You Can Over Game A Stage

[Bwana Six-Gun]

Sunday morning, quarterly 3-gun match at the local club, hotter than a cat's a$$ in a pepper patch. Seven stalwart shooters show up for the match. (Thank God for a small turnout.)

First stage, multi-gun. Start in a recliner with pistol on table out in front. Five open targets to engage. At the end of those targets, table with shotgun and rifle loaded up and ready to go. Grab the shotgun and pop five steel through a window, put the scattergun down and grab rifle to put two on ten target ranging from forty to eighty yards. Nothing to it, right? Watch and RO the first four shooters as they go through the course and run 70+ second times with at least two or more misses on the far rifle targets. Make the comment, "Wish I could get up close and personal on the rifle targets. (I'm shooting a Mec-Tec .45 CCU.) Stage designer says, "You can go down there if you want, only the steel has to be shot at the window." Fifth shooter smokes a 40-45 second time. I think, I can run down there and smoke those last six as I go by and guarantee all A's. Step to the line, LAMR all guns. Buzzer goes off. Nine A's ans a C on the pistol, grab the shotgun burn down the steel. Grab the CCU and use the window as a rest and take the first four at 40 yards, take off like a jackrabbit for the last six reloading on the way. That's when the stuff hit the fan. Ten yards from the first target, step in a rut left by some earthmover, (we just had work on theberms done) dowm I go. As I'm going down all I can think is keep the muzzle out of the dirt and down range. Knees and elbows take a heavy hit leaving large amounts of skin and body fluid in the dirt. Worst of all, as the knees hit, the legs go into the WISHBONE formation. Get up finish the run, get all my hits. Good news, got the hits. Bad news, I'm a walking ad for Bengay and large economy size bandaids and Neosporin. Further good news, no one had a video camera. Further bad news, the fall screwed my time and I still ended up no better than those who shot from the window.

Today at work I could barely walk and everyone wanted know how I got so banged up.

Lesson learned, Don't Overgame the Stage!!!!

[Merlin Orr]

Sounds like a good plan thwarted by the evil Mr. Murphy to me.

Had you not stepped in the rut would your plan have worked as expected?

[ima45dv8]

How were the pistol and shotgun abandoned? The requirements of MG 10.5.3 would have significant impact on whether or not a shooter would/should be allowed to run downrange of the grounded pistol and shotgun.

As to whether it was a good plan, I was told my bullets could get downrange a heck of a lot faster than I could.

[mscott]

Why were you so concerned with the accuracy of the CCU? Mine seems to be plenty accurate for 80 yard targets. Stuff just happens sometimes.

[Bwana Six-Gun]

It's hard to say that the plan would have worked if I hadn't taken the dirt dive, since I don't know how much time I lost on the fall and the recovery.

Bullets do go down range faster than I can, but I am a lousy rifle shot even with a rest.

Pistols ans shotguns were grounded on the table with slide and/or bolt back and the magazines removed or tubes on the shotguns empty.

Did I also mention that my front sight post came off on the last shot before I took off running. Didn't even know it until I got through and the RO told me he saw it fly off on my last shot at the window.

Noneltheless, next time I will just shoot from the barricade and leave the running and gunning to those with younger legs.

[ArnisAndyz]

Pistols ans shotguns were grounded on the table with slide and/or bolt back and the magazines removed or tubes on the shotguns empty.

Thanks for sharing that. I was entertained just by reading it, almost as if I was there.

If you shot the rifle from the table I assume you could just put the other guns down (with a loaded chamber) safety on since your not leaving your weapons. I guess you would have to calculate the time penatly in having to clear the weapons vs the points lost on non-A hits from the table.

[tightloop]

+1 Merlin's comments.