Matt Griffin

I find that I'm getting impatient for my shotgun sights to return and running ahead of it. Any tips on stance, grip, or method that helps folks run plate racks or other close targets at maximum speed? Matt

First, be sure that you are taking an extra .25 of a second to get a PERFECT grip. Grab the barrel of the gun with your strong hand and bury it in your weak hand. Next, as Brian and BoyGlock said, pull the trigger straight to the rear, but I'll add this: at the same tempo through the entire trigger pull. You don't want any sort of staging or slack-taking with the weak hand because your brain is too wired for the speed of your normal trigger pull. This leads to anticipation. Instead, start your trigger pull and then get your mind off of the trigger pull and onto the sights. If you think about the break you will almost always anticipate and pull the gun. I'm also of the opinion that you should use much more force on your ring and pinkie fingers and let your middle finger ride fairly loose. This will prevent you from overloading your medial nerve and getting a sympathetic response from the trigger pull that moves the gun.

I say learn both weak hand and Load2, they can both be used at different times with greater effect.

Also, be aware that any non-firing impact will look like a light strike, most of the pin indentation is made by the explosion blowing the primer backwards rather than by the firing pin spring speed. Check your strain screw, if that isn't it then open 'er up and start cleaning things.

Perfect response, thanks Mark.

If I start shooting major matches, would I want the 6x, or is the 1.5 that big a difference at the bottom of the range? Matt

I'll almost certainly be at the PASA match, my question is when is the wait list for the Single Stack? I've been to 3 of them, but not the most recent, and still have a skinny gun in the safe somewhere.

I'll check those out Edit: Just checked them out. For that price I could get an EOTech for $100 more. Not worth it to me. Only reason I looked at the Sightmark was the price tag of $100. I am considering a sight that I could use until I can save up for the EOTech. I've been very happy with the Bushnell TR-25. 80$ and seems to be built extremely well for the price.

Nope, that's what the game is all about. For example, at the last two Nationals where we're shooting stages designed for Open and Limited shooters, I recall one standing reload in the entire match, where a final position had 8 shots and you couldn't see anything until you got there. That's the fun of revolver, figuring out how to optimize a stage. Sometimes you take risky shots, sometimes you lean around a corner farther than the other divisions would have to, sometimes you long-ball steel from 45 yards to make the round count come out right. Also, I've never needed more than seven moons to finish. ;-)

What are the complaints? It's a pretty simple piece of kit, I'm not sure what could go wrong.

My thoughts: 1. Please, please, please don't make this a stupid 6-shot neutral match. Just make it a regular USPSA match, a very large portion of the fun of revolver is adapting 6 shots to 8 shot arrays and 32 round field courses. 2. I don't know why Sam's match in Memphis wasn't chosen, it already was attracting ~70 shooters and was a great match. 3. As for why there aren't many revolver shooters, well, it's harder. It's not a comfortable division in execution or feel. Rob, you've shot (and won) the IRC so you know your way around a wheelgun and I think you would agree that coming from a singlestack as so many do, it's a whole 'nother beast. The fact that Jerry has until recently completely stomped everyone else in the match might have something to do with it, too. I look forward to it, but I'm apprehensive. The game is the game but the folks who shoot revolver for the love of the strange gun are a unique bunch. I really don't want to see the same behavior I experienced back in my Glock days translate over to the revolver folks. Maybe it's rose-colored glasses but they are a different breed in my eyes.

The 625-2 are the only model I've ever heard bad things about. The hammer mounted pin stopped at -4 or -5, arguably you can do a lighter trigger job on the frame mount. Other than that it's all a mixed bag of forged vs. MIM parts, etc. My advice is this: If you find a 5", buy it if the price is reasonable. They all work pretty damned well.

Thanks Benny, I undercut my port and suddenly Load 2 works nearly every time. There's a significant ridge on either side of the magazine that is hell on thumbs as well, I removed that and undercut about half of the thickness.

Here's my question: At what point do you become "that guy" at a local match? I usually show up late and am squadded with a random assortment of folks that never shoot outside of our club, and the trigger finger discipline is absolutely awful. I could DQ two thirds of the squad every match if I were inclined to make an issue out of it. What's the order of attack as far as letting the shooter know, letting the RO know, making a broad announcement, etc?

Yay, my first 3-gun match! Boo, my crappy EOTech that doesn't show up in sunlight! I still had a good time and the shotgun is a ton of fun.

You said you were winning the Level 3s, that's what I was suggesting, that you save up to attend a national or bigger tournament (I don't really understand IPSC match rankings)so that you could, frankly, get handed a beating by some guys and watch what and how they were doing. Just out of curiosity, how are your stage points? It's pretty easy to get complacent with no competition and wind up shooting too slowly. You might need to push to failure, then dial back a bit.

Matt Maybe I misunderstand your comment, When you said (you are the best in the world) I assume you were being sarcastic. I truly believe there are much more stuff I don’t know about in the sport. Just try to get some info here. Some of the stuff is good some are not. I know dry fire at home is not what i need, But I am open to suggestions, I am genuinely asking for help. Mike Sorry about that, I wasn't intending sarcasm. I was just pointing out that it's hard to learn from matches you're winning, do you have the opportunity to shoot 4s and 5s? You can still learn from the stages you lose at the 3s, especially the ones where you don't have any obvious flaws like a pulled shot or tanked reload. I've always picked up the most information when I thought I shot the stage well and was subsequently beaten; figuring out how provides a lot of breakthroughs for me.

