The Early Days of IPSC

[tightloop]

When I first started shooting IPSC back in 78, there were a handful of LEO's who shot with us civilians....but after a yr or so of sucking bilge water at each match they attended, they accused us us rigging the matches against them and said that if we shot at their range we wouldn't do so well...

told them to set it up and let us know...they did, and we kicked some sand in their face...they never shot with us again....too bad really, but they had this thing against civilians beating them shooting....

[Patrick Sweeney]

This happened just last year, and is only partly USPSA/IPSC related, but I have to tell it. I was at a law enforcement class in the Chicago area. Ned Christiansen and I were helping Jeff Chudwin teach a bunch of Chicago-area coppers how to shoot AR-15s. (Second Chance veterans are genuflecting simply becuase of the names. Some are waiting for the trivia question sure to follow.) After the days classwork is over, we're just fooling around on the line, shooting various toys we have with us.

The local departments Rangemaster asks if he can run a line, he has some officers who need to shoot the qualification course. We say sure, we're just fooling around anyway. Then we get the idea, why not shoot the course?

We set up our targets at the other end of the line from the officers, 'cause we don't want to be a distraction. The qual target is a yellow 8.5X14" sheet of paper, with a half-size box in the middle. The center is "ten" the rest is "five" and it takes something like a 70% score to pass.

On the first string, I find I don't have enough magazines. But I have a box of ammo in my pocket. So once the first string commences, I dump the ammo in a cargo pocket, shoot the magazines I have, then re-holster, reload the mags from my pocket and continue. Sometimes I do this while time is ticking. (Strings are like: twelve shots in eighteen seconds from the 7-yard line, or slower.)

I'm shooting a Wilson CQB from a tactical thigh rig, and I put the thumbstrap on before each string. Once we finish, I have two shots (out of 60) not in the ten box. Ned and Jeff have three. One of the three officers still doesn't pass qualification.

If those poor guys had been at an IPSC match, their heads would explode after watching the first stage.

[Patrick Sweeney]

Now let's reach 'way back in time, to the halcyon era of early 80's music. I hear of a PPC league the local Sheriffs department is running, one that is open to civilians. I show up to shoot with what I've got: a 1911 that was high-zoot then, but would be considered a box-stock Lim-10 gun today, and my IPSC practice ammo.

They look at me like "Oh, this poor sod. He's got that cannon, and he thinks he's going to shoot well."

For those who haven't shot it, indoor PPC then had such barn-burning speed stages as twelve shots from the seven yard line in twenty five seconds, from the holster, reload included. (Now it is 20 seconds.) The only one you could consider fast and tough is the six shots in twelve seconds from 50 feet. As the X ring is the size of a playing card, getting six ten-hits isn't easy.

Once I settled down and got used to the glacial times, I posted a 596 of 600 average.

The second league of the winter arrives, and the Sergeant running it tells me that some of the guys have been complaining about the noise of my .45 (By then, I had slacked off from 200's w/5.6 of WW-231 to 200's with 4.2 of Bullseye.) "No problem" I said, and brought my Super with me. I had built a stock Super with a Bar-sto barrel, and was running 125 LRNs with the same 4.2 of Bullseye.

My average went up from 596 to 598. I entered and shot the league three times a night, putting 180 rounds through the gun without cleaning. So much for autos that jam when they get dirty.

[tightloop]

Back in the early 80's, I was at the local gun club getting my new Pin gun dialed in from the bench and a rifle guy comes up to me lamblasting the 1911 as inaccurate and not good for anything over about spitting distance....

Listened to him rant on for about 30 or so minutes then asked him if he thought I could put 5 of 7 rounds into a paper plate off the bench at 200 yds...tells me NO WAY and says he would bet 50 bucks that I couldn't do it...

Asked him if I could have one magazine full to get the range and then fire 7 for score....he agreed...

After putting all 7 on the paper plate, he paid me and said as he walked away..."I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes...." told him as he got into his truck that if he had another 50, he could see it again....

