just enough to get good points on the targets, which were all open targets within 10 yards. But having no partials made them very tempting to go too fast on. (I talked more in depth about the design of this stage a few days ago.)

My intent on both the left and right sides was to move hard to the shooting position, shoot one paper while settling in, and then grip hard and rail fast splits and transitions on the other two targets. As for the two middle positions, just get there fast, shoot each target quickly, and haul ass out.

Everything went pretty much to plan except that my left hand grip was just a little loose coming out of the reload, leading to a delta on each of the two targets right after. But I was committed to busting through the stage as fast as I could and didn’t have a lot of makeup shots, so I just got what I could and got out of there. Obviously the theme of weak hand grip is starting to develop.

Stage 3: I really liked this stage. The tight shooting area and the way the targets appeared and disappeared gave it a really interesting flow. Early on walking the stage through, I saw the obvious plan of going left, forward, right, and then back meant having to move backward. I saw a plan that meant going left first, then right, then forward, which saved me having to move back, which can often be a good time-saver. (My buddy Gary Byerly’s rule is that every step backwards should be counted as a step and a half when pacing off distances through a stage.)

As it was, I don’t think it was a clearcut advantage, and I think my hesitation during the stage lead to generally slow execution. Also, just because the stage plan involved memorizing the order that targets would appear and disappear in, I was thinking too much about that and not enough about gripping the gun.

Should I have abandoned my plan and gone with what everyone else was doing? Maybe, or maybe not. The hesitation of mixing up plans might have made me even slower all told. Ultimately my main takeaway is just really visualizing in these kinds of stages where targets appear and disappear so when it’s time to shoot, you’re just flowing through and thinking about gripping the gun and calling your shots.

Also, planning to shoot to 10 at the beginning of the stage (4 steel, 3 paper) was risky and I knew it. I planned a contingency that if I didn’t go 1-for-1 on the steel, I would do a reload moving across. But regardless of planning for it, having to do it threw me off and instantly put me in a conscious mindset which was slower.

Stage 4: The stage plan I chose was not what the designers were planning. Historically I usually try to avoid “gimmick” stage plans like this where you exploit an apparent loophole, both because I think they tend to be a sucker’s bet, and just out of high-minded respect for the stage designer blah blah blah. So obviously this time I chose to take the gimmick and give it a try. My buddy Gerrit, who was shooting Single Stack Minor and edging me out on three of the four stages of the day so far, shot the “intended” plan and actually beat my time by four tenths. So standing back and sniping definitely wasn’t a slam dunk better strategy.

Like Stage 3, planning to shoot to 10 at the end of the stage was a calculated risk, and one that meant after I used my one makeup round I had to confirm each sight picture more before pulling the trigger, adding a few tenths per shot.

Overall, this stage went pretty much like Stage 3: thinking too much about navigating the stage, and not just leaving myself free to grip the gun and call the shots.

Stage 5: This is where the day started coming together for me.

I shanked the DA shot off the draw, but after that, my grip was dead on. (Another instance of shooting to 10 forcing me to be very careful after I used my one makeup shot.) The whole stage basically demanded to be shot on the move since you could only see two or three targets from any one position and you just had stay low and move through.

I definitely dropped too many charlies by not settling the gun on each target while moving, but overall this was the best stage of the day yet, by far. I managed to edge out the stage win on this one which was a good feeling. (Stage wins at club matches don’t always mean much of anything, especially if your competition has some major problem. But in this case it felt like I could still pull out the win for the day.)

Stage 6: I was so happy at how well the first six steel targets went that I forgot to reload moving to the middle. That got me out of the flow (shooting in the past tense, as Brian Enos would say) and then the left swinger was just swinging away as I got my sights on it. I could feel the seconds slipped away while I waited for it to come out. Then the right swinger did exactly the same thing as I transitioned to it.

In retrospect, I should have waited until it came back out and just fired two shots at it, but I really wanted a good time on this stage. Like on Stage 1, I’m very conscious of my tendency to over-aim when the shots get tough and I wanted to just call them and be done. As it was, the hits were good even if the time was a little slow.

(This stage was only 10 shots, thus 50 points, with three positions. Ballparking the raw time at 9-10 seconds, that means about a 5 hit factor, thus every charlie is worth .4 seconds. I ended up sneaking the win on this stage by shooting .3 slower but taking 2 fewer charlies. Sometimes that’s just how the scoring works out.)

