"falling" Out Of My Normal Thought Pattern

[kenjuudo]

This past weekend, at the first outdoor match of the year (Canada you know) a couple of interesting circumstances led me to what might be an insight into loosing yourself in the shooting / moment and just "doing it"... either that, or something unnatural happened, but whatever it was, it was cool... and while "I" was there, the one doing the shooting, I have to say that I can't really recall exactly what happened for part of one stage... is that odd...? Please provide whatever comments or suggestions, insights through past experience, or whatever else you might be motivated to share... 'cause as I mentioned, I'm not really sure what mechanism(s) came into play here.

The first stage in question was comprised of two full size poppers, two classic paper targets, and two Texas Stars (or something like a Texas Star... a five spoked frame, mounted on a shaft through it's center, with 5 x 8" plates, one each on the end of the spokes... when you engage a plate and it falls off the spoke, the Star becomes unbalanced and starts to spin or change direction if it's already spinning...). The two Texas Stars were set apart by approx. 30 yards, an equal distance back from the forward charge line (approx. 11 yards). The two full size poppers were straight down the middle, and the two papers were one either side, set just outside of the Texas Stars... on signal, the call was to open a hinged port, engage the two full size poppers down the center, and then proceed to either the left or right side of the barricade and engage the single paper and Texas Star on that side, then proceed to the other side and finish the second paper and Texas Star... well, on the beep, I opened the port, engaged the two full size poppers, let the port fall closed and went to the left side of the barricade to deal with the stuff on that side first... engaged the paper with two rounds, and then started onto the Texas Star... given that the star was stationary to begin with, the first two rounds each got plates... but the remaining three plates took about 7 rounds (approx.) to get... so, after completing that side, I took off running around the barricade heading for the right hand side. About 2/3 of the way around the barricade, with the ground surface being made up of mostly red chipped shale, I took a serious header into the dirt... landing mostly on my right forearm and hip... and wound up lying kinda' on my belly, thankfully with the old Para pointing in a safe direction... the RO ask if I was ok, to which I quickly replied yes, and asked if I could continue shooting, the RO replied "yes, but you should stand up first..." which I did and (dusty as hell now) proceeded the rest of the way around the barricade to engage the right hand Star and paper... which I did in 8 rounds total, and in what seemed to be a mere couple of seconds... all ending in a bit of a cheer from the rest of my squad (which was nice)... so that's 2 rounds for the paper, and six rounds for the 5 plates on the Star (significantly better ratio then I had achieved on the left hand side...) The only difference between the two sides, about 30 yards, some road rash, a lot of dirt in my shorts, and some embarrassment... all of which I would have otherwise expected to degrade my ability to shoot... but not in this case... and as I mentioned at the top... while I know how many rounds I fired (because the mag I finished with was full heading over to the right side, and had three rounds left when I was done) I have no real recollection of having fired those 8 rounds... I'm thinking that all of the stuff other then shooting that was running through my brain just setup enough "distance" between me and my shooting to allow me to shoot "naturally"... or without thinking about whatever it is that I normally think about while shooting... but by whatever means, I wish I could shoot like that all the time...

Now, in the second instance, the stage was a very long (approx 60 yards) straight down the middle kinda' thing... two steel from Box A, then proceed forward engaging papers as they became visible (behind staggered barricades down both the left and right hand sides, ending with two steel at the end of the course of fire)... Now at this point I should mention that the club ran two qualifiers last weekend, one Saturday and one Sunday... with the stages being massaged Saturday night, but for the most part (with the exception of actual target placement), the two days stages were very, very similar... so, on Saturday, I shot the course and scored a kinda' dogs breakfast... A's, C's and D's alike... minimum call was 32 rounds including steel... so come Sunday, the stage is for all intents and purposes the same as it had been the day before, except that each and every target position was now obscured by soft cover. They had taken long pieces of snow fence (orange rubberized mesh fencing, full of approx 1.5" square "holes"... I'm sure you've seen the stuff....) Well, they rolled it up into a kinda wide sausage shape, and then stood it in front of each target stand, completely covering the targets. While you could still make out the general shape of the targets behind the snow fence, no way could you see scoring zones, or even really make out where the edges of the target were... kinda' cool... but here's the thing... with the targets covered in this manner, I took almost 7 seconds of my previous days time, and my hits were 24 x A's, 4 x C's (and 4 steel)... all without being able to actually see the targets... so, with the targets completely exposed, a slow dogs breakfast... and with all but a faint outline of the targets covered, a (relatively) quick 24 A's and 4 C's... here again... what's up with that... I'm guessing that the targets being covered caused me to think differently (or less) about the actual shooting, and I simply went out and shot at the targets...