[Patrick Sweeney]

Let's go back to the wonderful year of 1986, kiddies. The Nationals were held in Dallas. In the summer. I load up my 1985 Escort (sans airconditioning) and head south. When I arrive I realize that while I had consulted a map, I didn't bother to check the scale of said map. My hotel, which was plenty cheap, was like three zip codes away from the range. To and from the match was an hour's drive. Across the freeway was a construction site, standing silent. It was right after the S&L scandal, and the temporary collapse of the housing industry. The industry was so quiescent that the site still had bundles of materials left in the open. It wasn't worth stealing bundles of lumber, shingles or other stuff, for no one was building, and no one would buy.

The freeways were lined with "see-through" office buildings. Built, completed, left empty as it was cheaper to leave them empty and unattended than to staff a maintenance and receptionist crew for the 10% occupancy you might get.

The match was hot. As in, over 100 degrees, and even with shade and water at each stage you planned your movements from one to the next. As if that wasn't enough, some of the ranges were paved! Also, the Dallas range was a "checkerboard" range, with bays downrange of each other. The berm behind you was the backstop for the bay behind you. You got used to hearing bullets overhead.

We were all shooting single stacks, mostly .45s, but a bunch of Supers were to be seen. In my photos we're all skinny, have plenty of dark hair, and are wearing shirts with iron-on lettering and logos. Not a bit of plastic is to be seen, all the guns were steel and the gear was leather.

All I remember about my shooting was the heat, and one timed stage where I got all my shots off, all hits, and this despite several targets being partials, cut on the diagonal.

As I drove out to head home, I heard the radio announcer gleefully reporting that the temperature at the moment was 106 degrees! I thought I was going melt before I got home.

[TimmyBoettcher]

Hello all! Patrick, it is really good to see you on here! I dont know if you remember me or not, but I shot at Livingston and Double Action with you several times. Livingston is a great club, thanks to you!

I remember one time at Livingston, this was back when everyone was trying to see how light they could go on the supers (bullet weight). Patrick was running the chrono, and this smartass walked up to it with 115 major (me:-) and fired the first round through the chrono and Patrick said "What in thee hell are you shooting buddy?" and just shook his head and smiled. I believe it was about 181 power factor too!

Now a days, I'm just sticking with the safer cartridges!

Looking forward to shooting with you guys soon! Patrick is one heck of a shot and a great gunsmith!

Tim Boettcher

[eerw]

the '86 nationals was the first match I ever got to watch..got me hooked..

Pat..you're right..you guys were all skinny and had hair..

TGO and BE were shooting the Wilson comp..think it was still the single port gun..

John Dixon had a para converted to super..

Bill Wilson had a huge weight welded onto the bottom of his gun..

Ernie Hill was the rage..

yes..and it was hot..very hot...

[Patrick Sweeney]

Oh, the early days of the screamer loads. We spent some time shooting our winter matches at various indoor ranges. We eventually figured out that whatever increased attendance we got from being indoors was simply spent on the range fees, and the club was better off just shooting in the snow in the winter.

We spent one winter shooting at an indoor range on the far eastside, which was simply an industrial building with a dirt berm on the back wall. After the first match, we all went out and bought paper face masks, so we could breath and not get coal miners lung. We'd been warned, so we managed to place our poppers so they were NOT under the light fixtures. The first group to shoot steel in there hadn't, and their first shooter put out something like a third of the lights.

One guy was teaching his wife to shoot, and he'd built her an Open gun. (Mid 1980s or so.) He was experimenting with loads, and had "determined" the best load for her: a Super with bullets cast of linotype: 120 grains each. I can't remember if the Power factor back then was 185 or 180, but that gun was friggin' loud. So loud that shooters waiting their turn did not stay on the range to watch her shoot, but decamped to the other side of the windows. After she had a good flinch built up, he started using the same load. It got to the point where just callig their names would clear the range, leaving them and the poor RO to be subjected to the noise.

As with so many, they eventually drifted off to somehting else. she'd have had so much more fun if she'd simply been shooting a .45 in Stock.

