Shotgun scoring

[Flexmoney]

Here is the course of fire:

Five full size poppers.  One of the poppers activates a thrower, which tosses two birds which disappear over the berm if you don't get them.  Another popper activates a second thrower that tosses a bird strainght at you at a high rate of speed (I don't think anyone got that one).  40 points total.

They scored the birds as misses and a failure to engage (minus 10 each).  Some of the guys shot their five steel and missed the birds (25 - 30 = zero for the stage).

USPSA 14th ed., section 12.5 (deals with scoring rifle and shotgun).

The book doesn't mention disappearing targets in the rifle/shotgun section.  I would assume you wuld defer to the pistol rules...which state that you don't incur misses on disappearing targets.

How should it be???

[PaulW]

Good one.  To me it would only make sense to score them as disappering targets.  How else would it make any sense at all?

[Patrick Sweeney]

I agree.  Disappearing targets, but you have to try.  This is perhaps the only predicament I can see where the "failure to engage" rule actually makes sense.  The rest of the time it usually indicates poor course design.

[Bill H]

Yes at our clubs we have found that usually just shooting the steel and forgetting about the birds leads to a better score if there are no miss or failure to engage penalties. This is a problem with some stages and how they are scored.It reallly sucks to zero a stage like that with those penalties.

Bill

[PaulW]

It would not be possible nor per the rules to give a failure to engage penatilies on disappearing targets.  What if my gun jammed at the moment the birds were let loose, I would get a double penalty?  What you should do is make the birds worth more points to intice people to try and shoot them.  Like 10 points each instead of 5.