Bunchies95

Somehow my grip has changed over time. It is to the point where my thumb is resting on my slide stop and not allowing my slide to lock back. This has burned me in a couple of stages where I should have went to slide stop but wasn't counting the rounds. For the past two days, I've really been focusing on diagnosing the issue. It appears to be off the draw, I get a firm grip on the gun while trying to keep my thumb out of the way of my support hand. This naturally makes my thumb position higher. After the reload, it doesn't seem to be resting on the slide stop. Once I figured out the root cause, I started working on fixing the issue. I'm not going to say it is 100% fixed, but it is much better. I'm trying to keep both thumbs away from the slide. I also set up a mini field course with some weird positions and hard leans. I focused on really moving fast when I wasn't shooting. I need to work more on driving the gun to a target when I have to lean during the transition. It just seems slow when I cannot see the target I want to transition to. I have to find it first, then go to it. I want to do both at the same time.

Repost to get videos to play:

I measured the offest of my gun in preparations for my first trip to Nationals. It measued 2.5", no bueno. I am using a Bladetech DOH holster for my XDm 5.25. I bought it before Bladetech made a holster specific to the 5.25" model so I had to cut the bottom off. I am thinking of either bending the offest bracket or putting a spacer between the holser and my leg. What is the best method to enusre my holster keeps the gun in a legal position? Any better holsters out there?

The Texas Summer Shootout hosted by River City Shooters Club was this past weekend. They had 8 great stages. My shooting, not so much. I finished 7th overall in Production, but with the people shooting, I think top three was easily within reach. I just didn't show up, nothing could get rolling, and the few times I was shooting like I normally do, it wasn't even for a whole stage. I still shot 91,7% of points before penalties (2 M), but it felt choppy as hell. https://www.practiscore.com/match-results/uuid?uuid=9D6121BD-F181-474D-B83F-81426CF326AC Some of my issues I think stem from I used my match gun without any practice with it the week before. It is different enough from my practice gun that it almost feels like new gun. I also rolled with a blacked out front sight. Since I only had one practice session with that set-up, it just looked weird. Finally I think the open squadding messed with me a bit. I didn't get to walk the stages like I'm used to. I walked up to a stage, looked over it while taping, came up with a plan, then shot it. The visualization and run through steps were very minimally done. Here are the videos from the match, in no particular order: http://youtu.be/PcrM2c3ZnJo This was my first stage of the match. Turn and draw into a low(ish) port. The 3 poppers were directly lied up and the front and back ones activated swingers. My plan was to drive them down as fast as possible. I think I was surprised when I got 4 shots on the first popper as the pace of the shooting slowed down significantly for the remaining shots. The first reload hurt. I lost ~2 seconds on that bobble. This stage went fairly well until I got to the long range steel. I have been shooting at this distance so much recently that I didn't pay engouh attention to my front sight. I thought it was going to be a breeze. That part is painful to watch. I also wished that I would have rolled through the shooting position after the start signal. It was a tight shot, with ~25% lower A zone available, the rest NS, but it was still pretty close. I don't want to talk about this stage. The video speaks for itself. I am glad I went with the head shots on the left hand targets though. I watched too many people dump rounds into the no-shoots, that I decided to play it safe (weird how a head shot is "safe"). This was probably my best field course of the match. It was a pure shooting challenge. The hardest part was commiting to the center section. I realized that I couldn't get my shots off at both the max trap and clam shell. It was just too dangerour. I decided to double tap the popper, then wait at the max trap to open. Drive down to the close target and finish on the head of the clam shell. Finishing on the head may not have been such a great idea, I'm just not sure. I really had to force myself to call my shots before I left. It worked out as I had A/B hits and the B just failed the overlay. Looking back on my stage perfomances, I lost the match on the field coures. The stand and shoot type courses, I was top 3. So I can stand and deliver. Could it be a stage programming issue? finally, I need to fix my holster for nationals. I measured the offset, and the gun is currently sitting at 2.5". I'll investigate options to reduce that by about 3/4".