[Patrick Sweeney]

Then there was my second Gunsite trip. On the first trip, we had the wonderful experience of exceeding expectations. At the first mornings lecture, we were told to mark down if we wanted a graded or ungraded certificate. And that usually one or two students got a "E" ticket, for Excellent. Of the seven shooters from our club at that class, we got six E tickets and one M1.

One of the other students in that class was a Kansas wheat farmer, Paul. While discussing farms, someone asked him how much he farmed. "Oh, ten sections." One of the guys remarked that wasn't a big farm for wheat. I said "In the midwest, a section is a corner of a square mile. In Kansas, a section IS a square mile."

Paul did well, but wanted to do better. So after the basic class, he took an intermediate six months later.

A year after my basic, I show up for the advanced, and Paul is standing in the parking lot. "Did you ever leave?" Deja vu! (Yes, he took three Gunsite classes in one year's time. Farming wheat is busy only part of the time.)

The advanced class then (and probably now) is a high-volume class for those who did well in basic or intermediate. In the days before classes of lot-n-lots of shooting, they told you to bring at least 1,500 rounds. Paul and I were in a class with 22 Marine NCOs. Most had checked out 2,000 rounds of Winchester Match hardball, some had checked out 3,000. At the end of the class it was customary for the military students to give the leftover ammo to the instructors and other students, the ammo cans to the school, and the brass to whoever wanted it. (They sure weren't going to haul it back to the base, and try to get the supply Sergeant to accept odd lots of ammo!)

I drove my Escort there, so I had a limited capacity. I got a couple thousand rounds of ammo. Paul drove back to Kansas with the bed of his full-size pickup truck six inches deep in once-fired .45 brass and cans of ammo. He said selling it paid for the class.

[redmist10]

Let's go back to the wonderful year of 1986, kiddies.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I had just thrown out my parachute pants and had just gotten my temporary driving license!

I wonder what Jake was doing...

Probably dry firing...

[Jake Di Vita]

I was 2 years old man.

[Kimberkid]

I noticed this thread has been stagnant for a while....

C'mon Uncle Pat, tell us another one.... please please pretty please

[Barrettone]

He's on vacation...We'll just have to wait.

Jeff

[Patrick Sweeney]

Yes, two weeks of bopping around Scandinavia, drinking bad coffee (Norwegian coffee makes the worst burnt-on-the-stove coffee at the gun club taste like ambrosia) and eating all the smoked salmon I could get my hands on.

And getting my brains liquified by a .338 Lapua Magnum at the Sako factory. ("Sure, we have more ammunition. Do you want the 16 gram load or the 19 gram load?")

Another 80's tale: Our ranges at LGC are mostly sand with silty clay mixed in. One day we set up a match and the rain hits. We keep shooting. One range ends up ankle deep in silty, slushy (did I mention it was cold that day?) mud. And of course it is a high-volume field course. One of the guys who shot then was famous for launching magazines. He did "The Flick" on each reload, where you snapped your wrist a bit to sling the mags out (one of those old-timer techniques).

He starts the stage, and the next thing we know magazines are practically skipping across the mud like rocks in a still lake. When he finishes, we start the search. We find all but one after about five minutes of searching. Rather than abandon a new McCormick 10-shot mag, he goes to the tool shed and gets a rake. While we're trying to stay dry and get the next shooter ready, he's raking the mud. He finally found it, some 10-12 feet from the firing port where he'd done the reload. Rather than go through that with every squad to follow, I grab a shovel and dig a small drainage trench to the "rice paddy" which was the catchbasin for that range. Once the water started flowing, I thought we were going to lose the stage.

The next workday, we set a shovel crew to re-sculpt the drainage on that range.

[tightloop]

Haven't shot in the mud like that, but have shot in rain so hard you couldn't see a 15 yd target and ankle deep in water...actually I came in third overall that day...guess getting drenched did not bother me as much as some others...

Water has been good to me....shooting in Austin at Hill Country and after the regular match which was won by Chip McCormick, John Dixon second, etc... we had a man vs man shootoff...made it thru the first two rounds pretty easily and then it started to rain...and hard...had Dixon in the third round and it was so wet that he missed his grip and lost the first round...burned me in the second and missed his grip again in the third...and I won...Next round was Chip...he burned me on the first run...and then had a Dixon and missed his grip and I won a round...the third run, both of us slowed down a bit to get a good grip and I won it by .09.....I was jumping for joy as I had beaten the top shooters in the area, but could not pull it together to beat Larry Raymond, but did come in second in the shootoff.. a good afternoon in the rain...