Stage 7 (CM 09-14 Eye of the Tiger): I knew the HHF for the classifier had zero room for confirming the sights too long. I set about just getting the gun out, gripping hard, and shooting a Blake Drill of headshots, and overall was surprised at how well it went. I called two of the shots a iffy, but they were on there, and As to boot.

Because I haven’t been practicing classifier skills, instead emphasizing movement and position entries and exits, it’s been quite a while since I actually shot a GM classifier. So that was another good feeling and great way to end the day.

Summary: I did end up managing to win the match among the low-cap divisions, which is a good note to start the year on. Now to hit the grip issues, and renew the focus on visualizing through stages so I’m not having to navigate while I shoot.

The post Match Video: Sir Walter, January 2021 appeared first on Berry Shooting.

I shot the club match at Sir Walter this past weekend, my first match in three months since the 2018 NC Sectional was the end of my season last year.

Going in to this match, I had one live fire session this year to speak of, and three dry fire sessions the week before.

As I mentioned on Episode 45 of the podcast, I don’t have a ton of goals for the season, but my two areas of focus right now are improving how I grip the gun and improving my movement by cutting out big steps to push out of position. I saw some promising early results in the grip improvements and my movement coming in to positions with the gun up and shooting early.

But there were also some very significant problems.

On Stage 8, my first stage of the day and the last one I walked through, I let myself be talk to my squad mates instead of making sure my round count for the stage matched the WSB (spoiler: it didn’t). I also shot too many (more than zero) deltas.

On Stage 1, I tried to go too fast when grabbing my magazines off the barrel and flustered myself from the get-go. That was not helpful. In the future, when dealing with unusual tasks, I have to remember not to try to be snappy with my movement. Just be correct.

Stage 2 actually went alright. I had a good first run on it, but a timer malfunction mean I had to re-shoot, and I actually did slightly better the second time through. Because a good stage run is the result of a good process, I was able to just run through the process again and produce another good result. I’ve never particularly been afraid of reshoots, but this was a good example of why they aren’t as bad as people think, if you have good process.

Stage 3 was frustrating. The light strike on the draw, the miss on the swinger (trying to push too hard to catch it before it swung away), and the no-shoot while transitioning across. The no-shoot in particular hurt because I realized I was trying to stay back off the wall. Most folks on the squad were leaning into the relatively pliable PVC wall, but instead of doing that, I shifted backward away from the wall and my trigger finger outran my front sight. Just one of those examples of how walking the stage through doesn’t always uncover the little gotchas you find when actually executing it. I will have to remember that for the future.

Stage 4 went well, but only barely. I knew cutting a position by taking that tuxedo from so far back was very risky, but I did it anyway. I know I have struggled on tuxedo targets before. I know there is no reasonable reason I can’t take the time to aim enough on them. And yet I still came a quarter of an inch from a miss. From a match scoring perspective, yeah, that was an alpha, but from a training perspective it was a failure. I have got to be able to deliver confident hits on hard shots like that on demand. The stage plan I chose was objectively the best one, I think, but I have to be able to control the risk on that one target that the whole stage pivots on.

Stage 5 was also frustrating. I fumbled the first reload, and then shot the plate rack target focus. 9 rounds to shoot 6 plates should have been plenty, and that’s just embarrassing. And then at the end, to have another light strike. My press has been acting up lately, but still, it’s frustrating to be stuck in the Groundhog Day world of perpetual light strikes. I’ve got the parts on order from Dillon to get the press back in shape and that issue will be going away.

And finally, the classifier, Can You Count? (Stage 6 got tossed from the match due to prop malfunctions.) On the one hand, I’m frankly amazed I was able to shoot and reload that fast. I never practice that kind of close hosing, so I had zero expectations of how the stage would go. I just tried to draw and reload like it was dry fire and the results looked pretty good. Except, of course, the extra shot. Without the extra shot, it still would have only been an 87% run, which is fine with me. Sub-second draw, .20 splits, and a 1.0 second reload is good enough for me at this point. Anything more than that seems like parlor tricks. In the inverse of what happened on stage 3, even though it’s a match score fail, from a training perspective I consider that a win.

All of that aside, everything else went mostly okay. I came out of the gate moving very aggressively. Also, I generally don’t put a lot of import on splits, but as a measurement of whether or not my changes to my grip are working, I’m very encouraged by splits that were much better than usual for me.

