Did IPSC used to be harder?

[rtr]

I was talking with some folks who have played this game for over 20 years, and I was asking how things used to be.

They said they used to have a lot more people at local matches, like twice as many.

They said that there used to be more accuracy required with longer shots and frequent long standards courses.

They said that it seemed at that time new shooters became better shooters more quickly because of the required difficulty of the shooting then. Whereas today people can get away with not being as good.

Just curious what other old timers think about this and how things used to be compared to now.

[johnhurd]

Well that let's me out I started in 81 right after they made it easier ................

[G-ManBart]

I'm not a real old-timer, but I shot my first USPSA matches in 1991. I think a lot of it depends on the clubs that you shoot at more than anything. I've travelled to some matches this year that were, honestly, pretty boring....lots of memory stuff and little real movement. Our club sets up stages that will definitely force you to make hard shots and they have significant movement in many of them. Heck, we had 50yd standards at the last match (which ate my lunch!). R,

[Bob Hostetter]

At least in my area, the answer is yes...........

The courses used to be much more physcially demanding, as well as requiring more skills. I can remember back in 80's injuries to competitors were fairly common. Broken bone type of injuries.

[Religious Shooter]

I started in ~1994(?) at SWPL...

They said they used to have a lot more people at local matches, like twice as many.

YES. 90-100 shooters at a SWPL club match was not unheard of. Now-a-days maybe 30-50 is more common.

They said that there used to be more accuracy required with longer shots and frequent long standards courses.

YES. 40-50 yard shots were not uncommon. These days you get a lot of byatching from the shooters if you put the targets that far away.

They said that it seemed at that time new shooters became better shooters more quickly because of the required difficulty of the shooting then. Whereas today people can get away with not being as good.

... maybe.

[Flatland Shooter]

I started in the mid-80's.

Today we have lots of moving targets, clam shells, bear traps, etc. I always thought that increased the difficulty of the shots. The difficulty of the stages today, i.e. long distance shots, is sometimes due to limited range sizes.

One thing that has changed, GOING PRONE AT HIGH SPEED. In the old days, at least one course of fire every match had us go prone. I believe I've shot one match in the past year that had prone as a required shooting position. Not that I'm complaining. Back then I didn't have as much built in safety padding (i.e. age induced girth).

I do remember some 30 years ago seeing our host, Mr. Enos, go prone at a stage in record time. It happened so fast that it seemed his whole body went horizontal a good two feet off the ground and then was not so gently lowered using only his week hand.

[BritinUSA]

Just in 1993 the UK World Shoot had us climbing walls, hanging from telegraph poles, shooting from a police motorbike, hurtling down the narrow stairs of a double decker bus. We had l-o-o-o-o-ng shots out to 50 yards, targets out to 25+ yards were not uncommon at our local matches.

We had strong-hand and weak-hand only reloads, prone etc.

Those were the good old days....

But now we have all the activating targets that we did not have in the past and these do provide a good challenge, though I feel the accuracy of the sport has suffered a bit, there are a lot of close, blasty-type stages. They could easily throw in a long range target in the middle of it just to spice things up a bit.

I've been doing this for about 20 years now... A lot has changed, we've lost the pioneering spirit a little, but the skills of the shooters are getting better and better, I'd just like to see a tad more accuracy than we have now.

[Jman]

In the Phoenix AZ area I feel the targets, their placement and presentation today is more complex and challenging. Getting into position to shoot in the early days was definitely more difficult than today. A good trade off as far as I'm concerned. The "Tarzan" swings and wall scaling obstacle courses aahh, well, all I can say is "what were we thinking?" Stupid fun though.

Jim

[shred]

The physical difficulty has declined somewhat since the 80's and early 90's when there were all sorts of changes going on. It hasn't changed much since then. The number of rounds increases. In the late '80's, we'd shoot 3 stages of about 20 rounds each, then retire to the local BBQ to score them by hand with a calculator. By the mid 90's, we had a scoring computer and were shooting 4, sometimes 5 stages, and a little under 100 rounds. Now it's pretty much always 5 stages, and 100 rounds plus.

IPSC is still somewhat more physical with usually more difficult shots than USPSA-- often you'll get multiple prone ports or long runs and long & tight shots thrown in. The last WS had you running up and down platforms, back and forth between two berms through the tunnel, lots of low/prone ports, several mandatory weak and strong-hand stages The EHC in France had you shooting from floating jet-skis, bicycles, crossing bridges and so on.

[Joe4d]

Well back in my day if we wanted targets we didnt just mail order em, we had to make em from tree pulp we chewed ourselves ! and we had to hang em up in the snow,.............. with no shoes................, up hill.......... Both ways !!!

[9x21]

I started in 88,

Seemed like a lot less shots per stage, with much farther shooting.

