Tight or long shots...

[Ron Ankeny]

Several of us share responsibility for being match director in our local club. Each month we try to set up courses that are easy enough for new shooters to get their hits, but tough enough to challenge experienced shooters.

At the last match, one of the guys set up a speed shoot consisting of two strings, with four little poppers set at 22 yards. Two of the the poppers had no shoot targets behind them at ground level. I kind of came unscrewed and I had a pretty vocal rant going about putting a penalty target behind a tough shot like a USPSA Popper. In my view, there is nothing wrong with an array of plates or little poppers at 25 yards, but putting no shoots behind them would frustrate new shooters. As it turned out, several shooters had multiple hits on the no-shoots. One shooter who was shooting his second ever match described the experience as humiliating.

The other MDs and I talked about where do we draw the line for new shooters? How do we balance accuracy requirements without feeding large doses of humble pie to folks who can't shoot the nuts off of a gnat at 50 paces?

What do you guys recommend? More hard cover? Go ahead and use the no-shoots and make people look at the sight and use some degree of trigger control? I am wide open to any and all ideas.

[Nik Habicht]

I'm all for challenges, but if they cause most or multiple C and D class shooters to zero the stage, then it's too tough.  Put that another way ----- I think the no shoots are overkill.  IF you put one of those poppers with  penalty targets into a 150 point field course, then I think it's a much more applicable challenge.  I also favor fast disappearing targets, as long as they are a small part of the total points available.   Challenge the better shooters by gving them many options for shooting the stages.  An array with a bunch of hardcover 20 yards downrange from the second to last array, makes for challenges with possibilities.  The fleet of foot can run and gun, the bullseye shooters could stand in one place and shoot both arrays.....

[Nik Habicht]

P.S.  I love free style because I'm not that good yet.  I can't hose with the best of them, and I can't run with the sprinters.  However, in a true freestyle scenario, I can usually find a way to shoot it according to my best ability without getting frustrated.  On some stages that migh mean running and gunning, on others I might be making long shots or engaging targets in an order that no other shooter would pick.  

[Chriss Grube]

There are too many stage designers out there that think they are going to show the top dogs something new. Guess what they've seen it before. TGO and TJ are going to be able to shoot whatever you throw at them. It is the C and D class guys that get screwed. Use of common sense seems to be lacking with some designers. Make it a challenge but be reasonable. If you expect 50% or better to crash and burn on a stage then you're being an ass not a stage designer.

[sincityshooter]

I've been match director for a couple years.  I try to set up courses of fire so that a C class limited shooter can make it through the match without too much frustration.  Another words, I don't put no-shoot targets at 25 + yards and I don't put 8" plates at 20 yards.  Make shooters respect the targets, if they don't then the price is paid.  hard cover and no-shoot targets at 10-15 yards will challenge everyone.  Look at the Nationals... a lot of hard cover and no-shoot targets at 7 yards.  Guess what?  Not even Todd or TGO was hosing... the respect for the targets was there.

[38supPat]

Use Noshoots sparingly. Its one time I look back to the defensive roots of the sport. Would you make a shot like that if the targets and noshoots were real people? A no shoot was intended to mean something, otherwise use hardcover.

[vluc]

Hmm, interesting post as that seems to be the rage lately...no shoots behind steel...not all at 25 yards, but still there...

[Ron Ankeny]

I am glad you guys agree with me. I am all for challenging courses and I think the arm's length in your face stuff really waters the sport down. I am going to talk to the rest of the club officers and see if can't reach an agreement that there is a difference between challenging and punitive.

[sincityshooter]

Pat, are you trying to put "Practical" back in practical shooting?  If so, it's WAY too late.... this is a sport.  No shoots have absolutely nothing to do with defensive real life shooting, they just slow the shooter down a little.

[Chriss Grube]

If this was practical then anyone still standing after the first shot is either a hostile or too damn dumb to be alive anyway!

[38supPat]

---

Quote: from sincityshooter on 10:47 am on Sep. 6, 2002

Pat, are you trying to put "Practical" back in practical shooting?  If so, it's WAY too late.... this is a sport.  No shoots have absolutely nothing to do with defensive real life shooting, they just slow the shooter down a little.

---

Oh hell no! I prefer it as a sport, but in reference to use of no shoots (maybe we should remove them all together since its now a sport, they no longer are relevant) they should be placed at reasonable distances and used sparingly, not as a punitive scoring area on already difficult shots.

Use hardcover instead, it'll slow everyone down, but it won't humiliate a new shooter. You can miss a shot 30 times and still only one miss, but if those 30 bullets hit a noshoot instead, you day is going to really suck.

[38supPat]

---

Quote: from Chriss Grube on 10:50 am on Sep. 6, 2002

If this was practical then anyone still standing after the first shot is either a hostile or too damn dumb to be alive anyway!

---

I remember shooting at a club once who tried to pride itself on the "practical" nature of its matches, going so far as to detail what kind of weapons the bad guys (IPSC targets) were carrying, then descibing an engagement order of the targets that had to be followed as this was "practical"

When I found one course of fire when I was faced with an array of targets that apparantly held SMGs, ARs and shotguns, I told them that if it was truly practical, I'd just drop my gun and kiss my a** goodbye

The other good one, was a course of fire containing about 20 or so targets who, we were told, were armed with MP-5's (I think it was Die Hard based theme...pretty realistic huh?) I asked where the MP-5s were, when asked why  I replied "'cuz if this were real, I'd shoot the first one and finish the rest using the MP-5 I retrieve from his corpse, why the hell would I use my pistol?."