It would be easy to be discouraged or disappointed in this match, but I just can’t help seeing each of the mistakes I made as fixable and be encouraged that the changes I’m making are working. This sport stays rewarding and satisfying as long as I can keep making progress and despite barely practicing in the last three months, that’s exactly what is already happening.

The post Match Video: Sir Walter, February 2019 appeared first on Berry Shooting.

Since my last Match Debrief, from the 2017 NC Section match five months ago, a lot has happened. I went to Nationals, and many of the same problems from the section cropped up again, particularly a bad habit of pulling the trigger sideways and pushing shots in to hardcover straight at 9 o’clock. This has been a major focus of my training since then, and I’ve been lucky to have a number of 60 degree days on the weekend this January and February to get out and practice.

March is mentally the start of the competition season for me, since Daylight Saving Time ends and it starts to be warm enough to really shoot well at club matches. This weekend’s match was still pretty chilly at times, but it was a good chance to come out and shoot and see how the winter break and early training has been coming along. On the whole, it was a very consistent match for me, shooting a lot of points, but slowly.

Results on Practiscore

Stage 8

This was my favorite stage of the day, both because I found the design really interesting, and because I rather like how I did on it.

First of all, the design offered a type of option you don’t see very much: a choice between shooting a target from 1) further away, but with a short transition or 2) with a wide transition but relatively closer distance. I came up with at least three viable stage plans for this stage in Production alone and ultimately just picked the one that put the most number of targets straight in front of me. Also, no target was particularly far away or hard, but there was also disaster lurking everywhere, which is fun.

For my performance, I was very happy with how I ran the gun, particularly at the end. My efforts to fix the “pulling the trigger sideways” problem mentioned earlier seemed to really pay off at the end when I had two of the tightest groups I’ve ever shot in competition, and I wasn’t even trying to be particularly accurate. The gun was just tracking right back to where it lifted from, which is a good feeling.

What appears to be trigger freeze on the third target is actually, I think, a manifestation of the same thing that happened later on stage 1: starting to move my arms too early before I’ve broken the last shot. That too has been a longtime problem that’s dogged me, particularly on steel. I’m not happy about it, but at least it’s not out of character for me.

Stage 1

This was a really interesting stage with technical elements like the port you had to hold open, and targets spaced out just enough that you never could really set up hard. Except for the plate rack of course.

Steel has been a weakness of mine for some time, due to a combination of the “pulling the trigger sideways” problem and my issue of pulling off targets too early. It goes something like this: I see a good sight picture on the steel, and start to move my arms at the same second that I start to pull the trigger. Gross motor skill beats fine, blah blah blah, and I end up pulling the shot (not yanking) off target.

Being aware of that, I was very conscious to try and follow through on each plate and go one for one. I was so sure I had a good call on the last plate that I decisively dropped the mag, before I realized that I had, of course, pulled off the target too early. Out of nowhere, I realized on the fly I could just shoot my last round and reload the gun on my way to my next position. I have never practiced something like that, and if the run to the next position had been any shorter, I probably would not have done it. But somehow, it the moment, it seemed like the right thing to do, and I think it as the best salvage of a bad situation.

Now, to stop pulling off targets.

Stage 2

For the rest of the match, I was very conscious, bordering on deliberate, to shoot steel without pulling off early, and managed to do it. This stage was another one that I quite liked, because it had a lot of little options and interesting details for a stage that was “only” 23 rounds. (For contrast, Stage 3 was 28 rounds, and much more straightforward.)

This was another stage with lots of targets to find, and choices on when and where to take them from. I ran my plan exactly as designed, with only two hiccups in execution. The first was on the last reload, I cleanly missed the magwell on the right-to-left reload. But, as I’ve been practicing controlling the magazine all the way in to the gun, I still had a good grip on it and was able to recover and had plenty of space to get the reload done before needing to shoot. The second was just on the last target where I started blasting before I had finished transitioning. I shot four shots at it, two quick charlies that I called as bad, followed up by two alphas. Mentally, I was just pulling the trigger until I had two good hits, and so there is no real perceptible difference in my cadence. I’m not thrilled about the extras, but I like hate that I called them and made them up without any hesitation at all.