I'm not sure what you're going for there. I'm just saying that if you're shooting level 3 matches and winning them then likely you don't have any particular weak points, just keep practicing. More to the point, if you're at that level then whatever problems you have are too subtle to come through on hat cam or video, which is why I recommended examining your performance vs. the match winner when you didn't win the match. Thanks for the video though, I haven't watched my first year of shooting revolver in a while! It took me forever to reload back then.

Thank you for noticing that, I have attended two matches recently where videographers were inside the shooting area while the competitor was doing their walk-through. At the latest match one shooter had to wave them out of the way several times as they were preventing him from seeing his next target array. I think that any video crew should remain away from the shooters while they walk-through the stage and -during the actual run - remain behind the RO at all times. They will not get as good a view of the action but it will be safer for all concerned. The video crew is there to record the event and not interfere with it. That also happened at this match with the hippy-ish fellow. Can you film me? Sure. Can you do a full orbit around me five seconds before LAMR? Please, no. Keep it behind my visual 180, and hold still until the buzzer goes off. Once that happens you could mug a clown and I wouldn't notice, but during my on-deck and at the start position I really don't want anything else to think about.

I think winning or losing the match wouldn't be a big deal for me anymore. Sometime I don't mind to lost the match but have a very clean great shoot that I know I shot it well……..I won the last 7 matches I shot in the past 6 months, some is Level 3 matches. So winning or losing is not affecting my performance. But knowing I am not getting any better worries me. And I know the fact is there is still a lot of stuff I don’t know about, or different way of look at things. I already got couple good tips here. I just don’t know what I should be working on…….! I think maybe some of the great shooter gone through what I am experiencing now are able to tell me more……. Mike My point was that if you're having trouble determining what your weak points are, then you should look at the matches you didn't win and figure out what the winner was doing that you weren't. If you're winning all the matches you enter then just keep doing what you're doing, you're the best in the world!

Thanks Brian. I'm seriously going to work on this. You know, it's funny. I was talking to a friend about close vs far targets and I was thinking- if I have an array of 4 targets at 7 yards and another array of 4 targets at 25 yards--- the As on the close targets count just as much at the As on the far targets! So why not make sure to get all the As on the close target since it might be tough to get all As on the harder targets! Duh! I'm getting all the close As for sure! (Note: Ridiculous hit factors follow in the service of math, with the assumption of no draw, no followup, no reloads, no movement, and transitions matching splits) I'll do you one better, because the As on the 25 yard targets are actually worth a hell of a lot more. More precisely, the non-As hurt more, because you're shooting slower on those targets, and thus are performing a lower hit factor, making points more important. Think about it. My splits at 25 yards are somewhere around .50 or .60, let's call it .50 for math's sake. My splits at 7 yards are in the .20s, let's call it .25. So if I shoot 4 targets at 7 yards for 2.00 seconds of shooting my best possible hit factor is 20. A point is therefore worth .05 of a second, or conversely a .05 of a second is worth a point. At 25 yards that same 40 points takes me 4 seconds to achieve, for a hit factor of 10. Points down are now penalizing me doubly for the same C hit. The A, looked at in reverse, is worth twice as much on that target, even though it doesn't seem that way at the end of the stage when everything is glommed together and averaged out. This is why the idea is to shoot all As all the time, at a speed where a few Cs creep in. That way you're riding the edge of speed while not incurring significant penalties. The real trick is this: We don't shoot that fast, and our transitions are much slower than our splits, which means we spend more time on non-sighting than sighting. Anyone who has worked extensively with distance and a timer knows how enormous a difference is .05 of a second on a split as far as the feeling of the shot. Add that .05 and you change "Hit the paper" to "Solid A hit" and that makes so much difference in how you are able to leave that target and move to the next. If I had to quantify the feeling of my shooting right now, it would be that I want a shot that I can forget about immediately after breaking it. People think revolver is slow, but in fact it's the fastest division. Where else do you have to manage two or three oscillations of the sights during the trigger pull, reload four times with both hands swapping guns, cylinders, etc. while on the run and then focus down on targets because you can't possibly afford a miss and an extra reload? That's the pure feeling of moving fast right there. There's much more to this game than the pull of a trigger, otherwise a bullseye shooter could come in and smoke us all. We have to couch our mental resources while in a state of managed panic, that's the real heart of the sport. Shoot the A every time in such a way that you think to yourself, "This will very, very likely be an A." . . . and then move on. tl;dr: The time it takes to shoot a good A is always less than the time saved by shooting wildly. The points are just gravy. Matt

Steve hit one big nail on the head, my question would be: Why (How) are you losing? If you don't understand that then you can't fix it. Matt

Ha, of course the only video is of me falling off of the lever thing while I try to hold it with my knee. Agile like a cat!

Thanks, I had a lucky match. I was last when we were waiting out the rain and first before the sun came out. I remembered how to watch my sights on the second day which helps a lot with so much long steel in the match.

120 isn't really doable with a .45, I tried using some 150gr. cowboy bullets and they're still floating down range like albatrosses. I'd suggest 185gr bullets at 750 fps, it's 138pf but if you're used to USPSA it feels like nothing at all.