Realistic Expectations

[LSnSC]

I shot my best match so far yesterday. Ive been getting better every match. Im a pretty decent rifle and shotgun shooter, and getting better with the pistol. I won the Heavy Metal Limited class (only 3 shooters, which is a real bummer) and finished 24th out of 60 overall. Im accurate but not super fast. Im pretty sure I can get into the top 20 consistently with improvement, but is top 10 doable with HM gear???

[co-exprs]

Wow, that's a really open ended question. It depends on the match, who you are shooting against and the type of match you are shooting. For example, if Horner shows up to a major match... everyone else really has thier work cut out for them. If the match leans toward close in work the heavier recoil can make it really difficult to put the throttle down. The heavier rifle and longer sight recovery just makes it impossible to keep up with the faster and light 223s. Likewise, in close fast courses the time it takes to pump and the extra time taken to reload the pistol are simply an unavoidable handicaps. I ran HM at Colorado State in Apr. One thing I noticed was that I simply couldn't run the irons on close stuff as fast as a dot type sight. There are some guys out there who are certainly good enough to challenge that statement, but those guys have decades of experience. I want to be good next season. Not in 10-20 years.

For HM, realestate is your friend. As the courses and ranges open up outside hammer distance for a 223, the rifle playing field begins to level. Anything forcing the 223 guys to slow down and push sight picture helps to even the playing field. Likewise with the shotgun... if you are not mowing down plate racks or rows of poppers the pump gun is surprisingly fast. I can consistently pull down 1sec faster reloads with my nova than with my SLP, which helps make up for the time to pump the gun. It isn't an even trade, but it helps. If there is plenty of movement in a course, you can find places to reload you pistol. If the course is tight, the reloads will cost you time, which you simply can't get back. So it's easier for a heavy shooter to keep up on large field courses. As an example... at HM Nats this year, all of the courses were very large field courses. The two heavy shooters (Watson, Moots) beat everyone, including the 20 or so competitors in WeeMan division. Some of the WeeMen were open classers. There were plenty of places to reload your pistol on the move equalizing the advantages of lower recoil, hicap pistols. The huge, sporting clays style shotgun course gave up little advantage to the autoloaders and there were enough places to reload the shotgun on the move that I posted a faster time with my pump than all of the open class guys. With so much rifle shooting at distance and wide open field course work, it came down to making hits, rather than speed and magazine capacity. Both Watson and Moots won that match with solid rifle skills, posting amazingly fast times on stages requiring long range rifle skills and unusual shooting possitions. RM3G will be the same way. With so much open realestate, the top guys in the two HM divisions will post times surprisingly close to the top guys in the more competitive divisions.

This is not the case in most other matches however. Most matches have much more close in work, where the extra time associated with recoil managment, cycling the pump gun and reloading the pistol, are undeniable handicaps. You can certainly run in the top ten at your local, 60 man match. That will only take a season of dedicated practice. Running on the podium all the time will most likely take a bit more work. At least I know this is true for me. I'm in the "a bit more work" part of my learning curve now. I'm having fun, but it's expensive and admittedly harder than I thought it would be.

[LSnSC]

I should have clarified, Im taking local and state level shoots. Unfortunately we dont have any major shoots here in the Carolinas. My goal is to improve my skills this year, an attend a major next season.

[MarkCO]

Avoid the tempatation to compare on the local level. Focus on Metrics (time to do a specific skill or drill) and not placement.

The Novekse Shooting Team (Which includes Rob Romero, a top tier HM shooter) has several videos and drills. Watch them, learn from them and compare to them. Search AMU for Horner and you can get more. In "Shotgun Technical" there are several shooting and loading drills you can stack up against.

I run anywhere from 1st to 7th in local matches (out of about 25 to 30) depending on who shows up (including winners of majors this year)...that translates to 30 to 60th at majors. 20 out of 60 locally is going to put you somewhere in the bottom half at a major. But if you know your metrics, and you can improve on them, then you have a realisitc goal and a way to measure improvement.

Some simple metrics for rifle to get you started might look like this.

Rifle: From low ready, shoot a 5 shot 10" group off-hand at 100 yards (goal of say 10 seconds). From low-ready, shoot a 5 shot 10" group from prone at 300 yards (goal of say 12 seconds).

[Bryan 45]

co-exprs gives some great insight. It all depends on who shows up. Shoot your HM equipment and enjoy it. The fundamentals are all the same, so if you decide to move to other equipment and a different divison later, the experience you will have gained shooting this season will be a benefit.

[co-exprs]

MarkCo offers good points as well. One of the difficult things for any of us type A, competitors to stomach is that this game is a marathon rather than a sprint. We all want to be badasses right now. In order to get good overall, you have to break it all down into individual skills. Figure out which skills are weak points and prioritize by overall performance impact. Just showing up and competing is the first step, but if you want to get good, you have to get focused in practice. If you don't know where to begin, start with the three universal truths in 3gun. Learn to shoot your pistol fast, reload your shotgun quickly and shoot your rifle accurately (or something like that). If you learn to do those three things very well, you will finish well at your local matches no matter what your division. You will also find that during your journey to master the three universal truths, you will inherently improve many of the other skills. Then you only need to fill in the blanks, such as thrown targets, off hand rifle, wierd shooting possitions, accurate pistol shooting and shotgun slugs. Some shooting communities are more competitive than others, but if you are in an area which doesn't have a super competitive group of shooters, you can get good and win matches, regardless of division.

[LSnSC]

Thanks for all the insight.

Shotgun shooting is my strength. Ive been a wingshooter since I could carry a shotgun, and have shot competetive skeet and sporting clays for a while. Shotgun stages are my best stages and the ones I enjoy the most. No problems with flyers or slugs, and my reload times really improved alot when I changed to the load two method.

My rifle shooting is pretty strong. I live out in the sticks and have my own 300 yd rifle range. 3-4 moa targets dont give me much trouble. Need to get faster on the close stuff. I'll find some drill for that.

Need to work on my pistol shooting. Im pretty accurate but slow. Ive killed a bunch of game with a revolver, but Ive never done anything that required speed with a handgun. I found some drills online and Im alot faster than I was but still pretty slow...

[co-exprs]

You need to get hooked up with someone who knows how to teach action pistol shooting, really well. Fast pistol shooting is all about the front sight. The front sight is your throttle. The faster you can see the front sight the faster you can shoot. Proper grip, frame, stance and knowing which muscles to turn on all contribute to better recoil management. Good recoil management pays out in dividends in front sight tracking. Learn to see the front sight through the entire firing cycle and you will find your speed. To be honest, the hard part is finding someone who knows how to break it down and teach it well. There are tons of guys our there who know how to execute, but very few who can break it down and teach it well. Ask around and find that one magic guy in your area who really knows how to teach pistol shooting (he might not even be a GM). Even if you have to pay for the lesson, you will spend far less time and money in your learning curve than burning the ammo to figure it out for yourself. There is a fair bit of cross over between fast pistol shooting and fast rifle shooting. If you learn to run the pistol fast your learning curve on rifle will be very quick. Focus on pistol though, as that is the longest learning curve.