Stage 3

Right as I cleared my mind at “Standby”, the idea that I might back up in to the RO popped in to my head. Before I had a chance to get rid of it, the buzzer had sounded. Everything turned out just fine, but that little kernel of doubt was enough to make me feel like I was playing catchup for the whole stage, leading to a really loose and unfocused run on the stage. Nothing went catastrophically wrong, but the mystery mike on the second drop turner, the genuine trigger freeze, the lost time hunting for the targets at the third position, and the extra shots at the end all just added up to be generally unimpressive.

In the future, any time there’s a start position where I’m moving back at the start, I need to just glance over at the RO and see that he’s far enough away to remove any doubt that it’ll be a problem.

Stage 4

This stage called for one of the goofier stage plans I’ve come up with in a while, splitting an array of full size poppers between two positions based solely on the “how could I possibly miss?” theory. I think it largely worked out and let me take out the risk of shooting to ten on an array of steel. Plus it just looks cool on the grams, you know?

This stage was an example of my inconsistent grip, where the gun was just bouncing around way more than I like at the third and fourth positions. Everything turned out okay (with a makeup shot in there for good measure). But with that much hard cover, I would really rather have a solid control of the gun and keep it returning right to the A zone.

Stage 5

Definitely the worst stage of the day for me, because I was very deliberate with how much I aimed and still not confident, leading to extra shots. It was five and a half hours in to the match, the sun was going down and it was getting cold again, and we had waited a little while for the squads in front of us, which all just added to just not bringing a sense of urgency to the stage, all of which I should have better compensated for.

Of course, nothing went terribly wrong, and in the final tally I ended up being extremely accurate, but at the cost of being 4 seconds slower than the stage winner.

I think the contrast between the targets on the left of the stage in the shade, with the sun behind them, and the targets on the right of the stage that are brightly lit is pretty interesting, as well as the fact that half the poppers were brightly lit and half were in shadow. As a competitor who doesn’t get to pick when you shoot a given stage, there’s not much I can do about this, but perhaps next time I’ll be more cognizant to aim on the dimly lit targets and trust my sights a little bit more on the brightly-lit ones. As it was, I shot everything at a slowish pace that wasn’t well suited to either.

Stage 6

For me, this stage was all about the steel, and going 8-for-9 is a result I’m actually pretty happy with. That tells me I was in control, but not going so slow that I removed all risk.

The one charlie was my second shot on the second paper target, as I, of course, pull off it too early. I actually called it a delta at the time, but it was too late to go back by the time it registered in my head.

Stage 7 (CM 03-08, Madness)

Another stage where nothing really went terribly wrong, but nothing really went well either. The 4 charlies took this from a 96% run to an 85%, a good example of why speed isn’t all that matters in classifiers. These days, I don’t need classifiers per se, but it is still nice to use them to track overall progress. This classifier is quite doable in Production, but I just didn’t have it in me at that point.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I shot a fairly consistent match, which is always a plus. It’s hard to figure out what to work on when every stage has a different problem. For me, going forward in to the next two weeks of training before my next level 1, I have to work on consistently gripping the gun like I did on Stage 8. I have to figure out a way to train to stop pulling off targets early (I can’t reliably reproduce the problem in practice, oddly enough). And on these long match days, I have to make sure to monitor my energy levels, and bring more coffee.

The post Sir Walter USPSA, March 2017 appeared first on Berry Shooting.

For the 2017 Carolina Classic, the NC Section match returned to the Rowan County Wildlife Club in Salisbury, NC. I had an inconsistent match but still managed to hang on for a 95% finish behind the very capable Tyler Turner.*

Despite taking two mikes on the match, my real downfall was being generally hesitant and shooting a lot of makeup shots on paper and steel. (If the two hard cover mikes were hits, it still would have only moved me up to 97.6%.)

2017 Carolina Classic Results

Stage 1
The first stage of the day was set up in a way that you could see all the targets from two positions, leading most folks to just shoot the stage from there. It would have been an decent-but-unremarkable finish for me without the hardcover mike. It was in the same left-low-left place that I took two mikes on tuxedos last week at Sir Walter. A frustrating trend, but I mostly managed to get it out of my head for the next few stages.

Stage 2
Nothing really went wrong on this stage, but nothing really went right. Generally sluggish, and after the last stage I was shooting very conservatively, especially on the back targets with the no-shoots. I still managed to pick up 7 charlies, from just being a too loose on the sights and sloppy with the trigger.

