puttingon a good match, stage descriptions

[bigbrowndog]

A stages description should be short, but different from the previous stage. Cookie cutter descriptions

simply show laziness and no thought. Change start positions, change gun locations, add strong hand or

weak hand to the description, make the competitor leave their comfort zone. When a description is

written the designer generally has an idea of how they would shoot the stage, please, please, please

do not write your description that way, unless it’s a standards COF. A description should allow options

for the competitor, it should allow freestyle target engagement, by the same token your stage design

should allow options, not run here ,shoot this, run here ,shoot that, etc. When I design a stage I try to

give a competitor as many options as possible, so that they can decide on their own if the risk/reward is

worthwhile, I’ll place a no shoot to allow a 6” gap to slip a bullet or shot column through or move 10yds.

and have a wide open shot, you decide on the risk/reward. My favorite example of that took place in

Greece at the 2006 European Shotgun Championships. The U.S. standard team was looking at a shotgun

plate with a no shoot covering all but 2” or so of the shoot plate, the option was that you could move

8-10yds. more and gain another inch or two to hit. A British competitor jokingly made the comment,

“there are only ten people in the world that can make that shot”, we all made the shot, to which our

reply was “yes, and three of them are here”. They simply chose what they were comfortable with, as

did we. That stage had several good elements, it was an empty chamber start, and several competitors

forgot to chamber a round, there were 4 or 5 ports but you could shoot it clean from just 3 of them.

It’s all about options and freestyle target engagement. A good stage can be shot more than one way.

Stage flow to follow.....................thanks