(our flintlocks took a long time to load!)

Usually went prone & had standards (30-50 yards).

Almost always shooting boxes, not many free fire zones.

Looking back, it seems boring compared to the high round count & great props we have today.

It was great fun & got us where we are today!

[GentlemanJim]

Well back in my day if we wanted targets we didnt just mail order em, we had to make em from tree pulp we chewed ourselves ! and we had to hang em up in the snow,.............. with no shoes................, up hill.......... Both ways !!!

hey

I remember that

Jim

[BSeevers]

No but we were better, just ask

[JKSNIPER]

Old guy mantra:

"I'm not as good as I once was but I'm as good once as I ever was."

Over 50 rules!

JK

[Hi-Power Jack]

I currently shoot IPSC at four different ranges

(one for each weekend of the month), and the

four of them are all "different" - and I shot in

five different ranges over the winter, and each

had a distinct "personality" depending on the

Layout, the toys owned by the range, and the

people setting up the COF's.

So much difference today from range to range.

I've found some courses that do offer long range

shots, weak hand shots, very innovative shots,

etc., and some are quick and dirty short range

courses = others are memory dependent.

[PistolPete]

This is an interesting thread and very informative. I would think that we (the younger shooters) have a MAJOR advantage over the people playing this game when it was first started. The reason is that there has already been the hard research and development of technique etc. to pave the way for us. The younger generation has a wealth of knowledge of proper technique and stage strategies etc. I think the ramp up time for a new shooter today vs. 20 years ago is ten fold. Were the stages harder back then? I couldn't answer that because I wasn't shooting in the 80's. Hell I wasn't even in High School in the 80's.

Pete

[DMS42]

I wouldn't say that the stages were harder back then, but they sure were different from what we are shooting now. I don't miss some of the stuff that we did back then, nor the special equipment we had for doing weak hand or strong hand only reloads or the contortions we went through if we didn't have the special mag pouches. I also don't miss all the prone shooting, but I do miss having some targets beyond 25 yards. Ropes to climb or shoot from, 6 and 8 foot walls to climb over, unstable platforms to shoot from, etc. are also not missed.

[Johann the Horrible]

Weak hand only meant just that, even reloads. You just stuck the gun between your legs and the RO needed to duck or have a gun pointed at his feet. Many high walls of debatable strength got scaled. Frequently you had to holster during a stage to scale a "wall" climb a barb wire fence or tall ladder. If the ladder fell over you had to put it up again and continue shooting(in the right place too). Targets were placed at longer ranges, well because the ranges were longer and bigger. Few shooters were DQ`ed but more than a few retired "hurt". (You try falling off a 2 meter(+/- 8 foot) ladder while hanging on to your gun.)

Major and minor was well balanced since you got more 9mm bullets into a Browning mag that 45 bullets in to a Colt mag. Virtually all stages included a lot of running, and you prayed for some the running once Standards came along with half targets at 50 meters from prone!

A lot more people shot since just about every gun of 9mmP and higher was competitive.(Then came compensators, red dot scopes and hi-capacity frames) The longer shots made it easier for the good shots to win. Currently accuracy is not as important as speed since now you CAN miss fast enough to win.

[DMS42]

Without the special mag pouches for doing strong/weak hand reloads we would either put the pistol between our knees or back into the holster after dropping the mag then insert a new mag redraw and engage the targets. For awhile it was allowed to have the muzzle pointed uprange, but soon changed to muzzle pointed downrange only. I can also remember having to do a weak hand draw in a couple of matches. The mag pouches were open front. You put the mag in with the top up and bullets pointed downrange. To load the mag was started while in the pouch and then you ran the gun and mag down your leg and hoped that it would seat all the way. For some reason we called them "Idaho Speed Loaders", maybe because the pouches were made by some outfit in Idaho. I've still got a couple of them around here someplace and I'll have to find them and see who made them.

[tightloop]

There have been many shifts in the direction of the sport since the start...some of these shifts can be looked at as what is different now vs then.

Lets start with the physical differences. There was much less emphasis on running, and regardless what the young guns like Jake DaVita tell you, being fleet of foot can make a huge difference. However, there were tough physical stages, which meant climbing over an 8" wall as in the 80 Nationals, the Cooper Tunnel was an on your belly 2' tall and 4' wide. There were WHO draws and WHO reloads. There were stages with SHO then WHO. For all practical intent, the rules were made political correct, so we shooters might not hurt ourselves or damage our perhaps totally inappropriately gimmick laden Open Blasters costing 3500+ bucks by requiring climbing, jumping, crawling or coming in close contact with the ground by going prone, etc.