Just paid for my slot to Production Nationals

Took a permanent marker to my front fiber last night. That was pretty cool, I think I'm going to roll that way for a while. I definately noticed I wasn't picking up the front sight as fast as I normall would, but my accuracy and ability to call shots was awesome. On a 25 yard zebra target, I could tell when I had one right one the scoring line and that it probably needed a makeup. I've never seen with that kind of resolution before. Height alignment was still an issue, but that just means I need to pay attention a little more. I started the practice session out with the Frank Garcia Dot Drill from 5 yards. I know, its supposed to be 7, but I've never shot it clean from there. I started off with no par time, just shooting my sights. Hit quality was ok. For my last run, I decided to run with the 5 second par time. Shoting was faster and somehow the hits were greatly improved. I still had a couple outside the circle, but they weren't a trigger issue, just slightly high or low. I'm wondering if it is my grip somehow. The last run also showed me that I shoot better under a little pressure, or when I absolutely don't care. Moved onto 35 yard bill drills. Most of the runs were ~6 seconds with a few charlies. I wasn't really watching my sights on this one enough as I had a miss one string, but no clue where it went. Ended the session with a similar set up to the previous one. Closest target was 15 yard head shot, then a variety of hardcover out to 30 yards and a mini popper at 35. I had some issues of not running the set up exactly how I wanted to. I planned to shoot outside in, to work on wide transitions. But the first couple of times, I shot left to right as I had a target available. Took a short break and really rehearsed what I wanted to do and fixed that issue. Visualization on weird engagement orders is really going to be important. I shot that array set up pretty well. Ocassionally throwing one into the hard cover, but like I said, I could see the left to right issues. The head shot gave me some troubles, so I will keep that in for the next couple of sessions. Finally, I got a slot to Production nationals. Just waiting on final approval for time off work, but I've already started preparing for it. Ordered 7k bullets from BBI, they should be here next week. I've got about 16 weeks to really practice hard and get ready for it. I keep saying I'm going to make a training plan, but never do or at least never stick to it. For starters, I need to start handling my gun every day for at least 15 minutes. Until I can find a plan I like and am likely to stick to, that is a good start.

Unless I clearly hear STOP through my double plugged ear protection (I shoot open) then the CRO/RO is going to have to chase me down and physically stop me. The stage plan was firmly lodged in my head. It's going to be executed. Blocking out almost everything else when I'm shooting has been a major focal point for improvement. BC BC, Can you warn people when you resurect a thread from the dead? I got through the entire thing before I realized that it was 5 years old.

Had a really good practice last night. One of the club members set up a rough array of paper targets. They were from 15-25 yards and all had some form of hardcover or no-shoots. One zebra hardcover, one zebra with no-shoots, one bottom half hard cover and one head shot with no-shoot. That array made trigger control and ensuring that you saw a good sight picture key for a good run. I put a lot of holes into the no-shoots and hardcover when I was really trying to push the pace. But I could dial it back and get my hits pretty much on demand. I had a lot of trouble on the head shot, kept missing high as I really wanted to get my alphas on it. The misses that occured on the zebra targets were mostly to the right. I'm pretty sure that is a result of my weak thumb applying pressure on the slide. Something I will pay attention to in dry fire. I was also having issues over transitioning on a 90 degree transition. Focused on not over transitioning, only to under transition. Somewhere in between is my happy medium. We also shot some poppers from 30 yards, but there is not much to say about those. I was able to ring those pretty good when I actually watched my front sight. I am finding it easier to be accurate with my practice gun then my match gun. I'm wondering if the difference is that my practice gun has a much lighter trigger? After my match this weekend, I may work on bringing the pull weight up to where my match gun is or the opposite. I'm also considering changing my front sight to a wider width and getting rid of the fiber. Right now, there is a lot of daylight on either side of the front sight, which is slowing me down at distance. The fiber has also been distracting to me. I forgot to black out the top before practice and caught myself looking at the dot quite a bit. Normally I take a magic marker to everything but the front face to really dim it down. I'm going to try completely blacking it out to see if this is the direction I want to go in.

This was the case at this year's Double Tap. The no-shoots were not swinging, but a guy on my squad put 4 holes into them, right as the swinging target was behind them. RO couldn't determine the hits and ordered a reshoot.

