Bring enough ammo to the start box

[flynbenny]

Shotgun only match. Walked into the start box, "load and make ready" "shooter ready?" "stand by" BEEP! blast my first four targets, reach down for the first four (plan was load 4 while moving) out of my Taccom vest...air. I only had 12 on my belt in weak hand caddies, so I was done early.

 

There were 26 targets on the stage. 9+12 does not equal 26 in case you were wondering, especially when you are pysched out and miss a couple. I won't forget to put my vest on again.

[Hi-Power Jack]

13 hours ago, flynbenny said:

  9+12 does not equal 26 in case you were wondering,  

 

This is the type of information that keeps me up late at night ...    Thanks.    

[Chriswakey]

You can never have too much ammo unless you are on fire or drowning!

[Boudreaux78]

Went to the nationals in 2014, went to the line twice with not all my mags topped off. Cost me two standing reloads. Would've thought I would've learned after the first time. Needless to say, I haven't made that mistake again. Part of my preshoot ritual is to now check each mag, even if I'm shooting production or limited.

[flynbenny]

That is one nice feature about the sand/dirt ingress holes in the back of the Glock magazines. You have at least 17 in there. Got to push the top round down with your thumb to make sure 5 are in the basepad too.

[Boudreaux78]

Well the lesson I learned was to actually check. It's amazing what happens when you do! You find out before the oh sh;&$t moment happens. 

 

I now use a method I learned on this forum. When I'm the second shooter, I check all my gear, mags, ears etc to ensure I'm ready. Then I start mentally shooting the stage and do one final walk through. This was extremely helpful at the Nationals this year and I had no problems.

[JAF1680]

At the 2016 3GN Nationals our squad got to the all shotgun a little early and saw shooters picking up shells out of the grass because they had run out shells.  Luckily people had dropped a lot of shells while trying to load running through the stage .  It was a 44 round shotgun stage with a death star and slug poppers.    We had guys strapping on two vests plus all of the caddies on their belts so they could make it through the stage. 

[flynbenny]

I saw people running the Colorado 3 Gun Champs shotgun stage with two vests and those Taccom leg carriers. The box fed open guys had a fence made out of mags around their backs, and the rest had hula skirts made out of Arredondo loaders. I think the RO's had some DeTurk vests to loan to those who needed them.

 

I am trying to get better at doing my gear check when I'm in the hole, followed by my mental rehearsal when i'm on deck. It can be very hard at some smaller local matches though, some little squads don't have enough people for reset so you don't get as much time to prepare.

 

I did get a hold of some 140mm magpuls, they do have a witness hole for the 21st round, should make that check a little easier. My Colt SMG mags have witness holes also, but since I'm moving to "real" rifle this next season I will have to come up with something for those, I use the USGI aluminum mags along with a handful of windowless Pmags.

[davsco]

at a major 3 gun match a few years back, first stage of the match, guy in front of me rocked his handgun, then his shotgun, then ran to the position for the rifle and had no mags on his belt.  of all the f/u reasons out there, that is one of the few i haven't done...

[sean_stw]

I can tell you I wont ever come up to the shooting line again with just enough ammo. I was at a USPSA match and on one of the stages it was a table start and you weren't allowed to start with any mags on your belt or put any mags on your belt after the start. I was shooting production and I put 3 mags on the table which I thought would be enough since the stage round count was only somewhere around 20. well there was a bit of steel a few paper and a texas star and needless to say I ended up with a failure to engage on one of the paper targets all I needed to do was put one extra mag on the table so from now on I'm gonna start with as many mags as I can carry or have on the stage lol.

[stick]

I did something similar.  loaded my carbon arms vest with rounds and proceeded to leave it on my cart.  when I got to the line, I had 9 in the gun.  I shot the first 9 and reached down to reload and oh $hit, I forgot my ammo. Valuable lesson learned.  I started putting on my vest during the walkthrough.