Equipment differences: This is where the game really changed and was different. After the introduction of HiCap frames and dot sights it became a really different game...No longer did you have to worry about having a dropped shot causing you to make a reload, no longer did you have to worry about being able to make shots on a 6x6" head at 35 yds with iron sights. While these two things made it a different game, the inclusion of 146 and 170mm magazines truly took away any relevance to "Practical Shooting", it became Show Time with Spray and Pray stages which contained a veritable sea of targets, many times over 30 shoot targets and perhaps the same number of no shoot targets...Gone were the days of a tough Z combo at 30 yds, heads only at 15 thru 35 yds, or stages which really required judicious use of your sights prior to letting the shot go,and it also spelled the demise of stages which could be set up, shot and broken down with ease, and the demise of stages which were shot from one or two locations...No these stages which mandated that anyone wanting to win, must have a "TUNED" Big Stick, stuffed into a S-I widebody gun costing big $$..., and gone were any ideas about tough, skill laden stages which did not require 20+ shots ( only alive now in some of the classifiers of old)

There were no Monkey Toss stages requiring carrying a stuffed squirrel ie, toss a granade, carry a stick pony or any other such questionable props during that stage.

They made you have holsters which really held your gun in place while you either jumped over a 3' tall barrier or did a back rollover w/o loosing your pistol...not sure many of the Open race holsters today could handle that.

There have been some changes for the better also...more innovative target presentations, ie disappearing, turners, droppers, etc..

Yes, also gone are the days when you expected to find a standards stage at most matches, and while the equipment race has died out the struggle today is how can I jam one more round into my magazine to give me more of an edge. Then you either shot "real" major at PF175 or not...no questionable calls on which bullet diameter was allowed to be pushed fast enough to make it or not...if you could, and it did, it was...end of story....There was also a different mindset among the shooters then....they knew if they wanted to win, they had to keep up with the changes to equipment, no whining; they knew there would be little or no prizes to lure them to any particular matches, they knew that if you had thin skin you would not last, and they knew if you did not getter better you'd never see your name at the top of the page (cause there were no different classes). Yes, it is different...is it better...personal call...but that it has changed, there can be no doubt. Was it harder then than now, again...it has "changed".

Edited July 28, 2008 by tightloop

[BlackSabbath]

"Old Timers...."

Hmmm...I guess I 've got one foot on each side of the line, but here goes. I'm 40. I started in 1989 at the age of 21. Target distance was much more difficult back then as 50 yard standards were the norm. Also, lots of strong and weak hand mixed in. We had field courses and speed shoots, but not all the props and moving targets. The stages weren't as Ron Avery put it once, "Carnival."

The design of courses seem to change in the mid-90's when newer shooters would get in the game and become course designers/match directors. If they didn't like the harder stuff, they simply didn't put it in the match. So, it seems like the sport has devolved at little in that area to me. I mean, like everyone else, I like hoser stages because it's fun. But back then, your B class to M shooters could pretty much hang together on the close stuff. The 50 yard standards separated the men from boys though and it highly effected the outcome of the match. And, at 50 yards, you had to know what you were doing, or you were in big trouble. My first 50 yarder was 24 round course. I hit one "D" zone and that was it! You figure out what the penalties were! I had to learn what I was doing at 50 just to keep up. It was hard work, but it really helped my shooting. In our area, lots of shooters came from an NRA Action backround. It's probaly what most came from into IPSC in the early 80's nationwide, I would imagine. I think they had a big influence on course design at the time. That's why we were shooting greater distances then. I'd love to hear BE chime in about that.

In USPSA, I'm all Production all the time now because I like the fact everyone is scored minor and "A" hits are important. I also shoot alot of steel matches and ICORE these days since it's more accuracy based. The older I get, the more I enjoy that!

Hope this helps.

Edited July 29, 2008 by BlackSabbath

[BlackSabbath]

Man,

I'd forgotten some of the stuff tightloop just mentioned. Great post! Hey tightloop, remember when our holsters smelled like leather and Ernie Hill was the stuff to have? Geez... maybe I AM old.

Edited July 28, 2008 by BlackSabbath

[Flexmoney]

I shot a stage at a local match a week ago that took me 54 seconds with my Production gun. And, I was third overall (behind one Limited and one Open gun). Somewhere around a 2.5 hit factor. And, for the 6 stage match, I probably averaged about a 4 hit factor.

[tightloop]

I shot a stage at a local match a week ago that took me 54 seconds with my Production gun. And, I was third overall (behind one Limited and one Open gun). Somewhere around a 2.5 hit factor. And, for the 6 stage match, I probably averaged about a 4 hit factor.

And did any of those factors make it harder or easier than matches in the earlier days? Good shooting BTW.

Edited July 28, 2008 by tightloop

[Flexmoney]

We get some tough stages, and matches, locally.

A good flowing (not even a hoser) stage/match...at my current level...in Production would have to be better than an 8 hit factor. Shooting at half that pace...tough.