[Patrick Sweeney]

Another Second Chance tale, just so you know how completely and totally weird the match was. The firing line was just that, a sidewalk with rails in front and a tall fence behind made of plexiglass panels. That way the bouncebacks would not paste the timers and spectators. The shooters were on their own. You want to know the best use for Richards kevlar groin guards? While shooting on 3-man teams. With bullets and buckshot flying like lead hail, lots bounced back. I got hit every other year, mostly small stuff. Mas Ayoob was a lead magnet, and got pasted hard every match.

On top of the fence was Richard's roost, a railed platform with water, trivia loot, blanks and birdbombs. He stayed up there almost the whole match (9 days) calling the line and asking trivia questions. Occasionally he'd launch one or two birdbombs out of his papered sawed-off shotgun. (A birdbomb is a 12-gauge launched M-80 explosive.)

We're in the stands watching, when a light plane (piper cub type) starts circling. Then it comes in for a pass, and someone leans out of the side with a shotgun. The shooter takes a couple of shots, and before we can duck under the stands the birdbombs go off. Richard isn't fazed in the slightest. He loads his double, and on the next pass, lets the plane have it. He doesn't lead enough, and the guy in the plane isn't too accurate, so they have another couple of exchanges before the pilot gets low enough, and Richard leads enough, that shots start getting close.

Of course we're cheering him on and wishing we had some birdbombs too, to weigh in with. Once both sides run out of ammo, the pilot wags his wings and flies off.

We never found out who it was, although there were many claimants and a few rumors. I think the reason it was never done again was that the pilot had to know that next time there'd be a bunch of people in the stands with their own birdbombs, and it would be like trying to get over Schweinfurt in a B-17 in 1943. (That, and someone would grab the wrong box, load "birdbombs" and rattle buckshot off his wings.)

[Patrick Sweeney]

OK, let's combine Second Chance and our host. At SC, your guns, booze and women were safe. Many a shooter forgot and left a rifle, shotgun or other guns 'n gear on the Back Range, the practice range. Whoever found it would turn it in, or try to find the owner. You could leave your trailer unlocked, store gear in a tent, (shooters camped right at the range) and be sure it was going to be there.

Your wives, girlfriends, sisters, whomever, were safe. No one would bother them unless they sent out "I'm available" signals. I once did some unpacking to clean some gear on a morning, and left a bottle of scotch on the table in front of my tent. It was there when I got back after dinner, untouched.

Ammo, however, was a goner. Leave ammo unattended and it would soon end up downrange for practice. (I once forgot and left my 870 behind when leaving after the match. Diane shipped it back to me once she found out whose it was. What shocked me was I got the ammo back too, two ammo cans of buckshot. Whoever turned it in gave her the ammo too.)

So, it had to have been the first year Brian shoots SC. Richard is up on his stand, and Brian says something to him from the bottom of the stairs. Richard turns off the mike and waves him up. Brian walks up, and they talk briefly. Richard turns on the microphone. "Hey, we have famous shooter Brian Enos here." Brian looks a bit embarassed, but waves, while the assembled crowd, knowing Richards sense of humor, greet Brian. "Brian left a bag on the back range. A bag with a couple of hundred rounds of .45, and a couple of boxes of buckshot in it. He was wondering if anyone might have seen it, or knows what happened to it."

The crowd starts giggling, and the next thing you know, grown men are laughing so hard they have tears coming down their faces. Of course they knew where the ammo was: in the backstop of the practice line on the Back Range.

Brain knows he's been had, but smiles, waves and walks down the stairs. Brian, did you ever get the bag back?

[Duane Thomas]

Just a comment on how honest are shooters. I once left my vest behind, at the end of the first day of a 2-day match. Sitting on a bench in front of the stats shack, in plain view, several hundred dollars in the wallet. When I came back the next day, not only was the vest still there, money unmolested, but a spider had built a web on it.

