What's going on? Lots of A's, few B's, C's, D's

[Forensics Doc]

I just shot my second IPSC match yesterday and of all things it was a state tournament. As expected, I had the usual assortment of brain locks and bonehead moves expected of a newbie but I also learned a lot. It was a 220 round match, and of these I had 169 A's, 0 B's, 32 C's, 5 D's, and 14 Mikes (sure is easy to put 4 holes in a target and completely overlook another one!). My question is this: Since I have mostly A's, no B's, and a fair number of C's, what's wrong here? Am I rushing the second shot? I'm using the word "rushing" loosely since I seemed to notice that my fellow squad members usually took their lunch breaks and bathroom breaks while I was shooting the stage. Any ideas would be appreciated.

[Flexmoney]

FD,

Rushing...going fast...going slow....none of that should be at the forefront when you are actually shooting at targets.

A good goal for you might be to:

1. Learn to call each and every shot. KNOW where the shot went by reading your sights.

2. Once you know where your shots are going...only allow yourself to release the shot where you have an acceptable likelyhood of hitting nothing but the Alpha.

The movement, and other stuff in this game, makes it pretty toguh...get the shooting part down solid. Build a great foundation.

[Steve Moneypenny]

that was pretty good for the first match (not the mikes but the A's) my advise would be to follow through a TAD more and see your sights better before breaking each shot. tooo many beginners see one and fire 2.

Steve

[warpspeed]

If most of your mikes were failure to engage mikes, I'd say your doing just fine.

Depending on things like hardcover & no-shoots, it would be very hard to shoot a match with no points down. Some "C"'s are expected and maybe even a "D" or two. It's the Mikes that ruin my day.

I think it was BE who said, and I'm paraphrasing here, you can't shoot fast enough to make up for poor accuracy.

[DogmaDog]

I'd worry about the mikes much more than the Cs.

One thing that took me a while to learn is that you can't shoot at the same tempo all the time, and learning how much you have to slow down to hit a partial target, or a target that's far away takes some experience. Instead of the "classic" sight picture, you need to be able to know what you need to see on any particular target, and have the visual patience to wait until you see it.

That's where I'd guess your mikes come in--shots on 25 yard targets that you shot at the same speed as 10 yard targets, or something like that. (Of course, I'm only guessing, and could be completely wrong).

If you shoot 3 As and 1 C, you're scoring 95% of the possible points, and your A:C ratio is substantially higher than that--about 5:1. So I'd say your accuracy is there, it's just the consistency that you need to get--you throw out an errant shot pretty often, as evidenced by the mikes.

Anyway, It sounds to me like just need to dry fire, and seek more experience shooting matches, and things will fall into place.

DogmaDog

[mcoliver]

Like DD said, I'd also worry about the mikes. If these were made when you thought you were actually shooting the target, then some "slowing down" may be in order.

On the other hand, with that number of A's only on your second IPSC match, I'd say you're off to a pretty good start.

[Eye Cutter]

FD: go at your own pace and shoot for points. shoot only as fast as you can see. once you get the knack of calling your shots, your time will improve.

during practice, you need to find out for yourself how fast (or slow) to shoot targets at varying distances.

:-)