Stage 3
There wasn’t too much to this stage, just go one for one up front and get alphas. Took one charlie on the second paper target, but this one pretty much went okay.

Stage 4
This stage required by far the most thinking of any stage in the match, with many different ways to break up the first 18 shots of the stage. I had a decent plan, but didn’t keep the one-for-one discipline from the last stage going. I got sloppy on the trigger and went to slide lock only knocking down two of the four poppers I planned to get with my first magazine. At that point, I knew I had to shoot the next magazine one-for-one, and the one after that too, so I had to become very deliberate to avoid a standing reload. I managed to do it and the final damage to my score wasn’t terrible, but I threw away a genuine chance at a stage win with steel misses and paper makeups.

Stage 5
I knew this standards stage would not be a strength of mine, but my goal was to see my sights and shoot points, without worrying about how slow it felt. Frustratingly, I took a mike, but on the freestyle portion. I overswung the transition into the tuxedo hard cover in the middle and put my fifth shot of the first string in the black.

The rest of the stage went passably well, but having a second hardcover miss in exactly the same spot was frustrating.

Stage 6
Another stage with nothing terribly wrong, just slow because of makeups. The random light strike after two thousand rounds of reliable ignition was frustrating but turned out to be the first of three. In the first position, three makeup shots. In the second position, a makeup shot on the tuxedo hardcover (which amazingly turned out to be an unpasted hole from the previous shooter; I had three alphas on the target). And then again in the last position, a makeup. Knowing I had to go one-for-one for the rest of the stage slowed me down. A mix of impatience to start shooting and sloppy trigger pulling (yes, even with a 3 pound single action) slowed me down too much.

Stage 7
More sloppy trigger pulling. This stage went more or less according to plan, except for the makeup shots. The makeup shots on the steel at the end are particularly egregious because I had stable sight pictures despite the bridge, but I was just not gripping the gun and pulling the trigger right. You can see both misses go off just to the left in to the berm.

Stage 8
Nearly a stage win, despite the second light strike, on the draw. That rattled me and my first instinct was to reload so I didn’t go to slide lock. It didn’t enter my head at the time that my plan wasn’t anywhere near needing a reload and the light strike hadn’t put me behind any rounds. I just reacted.

Perhaps a highlight of this match for me was recognizing the second swinger timing and engaging other targets while it was obscured. If I had taken fewer poppers from the start position, I wouldn’t have been able to come back to the swinger in time for the next swing the way I did.

Stage 9
On the last stage of the day, despite having a light strike, managed to step up and pull out the stage win on this one. I can’t really explain why, especially given my recent lack of performance on classifiers, but this stage just came together for me.

I don’t mean this breakdown to be a list of excuses why I didn’t win. But I hope through specific examples you can see the places I see in my own performance for improvement. Two weeks from when I write this, I’ll be preparing to shoot Nationals in the morning and I need to do as much work as I can on these problems between now and then. (And even after Nationals, because, of course, no truly difficult problem is ever solved, just temporarily abated.)

* Interesting side note: I took 95% behind Tyler last year at this match too, but in that time we’ve both gone from M to GM and trained, although clearly him harder than me. It’s a rare snapshot of the two of us progressing almost in lock-step which I find interesting.

The post Carolina Classic 2017 appeared first on Berry Shooting.

The Sir Walter USPSA match went pretty well for me. The stages were long (26 rounds or more, excluding the speed shoot) and technical and overall I executed my plans precisely and aggressively which was a good thing (I still ended up with the Production + Single Stack stage win on 3 despite my hard cover miss due to executing well otherwise and being 3-5 seconds faster than the closest competition).

The bad news was the mikes. Four of them. All four were off to the left, either because of transitioning off a target early or yanking the trigger carelessly. At the time, it was tough to keep anything resembling a good mental game going, but in hindsight it’s pretty clear that I was just focusing too much on technical execution (movement, footwork, positioning) and just took pulling the trigger for granted. That was a mistake and it bit me, repeatedly.

But as each hit came, I told myself there was nothing I could do to fix it and the best way to “salvage” the match was to focus up and calmly execute the rest of the stages, which I managed to do, with the stage win on my last two stages, during the part of the day when it would have been easiest to feel frustrated and defeated.