On the other hand, I once left a box of my .45 handloads on the range at the end of a match, inside a Dillon ammo box, and I've never seen the ammo or the box since.

[Keith Rogers]

Who'da thunk there'd be so many ammo rustlers at SC? That's probably a hangin' offense in some states.

[tightloop]

Duane,

Similar incident...went to a match and at sign up, I dropped 1100 bucks out of my pocket...did not notice it till after the match was over...went up to the MD and asked in a hopeless manner if anyone had turned in any money...he asked me how much and in what denominations...I told him and my money was returned...

and on the other hand..my bud had a Swenson custom pistol stolen off the front seat of his truck at a sectional match in '80 as he was helping to tear down the stages...

takes all kinds...

[Duane Thomas]

and on the other hand..my bud had a Swenson custom pistol stolen off the front seat of his truck at a sectional match in '80 as he was helping to tear down the stages...

WOW. I would have sworn that serious gun people were so honest such a thing was impossible. Well, probably good to have that level of naivete popped. There are exceptions to every rule.

[mcoliver]

Sometimes it's not the shooters really. It's the people they bring along to watch.

[Patrick Sweeney]

This one should go into a category of "Wisdom is where you find it" but we don't have that. And there is some gun content.

My wife and I go to theatre. That's right, stage plays. I love Shakespeare, and there's a whole lot of other good stuff too. We go the Stratford Festival, in Stratford, Ontario. For a number of years we'd eat breakfast our last day in a little place right next to one of the theaters.

This was a whole-foods, organic restaurant. You could get soy this and that, veggie smoothies, etc. But they had the best pancakes, and the staff wasn't so whole-foods that they turned their noses up at bacon. (The bacon was even better on the food scale than the pancakes were.)

The restuarant was staffed by women. My guess was, all lesbians. As you'd expect from the yonger generation, most with tattoos, piercings, dyed hair, etc. As regulars, the staff got to recognise us, so we'd talk. One waitress was quite talkative, and we'd spend breakfast talking to her. (We showed up as soon as they opened, and often spent our whoel breakfast as the sole patrons.) She was mixed; white, black, native Canadian, and looked remarkably like Halle Berry. And working in a whole food resturant, we would never have expected this:

We were talking about the luck of getting good seats for a play the night the cast was on fire, and she remarked "Yea, you've got to be there for your Caribou." Huh? "Caribou. When they come through for the annual migration, all you have to do is be ready with your rifle. But you've got to be there." The mind reels. I thought to ask what rifle she used, but thought injecting technical matters into a philosophical discussion would have been in poor taste.

So, in all aspects of life remember; "You have to be there for your Caribou." All the practice, planning, preparation, practice, gunsmithing and load development are wasted if you aren't sitting there when your Caribou comes by. You can't do well in a match you don't enter. You won't get to know people you don't meet. You never know what you'll learn about shooting from people you'd never think had anything to do with guns.

[R112mercer]

The story about getting dusted at your first match reminded me of the first time I shot Steel Challenge. It was a club match in PA, I went with Bill Gates (no, the other one) chock full of arrogance. I had been shooting for a while and wasn't too bad, but man, I though I was hot crap. I was shooting Open Revolver with my 627 eight-shooter with factory comp and a C-more. In my squad was this broke down old-timer complaining about his shoulder hurting him. He had a 686+ with one moonclip holder and an old 002 Cup Challenge holster. I went first and shoot some high 2/low 3 second times (Take that, old-timer! There's a hot shooter here to show you what speed is)! The Old Dude steps up with his Limited Revolver and proceeds to start knocking out consistant low 2's. Real low 2's. And that's how I learned not to judge a book by it's cover, and how I met Herb Beck. The time I met Rudy Waldinger is a whole other story...

[Carmoney]

Rob, here's an old picture of me shooting one of the "Big Money Winchester Shoot-Offs" up at Second Chance.....you'll see a younger version of Herb in the background! Not sure who won that round, but our hammers seem to be frozen at exactly the same place!