Muricanwerewolf

14.5 isn't going to limit you for 200 yards, I regularly shoot IPSC size steel out to 600 with it.

It would not be a great disadvantage, no. Especially if you're sticking with a compensator on the front. I like 14.5 and it's what i use for 3gun. With a red dot on it it'll swing much easier than a rifle with an optic, if that makes sense for the matches you're shooting. However if you go much shorter you (and the poor RO) gonna find it irritatingly concussive.

I'm always impressed by the Oneelaunee match, and the stage design is :chef's kiss: I borrowed a couple of the stages from last year for my night match last week over at NH I liked them so much.

This was the best choice you could have made

I'm with Nathan. Suppressors make sense in PRS where competitors are pretty much on top of each other and you're shooting supported but the suppressor is a competitive disadvantage in 3gun. Unless of course the timer fails to pick up your last shot lol. Also, a suppressor on your 3gun rifle is a great way to get dump barrel on your suppressor.

Yeah, that super ammo probably would help even if you're bad at shooting. And he asked for some tips, "get better at shooting by using ammo that makes it harder" is not a helpful tip.

So there's two possibilities here. It sounds like you have found my favorite kind of person at a match, the s#!t sandwich who has found that knowing the rules of the game (or at least thinking he does) and being willing to hold the timer has made him a god. The easiest way to handle this is to note his name, and next sign up make sure you're not on that squad. I've seen entire squads shift over to avoid "that guy". They're out there and they can chase new shooters away like no one's business. The second possibility is that you're pretty shaky with a weapon by competition standards and this guy was trying to keep you from doing something dangerous. I don't think anybody on this forum could possibly know for sure. So moving forward If I were you I'd try another match with a different RO and see if your experience is any different, while being open to any input if it is in the interest of safety.

I'm certain you're skilled enough to work with a less than optimal long range setup but do you really think it's helpful to tell beginner shooters "actually don't do the thing that requires no effort and is gonna make long range easier"? I think it's a weird direction to go, advice-wise.

Calling your shots is kind of a misleading term for what you should be doing. Like the idea is you're at a competition, you're shooting, and you're thinking while you're doing so "oh yeah that was a good one, no that was bad, bad again shoot, ok good..." Big waste of your mental bandwidth. If you're not good at the basics of marksmanship it also is a big waste of time trying to learn. If you move the gun every time you break a shot because you suck at your trigger press, are you really going to be able to say where that bullet went? No way. Instead, you need to practice your trigger press at home. The secret is in reps, especially in dry fire. You need to practice aligning your sights and learn what good enough looks like, that's step one. If you have a red dot then it's a bit easier, bullets go where the dot is. Find yourself some of those 1/4 size targets and painters tape them to the walls for practicing this. Draw and aim, transition between targets, get an idea of "If i pulled the trigger would my sights be on target?" Basically you're gonna get good at pointing the gun, you're gonna learn what a good enough sight picture looks like. This really just relates to irons, sometimes your sight picture isn't going to be perfect but because you're indexed on a large or wide open target you're going to be ok with a certain amount of slop in order to be fast, and you'll know this because you've seen it so many times before in practice. So the second exercise and the tricky bit is learning how to pull (I think of it as a press) the trigger fast without moving the gun. This takes time! Thankfully, you don't have to go to the range to do this, just practice pressing that trigger at home and watch if your sights or dot move. If your dot or sights jump, tighten or loosen your grip, move your trigger finger placement, do what you have to do to make the gun move as little as possible when pressing the trigger. Then learn to do it faster and faster. After so many tens of thousands of reps, you're gonna know exactly what if feels like when you press the trigger perfectly. At the match you're gonna see the sights or dot were on target, you're gonna feel that you pressed the trigger just like you've done it in practice. Or maybe it feels funky so you try again. The point is if you do this everything is going to tighten up for you. Your shot calling goes from "was that a miss" to "probably A, keep moving" because you have pulled the trigger so many times in practice that you are unconsciously competent at the two things that you need to do to hit the target. One complication that can arise is you're great at dry fire, but when you live fire you do things differently, because the gun tends to be a bit louder and move around a bit more when there's actually bullets in it. You flinch, you try to muscle down the recoil... The trick for that is to knock it off. Most of us are shooting 9mm, unless you've got flippers for hands your grip strength is fine, focus on your trigger press and let the gun do what it's going to do. Finally, as you get good at these basic skills start incorporating smaller targets, maybe like a tuxedo target, something to mimic steel at 50, have fun with it. If you can feel confident in seeing your sights and in your trigger press in practice your shot calling is going to magically improve.