September 2017 Sir Walter USPSA Results

Stage 4

This stage was so constrained, there really wasn’t any room to make any magic happen through clever strategy or aggressive movement. The name of the game was maximizing points while minimizing errors: fumbles with the windows, fumbles with reloading, or makeup shots. The PVC windows are so light that it’s easy to lose grip on them or have them bounce around on you, so I am happy with that part of the stage going smoothly.

The bad part of this stage isn’t just the hard cover mike on the tuxedo target, but the consistently low and left, tight groups on the two tuxedo targets next to each other. I was just not taking a sliver of care with how I was pulling the trigger and just letting it happen, and it turned out consistently low left. Not good, but at least the cause and solution are relatively straightforward.

Stage 5

Executed this stage exactly according to plan: one for one on the steel while smoothly hitting both positions needed. Hit the second “magic spot” position where I could see all five targets. Moved through the rest of the stage smoothly while getting good points.

The only hiccup was the second reload which went bad. The way my torso was turned downrange while my lower body stayed facing the right side of the range to push out of position meant that the gun was way closer to the mag pouch than I’m used to, so the new mag got to the gun way faster than I expected, leading to me fumbling it. Something to keep in mind for stages shooting near the right 180 and then pushing out of position downrange.

Stage 6

Not my greatest performance. 3 charlies plus a makeup shot on steel was very sloppy. This stage had a lot of nuance on how to come in to the left side and how early to start shooting that made it a lot of fun to shoot. But I just plain didn’t really execute it very well.

CM 08-03 Six

I think I was just off to the left (lazy trigger technique again!) of the small popper, so I heard a ding from the big popper being hit near its base. The silver lining of this stage is how quickly I processed the miss on the mini-popper and snapped right back to it.

Stage 8

A 26-round memory-ish stage that had a couple interesting ways to shoot it without being a crazy hard memorization challenge. Had a solid plan executed aggressively that put me three seconds ahead of the closest competition but two mikes put me out of running for the stage. In both cases, some mixture of lazy trigger pulling and transitioning off the target too early added up to a miss.

Stage 1

A straightforward stage where you go to each position and just shoot the targets you can see from there. Not a lot of strategy so it all came down to execution. At the first position, I failed to set up solidly and grip the gun, so it felt too loose and I took makeup shots because I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t called bad shots but hadn’t called good ones either. And then at the end of the stage, I took the mike on the second to last position. And the pair of scaled metrics at the end of the stage were 2C and CD, low left of course. More just lazy trigger technique.

Stage 2

Another stage with a bunch of positions where you had to go to each one and shoot all the targets available from there, but with a little room to make up some time. The biggest place to save time was not committing too deep to each position that you had to then leave, being efficient with the uprange movement, and of course going one for one on steel. I had actually planned to do a reload if I had a miss on the first steel array, but batting one hundred there gave me a little confidence boost going in to the second steel array, as well as saving me the time doing a reload and giving me a reason to finish out the rest of the magazine one for one.

At the last two positions, I became cognizant of gripping the gun with my left hand and pulling the trigger straight back, which shows up in the speed I went through, especially the last three targets, confident I would stay away from the hard cover.

Had one delta coming in hard in to position which honestly I should have made up, but I was in such a hurry to not get tangled up in that position I didn’t take it.

Stage 3

A stage with a lot of options and a little room to make some magic. Went pretty much as planned, except for coming in to the last target with too much speed and having to “push off” in to the air to avoid falling on my face. I have never done that before in a match or practice, but somehow it all came together and this stage was a strong finish for me.

The post Sir Walter USPSA September 2017 appeared first on Berry Shooting.

This was my first time back at the CGGR USPSA match near Asheboro, NC (halfway between Raleigh and Charlotte) since November and I knew it was going to be a tough match. Heat in the 90s, humidity, and a range that has notoriously little shade or wind. They did end up having coolers of water and a popup canopy on each bay which helped.

I ended up having a match I’m fairly happy with. It wasn’t perfect, but the big problems came towards the end of the day. I stayed hydrated and tried to pack as much as I could in to my stage plans and get all the details right.

CGGR USPSA August 2017 Results

Stage 3

This stage had a lot of tight, positional shooting but also lured you in to trying to hose the steel because you had plenty of extra rounds. I tried to shoot with high confidence on the steel and mostly succeeded. The one hiccup was the position in the middle where I could stay far back and work around the wall or go all the way in and commit. I ended up trying to split the difference and couldn’t see all the plates, so I had to adjust my position. That difference of twelve inches in foot placement made a big difference and cost time.

