Tengu

Production has proven to be a great draw for both novice and experienced shooters. It's an easy way in for almost anyone who owns a handgun, and it's also a great way to get back to fundementals and just plain have fun and develop your mental game for anyone who's shot for a while in the other divisions. Production seems to have a stronger following with each passing month at my home club in VT (GMPS).

I've been shooting a Savage .300 Win Mag. for years, and I love it- a sub-MOA rifle for an incredibly good price. Put the money you saved on the rifle towards great optics (mine wears a Leupold 4-14.5 Mil-dot variable) and you won't be disapointed.

I clean all my mags the night before, and load the day of match. Then it's unload, clean, inspect, and reload the mags after each stage for the rest of the day. I've been burned a couple of times too many not to have an imediate feel on all my mags when I'm at a match.

"Fuel"- Metallica, Reload "Ain't my Bitch"- Metallica, Load "Counting the Days"- Collective Soul, Youth

These are from memory, but... Yul Brenner in the Magnificent Seven: "Nobody gives me my guns back and tells me to run. Nobody." Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday in Tombstone, in response to the taunt "You're so drunk, you're seeing double": "Well, I've got two guns, one for each of 'ya." And of course, the classic Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry: "This is a .44 Magnum, the world's most powerful handgun. It'll blow your head clean off. So you have to ask yourself one question, punk. Do you feel lucky?" Apologies for any misquotes- but damn, those were good movies!

The Springfields and Kimbers I mentioned (mostly) turned into very fine guns with a little (lot) of tweaking. I'm sure there are some that come from the factory just fine

John Hiatt is great

I just saw it on DVD last weekend, and was really impressed. Excellent movie with spectacular cinematography, and very faithful to the original graphic novels. Dark but brilliant, one of the best collaborations between writer and director I've ever seen. Did anyone notice Jessica Alba's Ruger Vaqueros? (Yeah, I didn't ID them either on the first pass- just a little distracted- but nice guns to go with the outfit ) Rosario Dawson as Gail was killer too My wife actually loved it as well (she's a big fan of kick-ass women, scantilly-clad or otherwise) I'm kicking myself now that I didn't see it on the big screen.

"Better Now" by Collective Soul is a good way to get going.

A full-size or long-slide Glock 36-type would be nice... Could I hope that it would be available in 10mm as well?

Les Baer makes awesome, awesome 1911 single-stacks- probably the best pistols of their type that come ready-to-race right out of the box. Accurate and rock-solid reliable (really, really reliable). I've seen a lot of shooters ready to throw their factory Kimbers and Springfields into the garbage after a match in the cold, rain, or beautiful dry sunny weather, but Les' pistols just feed round after round in sub-zero cold, ice, mud, rain, whatever. They may be more expensive, but after you pay to fix the @#*&-ups in the other makes, it's worth it to do it right from the start (and no, I don't know Les). Good luck!

I used to worry about drinking cofee before a match, but over the years I've come to think that maintaining your usual routine is the most important thing... for me a cup of cofee helps get me going in the morning, and if I skip that on match day I'll be dragging ass, grouchy, and have a headache, too On the other hand, I usually just have that one cup, and then the focus and adrenaline of the match take over and I'm fine for the rest of the day (otherwise I'd be downing a couple-of-two-or-three more cups over the course of the day ) P.S. If you have the chance, genuine Thai Red Bull packs a hell-of-a-lot more wallup than the American variety

Shooting rifle sidematches with a handgun is definitely a blast! I love to do long range accuracy work anyway, and it is always fun to step up to the line on a rifle sidematch with your favorite handgun to see how it stacks up against the big boys... often the sidearms do surprisingly well! We set up Virginia count sidematches every year during hunting season (October) with five-shot strings at my home range in Vermont, and there are always a few of us who bring out our .41-.454 cal. revolvers and autos and have a blast. Sometimes we even surprise the fellas with the little black rifles