If you don't get into the match, everyone on the waitlist is screwed. I'm #6 and still waiting.

This was an Awesome match! Has anyone been to a match where the talent pool was that deep, other than nationals? Over 25% of the production shooters were M class and above! The stages themselves were very well designed and had a nice balance of hard and easy shots. Some of the movers were a bit of a carnival, but still fun. It's nice to see people discuss the best way to shoot the various movers based upon their confidence level. I didn't like a couple of the start positions, there was just too much chance of people breaking the 180 when drawing the gun. If you were left handed, most, but not all, of the 180 issues were irrelevant, though a few new ones presented themselves. The foot and hand cutouts on most of the stages were great as they enured that the starts were as consistent as possible. The match flowed pretty well up until Saturday afternoon. Then some backups started happening. I think it was due to the large squad sizes and the way the stages were forced to be organized based upon range limitations. I think 16 people per squad was really pushing the size limit. But we never had more than a half hour wait for a stage to open up (that I can remember). When the storms came Saturday night, Robert and his gang did a great job of getting the water off a few of the stages. The parking lot and road may have been a muddy mess, but the range surface was very good considering the amount of rainfall. I don't think the rain impacted the time much on any of my stages. Overall I give the match 4.5/5 stars. I'll be back next year!

Just got back from the Double Tap Championship. No video as I forgot my memory card in my work computer . All I can say about this match is that it was an eye opening experience. Very great match with some interesting target presentations. I shot to my ability, a little conservative, but not too much. Exactly how I wanted to shoot. I have never been to a competition where the production field was this deep. Over 25% of the production shooters were Master class or above. I finished 18th/79 and am really glad that I didn't finish last M. Only 1 B class shooter placed higher than me, and not by much. I was squadded with Mink, Hopkins and a bunch of other great Production shooters. The way they were shooting looked effortless, but aggressive. They usually beat me by 3-5 seconds on the stages. Where I had to pause on target after a transition to confirm my sight alignment, they just started shooting because they knew their sights were where they wanted them. I really need to work on being aggressive in my transitions. I'm sure I'll overshoot the target for a while, but I realy need to push the speed there. Then I will work on slowing down as the gun settles onto target. From what I saw, most of my time lost was in not being ready to shoot as soon as the target became available, whether it was hidden by a wall or just a transition. I'm not sure how much of that is just natural indexing or using aiming points. This match really gave me the push I needed to practice harder. I have been getting used to winning my local matches a majority of the time recently. I needed to be outclassed like I was this past weekend to push me even harder. Lots of work ahead. I need to rework my plan, just not sure how yet. Next match: Texas Summer Shootout. The question is, should I shoot Production, where I can compete for the Division Win, or Limited, where I can try and beat my shooting buddy, who, as of right now is better than me?

Wait, why would they feel bad for you? The rules clearly say you get a reshoot. Did something else happen? There is nothing in the rules to warrant him a reshoot. The RO did not interfere and gave the "If you are finished..." command after JAFO said he was done. By the way: at our club match this weekend, I was switching between Production and Single Stack (which meant changing belts). I walked up to the line to shoot Production with no mags on my belt. I've never had my make ready mag in my pocket before, so I go lucky. Even I cannot follow my own advice all the time. I made a lot of changes to what I was doing before/during that match. Almost got myself DQ'ed because of it.......Started to walk towards safe table with Single Stack mags in my hands. Stopped myself short of the table when I realized I was going to set them on the table so I could change rigs.

This series is just perfect for this thread:

Are you going to have a dedicated area to unload/reload for CHL holders?

Doesn't mean you've addressed step one. I have had quite a few ex-military guys go through my class that cannot hod a 6" group at 7 yards. Though they are safe with a gun. Could be a handgun is considered an "Oh S4$t" weapon to get back to a rifle. I went the NRA route when I started. Honestly their standards for an instructor are a joke. I had some D class USPSA shooters in my instructors course. For a handgun, if you can hold a 6" group at 15 yards, you pass the basic qualifications. 50% of my students can do that after a 3 hr class and I wouldn't trust them to teach.

