Being razzed by Taran Butler

[diehli]

We had an 80-point all-steel stage at this past Saturday's match (Jojo Vidanes' match). Jojo Vidanes, Taran Butler, Mike Voigt, and John Fletz were there, just to give you an idea of the better-known GMs shooting the match.

I was going to tag on to the squad that John and Taran were on as the last shooter for this stage (I'm one of the late guys), but another guy showed up and I shot with him. I was shooting Limited and this other guy was shooting open. I beat him by 1.25 seconds. There were 4 shooting positions with plenty of room to reload in between.

As usual, I was shooting my 6-inch Fat Free .40 from Benny Hill... Taran says I better not miss with that long sight radius or the gun would be "obsolete" (or something to that effect). I shot the stage with 4 or 5 misses and one reload and caught up with Taran later to tell him that the gun was, in fact, obsolete... and so was the shooter.

The match results were posted today... I ended up 3rd Limited, and 8th overall on that stage. And I beat John and Jojo (Jojo had a malf, though... bad one). I gotta say, I'm pretty proud of myself (particularly knowing that when my latest classifier posts and I finally get classified, it'll probably be as a D), but the best part of it was I had the GM mentality for that stage: don't miss (the A-zone, for all intents and purposes) as quickly as possible.

Now the key is to get as confident on paper as I am on steel... and to MAINTAIN confidence and focus throughout the match.

Thanks, Taran! (And Jojo, Mike, John, and everyone else I know and shoot with... hrm, maybe I should write an Academy Awards speech while I'm at it).

[Duane Thomas]

I shot the stage with 4 or 5 misses and one reload

but the best part of it was I had the GM mentality for that stage: don't miss (the A-zone, for all intents and purposes) as quickly as possible.

Okay, I have to admit I'm confused at the apparent contradiction. You say you shot the stage with four or five misses (which to me means the entire target) but then you say you shot it with the GM mentality of not missing the A-zone (?).

[diehli]

On paper I would have dropped 3 points (some were 6 inch plates).

Ok, fine... your zen's bigger than my zen. I still shot a good stage.

[Duane Thomas]

Okay, I get it - misses on steel that were swiftly made up.

Ok, fine... your zen's bigger than my zen.

I don't know about that. My Zen's not as big as you'd think.

[diehli]

Yeah, called misses that I picked up on the move out of positions, mostly. Shooting going in, shooting going out... just like TGO says.

Last two shots were 10-inch plates (is that the larger size plate?) at 10-12 yards—maybe more—that had to be shot from either side of a barricade. I almost fell out of the left side after tripping getting my size 13's into the box (entering from right), shot the plate and then tilted my girth to the right side and shot the plate, almost falling out again... fun stuff.

I had a plan for this stage and stuck with it (not a hard stage to plan at all). The main things I remember about the stage were that I was in the start position, leaning against an ATC, draw, shoot plates through first port, take a medium-sized step back and to the left to get the six mini-poppers through the second port (I had two of my misses on these, just over the right "shoulder"—high and left—floating the front sight centered over the rear notch is a BAD way to shoot... figured that out pretty quick-like), then reload, run like hell, make sure I don't stick my gun through the next port, run like hell, make sure I don't eat it on the barricade, pick up the left plate and then the right.

Truth is I remember the two stages that I completely screwed up better than this one. Not in terms of how I DID shoot them, but how I SHOULD have shot them. The ones that I do poorly on I visualize after the fact... gotta resolve THAT particular temporal issue. I think the main thing for me is that I don't notice that there's anything spectacular about the stages that I do well on, but notice when I @#$% up on all the others. Consistent minimization of the bonehead moves will only come through perfect practice. Somewhere in there I need to learn how to shoot, too.