This was also the only non-classifier stage where I shot a delta. I didn’t call it and it was almost a miss so that’s pretty bad. Also, shooting the long paper target at 0:27 off balance was very strange and it felt like it took much longer than it did for my sights to settle. I had never shot with my body bladed like that and was surprised how little leverage I had to control the sights. It worked out though because I got the alphas, but it felt really bad at the time.

Stage 4

This was an 18 round stage, with arrays of 8 and 10, and an unloaded start, giving me 20 rounds to work with. I knew I wouldn’t have much ammo to spare. I aimed a lot because I wanted to avoid having to do a standing reload at all costs. I called the bad shot coming in to the last position and knew I had to go one for one on the last three plates and come back for it if I could. Ended up with second on the stage at 98.5%, which is fine. You can’t win the match with this stage, but there’s so much danger it’d be easy to lose it. I shot all alphas and got out alive with 98.5% of the stage points so that was okay.

Stage 5

This stage combined both the opportunity to shoot aggressively coming in on steel and also had small plates far away. In general I shot this one a little too loose, with two steel makeups and two paper makeups while still not being particularly fast. I’m not sure why I didn’t bring more energy to this one. Probably just because it was “only” 21 rounds across three positions, and the whole stage looked pretty straightforward.

Stage 6

Another stage that was just okay. The first target that I drew on was two charlie and I had those slow makeups on the plate rack. Not terrible, and given the heat in that frying pan of a bay, maybe this was a good stage.

Stage 7

Dropped way too many points (half the hits were not alphas), mostly on the 15 yard freestyle and stronghand strings. I haven’t been training strong and weak much because it doesn’t show up in matches a lot (just being honest) but it still hurts to shoot a 68% classifier like this.

Stage 1

Somehow had the stage win (even including Single Stack which had two skilled Ms shooting minor) on this one, despite having to backtrack after leaving a position early. In this case, I transitioned from the small hex steel to the closest plate of the star instead of the top one like I was planning. No real excuse, just laziness and not visualizing that particular detail enough. That got me off plan enough I forgot the 20 yard paper hiding downrange. Like I said, by all rights this should not have been a stage win, but I guess this stage just kinda worked it’s magic on everyone.

The one bright side is that after the mixup and recovering, I went right back to aggressively executing my plan and finished out one for one on the rest of the steel and all alphas for the stage. Even when it goes bad, just remind yourself to see your sights and call good hits. You’ll naturally want to speed up to make up for the lost time, as though that’s possible, so redoubling your efforts to aim will balance things out.

Stage 2

My worst stage of the day. Got trigger happy on the steel because I had rounds to burn and burn them I did. I realized after the miss on the plate rack I had to go one for one or do a standing reload, so I made sure to confirm every shot after that.

And once again, I left a position early. In my mind, I knew those targets were there, but I thought of them as being on that side of the range, so moving toward that side of the shooting area seemed natural. I should have visualized those targets from that position more, instead of just relying on the lazy workaround of “shoot all the plates you can see from here” which I did because it was the end of the day and I was tired. I need to burn this memory of me backtracking on the last two stages in a row in my memory as a warning to myself about coasting and getting complacent at the end of a match. It’s never too late in the day to wreck your match.

Luckily, in this case, the error was minimal and the rest of my match was good enough that it made these flubs stand out by contrast.

The NC Section match is coming up in about three weeks, so my takeaways from this match are

1. Bring the energy and aggressiveness even to “simple”/”short” stages like Stage 5.
2. Visualize complex engagement sequences like Stage 1 and 2 repeatedly, especially when a mover is involved.
3. Keep up the shot calling. Keep shooting lots of alphas and making up anything that looks or feels bad. Keep up the high hit rate on steel

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This match was a tough one for me. Despite not having any scored penalties, I couldn’t find my groove all day and ended up having a few stages with more time on the clock than I really should have taken. It was a very up and down day, with a confident performance on the field course (stage 5) followed by a botched speed shoot and classifier. I can’t put my finger on quite what was wrong. One thing that definitely had an impact was taking the timer before I had shot the stage, which I generally try to avoid. Every extra visualization is a chance to smooth out a wrinkle or prevent a hiccup, and this was a match full of wrinkles and hiccups.