I prefer to zero 223 with a red dot at 50 just because it's easier to see the target, and generally speaking that means I'll put the dot on the target for everything out to a little past 200. In this case if I were shooting very small steel at 100 I'd know my hold is 2" low. However, if you zero at 100 your hold at 50 is like .5" high. So for this match, it probably makes the most sense to zero at 100, since you will know exactly where your rifle is hitting if they put small steel at 100 and you're gonna be basically POA/POI for everything at that range. This is all assuming there's actually going to be some positional shooting at this match, and it's not all just freestyle like a USPSA match. If it's the latter the targets are gonna be generous enough it doesn't really matter.

Every single person who has not achieved the goal of becoming GM was too lazy to do it? No other reason? You sure?

I have to disagree with you there. I would say there are a great many people who are able bodied who couldn't reach GM even if they put in a ton of work. Most even. I know people who practice more than I and yet are not as good, I see guys come out every weekend and still stay in A class, who seem to have hit their peak. They're not lazy, they just can't break through. You probably have friends who are right in the spot I'm talking about, so it's kind of a wild thing to say that they're just too lazy lol. I think the way you feel is a pretty common conceit people have; when they've worked hard and achieved great success they think that everybody could if they just put in the same amount of work. I don't think that belief is actually backed up by anything.

My MPX is so light putting the Perst on it makes it feel like a different gun lol. Also while it's a cool cat toy the perst is really lacking in practicality without a good illuminator. It now rests on a suitably ridiculous gun.

Do you think everybody could get to M or GM level if they just practiced more?

Kinda what I'm getting at, very few people are at that level. So for most people, a reload isn't free.

Good points for sure. I messed around with putting a full power Perst4 on my PCC but it's just too heavy for the limited benefit I get out of a really bright laser. And to the last I say that's on the shooter, don't do dumb s#!t!

What percentage of shooters do you think have no difference in running a stage with a reload vs without a reload?

Yeah you definitely want to grab some time before shooting to make sure you're totally prepared both gear-wise and mentally. Sometimes I'm the only one running the timer and if I have to run the timer up to my stage run everybody is gonna have to wait for a few minutes while I get myself together and walk the stage one more time. I'm happy to work hard but I'm there to do well.

Focusing on one gun will make you much better with that gun than using all of them. And the skill is generally transferable to other platforms. I think training without focus (which is what using multiple different guns is) is going to slow down a shooter's progression than picking a gun and using that most of the time.

Many people swear by the occluded dot but as you've said maybe your personal situation doesn't lend itself to the practice. IMO it seems a bit woo-woo to me but I don't have any trouble staying target focused.

I have the crimson trace on mine. I use it for only one thing, and that's cheesing port arms start positions. You can steal a little time indexing on your first target and shooting as soon as the buzzer goes off. Your next transition and shouldering the rifle are then done at the same time - saving a bit of time. I use a green laser and a green dot so they both kinda blend together when using the dot the rest of the stage. That might bother some but I have an astigmatism, my dot is a mess anyway lol.

I dunno, people who get peeved they can't do their little warm up routine are silly to me. For sure stretch, get limber, walk the stages but did you really forget how to aim your pistol? Pull the trigger? If you're not ready to achieve whatever goal you had by the night before spending 5 minutes practicing your draw at the safe table isn't gonna save you.

Depends how close to the bottom of the mag I'm gonna get in the stage. Like if it's a 23 round USPSA stage and I have a planned reload halfway through I'm just sticking with the plan. If I'm shooting a shotgun in 3gun I know where in my plan my shotgun will run dry and only count misses. If I know my plan had me finishing with a single shell left and I've missed twice I know I will need to go to my match saver at the end or load another 4 during a planned reload. Knowing how many makeup shots you can take before you need to change your plan and counting those is so much easier than trying to count every shot you take and then comparing that to the balance of targets left.

All the times I shoot one there's an activator and weight to get it spinning. So I shoot the activator and then start shooting the other side so the rack stops spinning quick and stays vertical. If you're lucky one of the falling plates hits one below it for a 2-fer.

You need to buy a chrono and a ballistic calculator. Doing anything else you're just guessing.