(Edited by Pat Harrison at 12:25 pm on Sep. 6, 2002)

[shred]

I had a chat about the original topic (courses for C & D shooters, if you remember) at RGNs.  We were discussing Stage 1 with the 40-yard poppers through a low port and how we'd probably not do that at home.

The question was, are non-challenging courses good or bad for the shooters?  Sure lots of penalties & misses suck, especially if your gun isn't sighted correctly (I shot my first year with iron sights and had no clue where it hit past 20 yards), but it's also nice to stretch shooters a bit and let them know they really _can_ do some things.  (I still frequently believe I can't hit a static target between an activating popper and the activatee during the walk-through, but when shooting I always have plenty of time).

Consensus at that point was that a _few_ longer/harder shots might not be a bad idea, especially if you give shooters a chance to approach closer should they so desire.  Preferably on steel, so the new shooters get a bit of feedback.

[John Dunn]

As a new USPSA member with two special qualifiers under his belt, I would advise to keep the difficult shots.  Humiliation is self-imposed.  I would tend to view poor performance on difficult targets as an opportunity to identify weak spots and work on them.  I know I would not take the time to adjust my fixed sights were it not for the occasional long or precise shot.

New shooters should be encouraged, but I wouldn't design stages around them.  If people only want to be good at things that are easy, I suggest Tic-Tac-Toe.  Keep the head shots coming!

Once again, total newbie.

[Ron Ankeny]

I went back and reviewed the results from the stage in question. I had a the highest hit factor with 7.37. The next highest hit factor was a B class shooter with 3.8 followed by another B class shooter with 3.2. The highest C shooter got 2.2 and it went down to between zero and 1 from there. All of the U and D shooters had a HF less than 1. I guess that kind of puts things into perspective.

I agree we should keep the longer and tighter shots, but I really think the no-shoots behind them need to go.

(Edited by Ron Ankeny at 7:29 pm on Sep. 6, 2002)

[Phred]

From the perspective of a C (wanabe IPSC Production shooter I really like the challenge of difficult and longer distance shots, however, I would like to be in with at least some chance.  A 60 point stage with two or three classic paper targets at 25m, bottom half covered with a penalty target (_very_ little A zone showing), using standard production gun sights,, well that's a big ask in my book no matter how much of a time penalty I suffer.  Probably, strike that, definitely a good thing that stage scores can't go negative!  Make those penalty targets hard cover instead, or reduce the ratio of penalty targets to overall stage points, IMHO the difficult remains but at least I'm for a chance of at least some score on the stage.  Same holds for penalties behind poppers; I don't mind the challenge but either use larger poppers or reduce the ratio of penalty targets to overall stage points.

Or am I simply kidding myself that a non-zero, all be it reduced, stage score is somehow any different than a zero stage score?

Cheers,

Phred

[Jake Di Vita]

I'm a production shooter as well and from personal experience, I always welcome a challenge. If I zero a stage, oh well, that sucks but now I know what I need to work on at my next practice session.

[JFD]

Another new "C" shooter here.  I figure a 22 yard USPSA popper is enough by itself.  A no-shoot is behind it is crap IMHO.  I personally like hard cover and longer range if the difficulty is to be increased.  I'm going to try to limit my use of no shoots (newbie stage designer as well) so that they are more "in the way" and function more to force a shooter to move around in order to see all of the shoot targets.  Sort of a crowd simulation more than a hostage thing even if either aren't overly practical to me.

[Nik Habicht]

Ron,

I asked two experienced match directors and a few other stage designers this weekend and they agreed that if the majority of C and D shooters zero a stage, it's poor stage design.  They also said that the match should be challenging for all shooters without being overwhelming for any.

[Duane Thomas]

I interviewed Jerry Barnhart out at the Factory Nats. And he basically said, "If you try to test the Super Squad, no one else will be able to do it. You back off on the difficulty level a bit, so it's still hard but not so much, we'll just shoot it faster. So we're still being tested, anyway."

[benos]

Yea, 22 yd little poppers with no-shoots behind them is a little silly. OK, it's really silly.

be

[Billf]

Silly, I agree, in a match situation. However, there are many who could make that shot consistently on the clock in a race, don't you agree.

Challenging shots should be required in matches. I believe that courses of fire in matches should be challenging to the A class shooter. But that is relative don’t you think - ie. the A class skill level of today against the Master skill level of 20 years ago.

No shoots are much more intimidating then hard cover, that in my opinion is one good reason to use them. Use of  the same targets at 22 yards, even out to 30, in my opinion would not  be bad in a match, but I would reverse them and use the popper as the no-shoot (of course one could get a bit silly there depending on how much of the shoot target is visible behind the popper).  I could think of one scenario off the cuff (using that target scenerio)that no Martial Artist could argue with, plus for those whom got sloppy or cant make that shot it would only cost them 1 No Shoot hit, enough to hurt ones score and/or motive shooters to practice.

Bill

[j1b]

I kind of agree with Bill.

Maybe two targets like that is overkill - maybe the shot in general is overkill.

This is a shooting sport. It tests one's ability to shoot and making long dificult shots is part of that. Personally I would dread that shot if I saw it in a match. In all reality I would throw a few shots in the no-shoot. Next time I practiced though I would be certain I could make the shot and then I would work to insure that I could make the shot in match conditions.

In the end I would have to think it made me a better shooter. I agree we should encourage matches that challenge everyone and are reasonable in scope however that should not be an excuse to shy away from difficult shots.

Am I screwed up in my thinking?????

JB