I made MASTER!!!! Mini Mart put me over the top to get 85.3% I know I can shoot like a master on any given stage, I just need the consistency that goes along with it. Since last update I've competed in the Space City Challenge. I'm not really happy with my performance there. Too many misses. 2 of which were on a zebra target at 3 yards. Did not pay it enough respect. I did learn a few things from the match though. Preconcieved notions of a poor performance will absolutely result in a poor performance. The entire week leading up to the match, I just felt off. I've made a lot of gains in speed recently, but has accuracy is still suffering. I have really been focusing hard on accuracy lately. I have seen a definate improvement. In practice, I am having no problems hitting the A zone. Though I have been shying away from the no-shoots a little too much. One practice I had a no-shoot covering the top half of the A zone (I know very weird presentation). Subconsiouscly, I know I am missing high, so I have been shying low. I know I can shoot a 5" group at 25 yards without much thought. But the chance of fliers had me aiming at center of brown resulting in mid C hits with good grouping. I think that is just a confidence thing. I've got less than a month till Double Tap. Even though I just made master, I absolutely refuse to be last master. I'll be practicing 3 times a week, every other day switching from accuracy to movement. Que the Rocky Montage!

Most of the shooters that come to our club match buy manufactured ammo. Therefore we have seen a sharp attendance drop. Went from 50-60 to 20-30. All the reloaders are still showing up. We have a LGS that is selling Federal Primers for $40/k with a 10k limit. Powder and bullets are still a slight issue, but not if you are planning ahead. For our matches, we are reusing some targets from one match to another. If we had a no-shoot on one half one match, it will be on the other half the next match. We are also designing stages that have a higher round count per target (speed shoots/standards). It's not much of a savings, but when your income drops off, expoenses need to be cut somehow.

I am not attending the match this year, but not due to the price increase. Just a plain ole scheduling conflict, kinda hard to shoot a match in the Bayou when you are in South Korea. If the price increase is going towards a better prize table, then that is the MD's decision based on what he thinks his competitors want. I, however, would rather the price be lowered and have a small prize table. I'm the type of person that if I need/want something, I will buy it. Most of the stuff I have gotten off of prize tables, I have sold/given away as it was stuff I didn't need or want. Though those Bayou bullets I got at last years Gator are going to good use!

Did you notice he was carrying concealed?

Had to download Google Chrome just so I can post the matchbook.....I was hoping to avoid that. But, as BPSC always puts out a match book ahead of time, I had to suck it up. Without further ado, here it is: 2013MayBPSC_MatchBook.pdf

Testing Chrome post ETA: Post formats fine after I review the topic, but I got a bunch of warnings similar to what Brian saw I'm guessing. Still can't post with IE even after rebooting computer, clearing cache, restarting IE, beating head against brick wall, sacrificing a chicken.....

Brought multiple pairs of shoes.

It's almost that time of the month again....that first Saturday where shooters converge upon the Bullet Hole Shooting Complex to take part in yet another superb USPSA match hosted by The Bullet Hole Practical Shooting Club. For those of you who decided not to go to the Cowtown Classic, come shoot with us. We will have 6 level 2 legal stages waiting for you at a fraction of the cost! Stages are still being finalized, but bring your front sight and a great trigger press (trust me, you will need both). We will be running 3 field courses, a standards, speed shoot (true to its name) and a classifier. Round count is expected to be around 125. A couple of the stages are deceptively simple (minimal hardcover and no-shoots), just watch out for the speed traps. If you don't respect them, they will get you every time. Beginners will have a great time, but GM's will find some unique challenges. Our matches always start on time, with results posted the same day. Match Info: Saturday, May 4, 2013 $20 match fee Registration starts at 9:00 am Match starts at 10:00 am New Shooters briefing at 9:30 a.m. Shooters meeting at 9:50 a.m. MD/RM: Mike Kocsis Hope to see you all out there! Mike Kocsis Bullet Hole Shooting Range 2715 Grosenbacher Rd., San Antonio, TX 78245 (210) 679-6781