Of course, it’s hard to complain since I still managed to win the match against some stiff competition.

My focus in practice recently has been getting a clean grip out of the holster, establishing a strong weak hand grip, and staying low when entering positions, which I failed to put in to practice on most of the stages. I think that’s the source of much of my frustration: I spent time practicing particular things and have it seem like it didn’t make a difference.

Stage 2

I was second to shoot this stage (thanks to a Mr. Beal on my squad coming alphabetically before me), but for some reason stepped up to the line without any sense of urgency. Having to shoot three makeups at the mini-popped is a far cry from my confident start to this match last month. This stage was just truly unimpressive. Not terrible, but sluggish and unenthusiastic. Between the hard cover miss in the middle on the low targets that I made up and the last shot being very close to a miss on the mini target by rushing the last split, I guess I should be grateful nothing worse happened. I should have been more focused despite being early in the order early in the morning.

Stage 3

Another stage where nothing really went wrong, but it was careless with the aiming, leading to too many makeups and forcing a standing reload. There was a rules dispute about the stage during the 5-minute walkthrough and then I took the timer since I was late in the order, and both of those got me out of my head. I just never really got my concentration back. I should have taken the distractions more seriously and been more deliberate about making sure my plan was airtight before starting.

Stage 4

The last stage where I took the timer to start. I was actually pretty happy with how the stage went except for the two surprise no-penalty mikes at the end of the stage. I wish I knew what happened, but I think I was just too target focused and didn’t even see the gun on two of the four shots on the drop turners. No penalty, but giving up the alphas hurt. Those ten lost points are the equivalent of a hit on a no-shoot. I should have visualized those targets more and not taken them for granted since they were so close.

Stage 5

I was pretty happy with this one. I ended up with a plan that meant taking the paper arrays from as close as possible to each and not doing any standing reloads. I did have one close call rounding the corner there, in part because the packed dirt and lack of gravel had been pounded flat by the three squads before us. I should have been more cognizant of the tight turn and looked for footing problems during the squad walkthrough when we got to the bay.

Stage 6

Pulling off steel, my old nemesis. I got fooled by the simplicity of the stage and how big the poppers were, as well as focusing too much on trying to shoot the fourth popper before the clamshell and got ahead of myself. I should have visualized the rest of the stage aside from the one “tricky” part more.

Stage 7

This classifier is deceptively tricky, requiring you to move more than it seems to see the targets on each side, and I didn’t fully appreciate that during my walkthrough. Since the design of the stage is so open, I didn’t give the sides a second look and spent all my time thinking about shooting through the low port. I don’t shoot a lot of low ports and didn’t think about how the recoil of trying to shoot and transition fast would fight my attempt to balance. I should have put a knee down for extra stability since I wasn’t planning to get up from the low position on the clock.

Stage 8

This stage went pretty much according to plan. This one and the next one were my attempts to “get serious” after the frustration of the last two stages, and it mostly worked. There was one spot where I hesitated because I doubted my shot calling on a hard-cover partial, but it all worked out. I “stood up” in position more than I would have liked, especially at the end which meant taking time to get low again to start moving. But overall, one of the my better stages for the day.

Stage 1

Tried an interesting stage plan that let me take one step to the first shooting position and do a few medium-sized movements but put the big movement for the stage in the middle when I could haul ass across the bay and I think it mostly worked. I was very conscious as I was slowing down of just how much I had to decelerate and it felt like it took a very long time for my sights to stabilize at the last position. But watching the video it seems like that may have just been impatience. Took charlie delta on a target that was in the shade and diagonally across the range just because I got lazy and aimed for center of cardboard. I should have called those and made them up, especially since I had plenty of rounds left in the magazine.

So overall, I feel like my performance was fine, and it’s hard to argue with a division win against significant competition. But it’s also frustrating to not see my practice manifest on match day, and to feel myself shooting with such a lack of focus and energy. It’s a sharp contrast to IPSC Nationals three weeks ago where it was very easy to focus and really thoroughly visualize a stage plan (when you weren’t first on the stage after seeing it for the first time five minutes ago!).

The main things for me to work on before the NC Section match in five weeks is really focusing and making sure to visualize with enough detail and repetition that shooting the stage happens without hesitation. I know what it feels like to visualize to that level, and it didn’t happen once at this match, and that’s a problem.

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