I shot the Eastern Lakes Section match in Cortland, NY over the weekend, and had a great time. As I have come to expect from shooting the Little Big Match at the club in the past, everything ran smoothly, and the match finished quickly- 9 solid stages completed before 2PM shooting in the morning squad. The stages this year were well-designed, requiring a lot of focus to avoid the numerous no-shoot targets (a number of poppers and plates in front of no-shoots really balanced speed vs. accuracy), and offered a good blend of speed shoots, field courses, and interesting barricade/port challenges. Hats off to Ed Putnam and everyone else who worked hard to make the match a success! I will definitely be back in future years

Some people use silica to make glass. Others use silicon to make computer chips. Some use silicone gel to caulk windows or make their breasts larger. I use silicon/silcone spray on the inside of my mags so they feed ammo more smoothly. Whatever product you use on your ammuntion, it shouldn't change the coefficient of friction enough to make your bullets tumble... maybe the problem is related to jacketed vs. lead bullets, or an excessively worn or leaded barrel?

A really good movie- I was glad afterwards that my wife dragged me along to see it. Incredible cinemetography, and a remarkable, beautiful story; I couldn't imagine how they could make a whole movie out of it before I saw it, but they really did, and it didn't drag. A good show for people of all ages.

The Chronicles of Riddick was way fun! A must see for action fans (which I belatedly discovered only after it had come out on DVD ) And, yeah, whoever managed to fit Thandie Newton into those dresses definitely did a service to mankind!

Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit- Tolkien Dune- Herbert Tortilla Flat- Steinbeck Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo- Dumas Something Wicked This Way Comes- Bradbury Mars and Tarzan series- Burroughs Musashi- Yoshikawa Foundation Trilogy- Asimov

I have been shooting my Glock 21 in both Limited and L-10. Lately I have been shooting mostly Production and L-10- I love the mental focus these divisions require, the need to really work on most stages and of course nail your reloads. I'm going to be building a single-stack .45 Caspian this winter for the provisional single-stack division. Single-stack 1911's and most Production guns (I shoot a Baby Eagle 9mm) are so slim and ALIVE in your hand, they are just a joy to shoot

As far as the movies on the list go, I'll take The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but Unforgiven is my favorite Clint Western.

Also liked it more than expected. The gilded Street Sweeper w/cross was a nice touch. And Rachel Weisz is always a plus (the Mummy series was excellent )

Jethro Tull Metallica (and some of their new stuff is really good, too- Load and Reload kick ass) Green Day Bob Dylan (Desire is one of the greatest albums ever produced) The Beatles AC/DC Beethoven (For those mellow times...) Enya Loreena Mckennit Evanescence (Fallen, the best album of '03) Collective Soul (Youth, the best album of '05) Shakira (If every woman in the world could move her hips like Shakira, there would be world peace) Wolfstone (An awesome Scottish rockband- you owe it to yourself to check them out) Fleetwood Mac Wierd Al (I still have too many Wierd Al moments...) Aint it amazing how many different kinds of music one person can like? Of course, I do like all sorts of guns, too... old WWII Mausers and Enfields, Walthers and Tokarevs, 1911s and Glocks, side-by-sides and over-unders, the list goes on... I guess it's not that surprising after all

I think the M1 is a great little gun when the range isn't too long. It never really has lived down the bad rap it got in WWII for its cartridge's lack of stopping power compared to the 30-06, but then again, the same criticism could be made of the 5.56x45. And handling counts for a lot in close quarters. If the shots at your home club are within 100 yards, go for it!

A simple drill I like to shoot is to set up two or three targets at 5-10 yards from box A, and two or three the same distance from box B. Leave 10-15 yards between the boxes, and experiment with shooting the same target set on the move vs. running from box to box and shooting only within the boxes. Play around with adding hard cover and no-shoots on the targets to see how it affects your time/score. This excercise will help to develop your skills at shooting on the move, as well as comparing differences between shooting on the move and simply running from point A to B before engaging targets.