Did IPSC used to be harder?

[Bubber]

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

JK, I thought the mantra was "The older I get the better I used to be." Did it used to be harder? I won a match with a stage in the late 70's (it was called Combat steel back then) with my right hand hancuffed to my right foot crawling throuh a 4 foot culvert. We never tried that again, and I am glad....It's different. It was easier for me to make the long shots back then than it is to hose and go today. But I'll learn..rdd

[dirtypool40]

I think there was a "spray and pray" dark ages as the focus went to the high cap dot guns and away from course design and shooter skill.

Personally I've seen course design improve and an increase in the degree of difficulty of required for the shot. Of course your local results may very.

Of course we dont' get credit for that, especially in the gun rags, but those who actually shoot, know without a doubt that USPSA is the big leagues.

[Karl @ GT]

Who remembers the "Miller Standards"? I was a new shooter in the early 90s and that was a very difficult stage with a limited gun. I could not finish all of the strings of fire, I had to shoot as many As as possible and take what I could get.

Later, karl

[tightloop]

I think there was a "spray and pray" dark ages as the focus went to the high cap dot guns and away from course design and shooter skill.

Personally I've seen course design improve and an increase in the degree of difficulty of required for the shot. Of course your local results may very.

Of course we dont' get credit for that, especially in the gun rags, but those who actually shoot, know without a doubt that USPSA is the big leagues.

DP40

It is an entirely different kind of course design. The current design trends seem to center around how well you can read the "trail markers" leading from position to position, you ability to handle different door treatments and sight barriers and possibly shooting on the move...this differs from the old school design which focused on using distance and partial target displays and combinations rather than props and movement. Doesn't make either wrong, just different. and the mental pressure of putting 18 scoring shots on target, by utilizing some distance and partial targets with just one reloading in a SS, is just as tough as trying to count to 30 as you run thru 6 shooting positions hosting big flocks of targets with your Open gun....again, both can be hard, just different. Point is that stage design has become much more elaborate so the gunners can shoot more often, most of the time with plenty of gimmie targets and a few difficult ones, where as old school target setters just set the hard ones and saw little or no purpose in gimmies at closer range.

As far as course design current trends or old school trends, and your comment about designs improving...it depends on what your objectives are before you lay pencil to paper, and comparing the two are as different as apples vs oranges in most cases.

[Carlos]

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....

. . . 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.

I agree with you. You've been shooting the sport more than 2X as long as I have. But I used to design all the stages for a local match. What about the offering the following challenge to all the other stage designers here on be.com?

At the next two local matches you design, please incorporate the following:

-at least one 50 yard target

-at least three targets in one stage that are past 25 yards

-at least one stage requiring shooting from a prone position (such as a very low port)

-at least one start requiring an unloaded gun (I understand these are more common in IPSC)

-at lease one target that is upper A/B zone only

-at least one stage or classifier requiring weak-hand only

Any other aspects that we should bring back into the sport? I agree that many matches have become simply close-range hose-fests. High speed is fun & requires certain skills. But has it become too much of a good thing?

[Flexmoney]

I guess it's your local clubs and their designs. We get much of your list in our local matches.

Here was a stage from one of the last local matches: (Opps...the video didn't come through. Anybody want to host a Quicktime movie clip for me?)

[Nik Habicht]

Hmm, we shot six stages at Old Bridge yesterday, including:

A classifier that included both strong hand only and weak hand only

10 plates on two different stages, 7 of which were probably at 10-15 yards. Plates are harder than poppers, at least a little. I found out I suck at leaving on a plate....

Several targets that were best engaged as upper A/B only

One old timey stage with four arrays shot from four boxes

One stage that required some speed coupled with precise footwork and efficient planning --- I still want a redo so I can see if a different approach would have been faster...

Two stages where almost every target was beyond ten yards, some well beyond --- and that's partly a facility consideration.

Three stages that required shooting on the move with tight side to side transitions to score well.

What were we lacking?

Prone.

Targets past 25 yards

Hard cover/No-shoots on more of the targets....

Old Bridge does pretty well every month. I think it comes down to a match management/course design problem.....

[Flexmoney]

OK...got my video up-loaded. This one wasn't a tough one. A good mix. Some hoser, some not. Just a couple with hard-cover.

I just wanted to show we do shoot under stuff and go prone.

[herky]

I don't mind prone as long as it is the last shooting position in the COF. With the average age of our local group at 60+, we sometimes need help getting up, bad knees, bad backs, etc.

[Flexmoney]

That is what I told our stage designer. Put the prone at the end...in case herky shows up.

(My back gets funky too.)

[tightloop]

That is what I told our stage designer. Put the prone at the end...in case herky shows up.

(My back gets funky too.)

When you get old like us, you can lay off a bad back on it being degenerative,but at your age it is probably something else..

[Flexmoney]

I think it's been 10yrs since I had it X-ray'd...and was told I'd need surgery.

[tightloop]

I think it's been 10yrs since I had it X-ray'd...and was told I'd need surgery.

The younger you get it fixed the better off you'll be. Faster recovery.

[Flexmoney]

Ha...I was uploading videos to YouTube and found one where we had to come out of a rocking chair. Seemed appropriate to this thread.

[herky]

Oh, that hurt.

[herky]

Back to the topic, the local matches I've shot in the last twenty years have gotten more "fun". More freestyle, far less boxes/static shooting positions. Longer shots are starting to make a come back, but some clubs just don't have the deeper ranges to handle the longer distances. Course design has pretty much given the shooters what they like.

[Bill Nesbitt]

IPSC is certainly different than it used to be.

We used to shoot a lot of fixed time standards. Stop watches and whistles. Most of the clubs were using the one rifle bay at the club. We would have several shooters on the line shooting the strings at one time. The match was often a 42 or 48 round standards with several starts. Sometimes the whole match would be one 18 round "assault course".

[BritinUSA]

Back in the old days, the stages had far fewer rounds than they do now. IPSC has the 3-2-1 rule (or something like that, 3 speed shoots, 2 medium, 1 field course). That was pretty much what we used to do when I first started but the field course was low 20's not 30+ as it is now... 7 stages would be about 125 rounds total.

Back then the double-stack 9mm that we used to use in the Tanfoglios held about 17-19 rounds. There were tons of mandatory reloads. Even the medium stages had long range targets next to close range, so you could speed up into a close one then slam on the brakes to hit a distance target. It was that slow-fast-slow-fast type thing that sorted out the men from the boys. Put a no-shoot next to that fast open target and you could almost guarantee a lot of penalties.

Nowadays, stage design seems to revolve around increase round-count. Sometimes less is more, a testing stage does not always require 30+ rounds. The trick was to allow the shooter the option of making a mistake, the shots by themselves were not always hard, but by mixing up distance and availability it caused the over-confident shooter to screw up and throw a miss or a no-shoot.

The equipment race was exciting in the late 80's and 90's. My first gun was a Ruger P89 competing against single stack Colt .45's. My second was a S&W .45 625-5. Then a Colt single stack .38 Super... I could get 10 rounds in the magazine, those .45's only got 8, kick ass time!!! I had an Ernie Hill holster for it (you were no-one without an Ernie Hill ).

Then the scopes came out, then the hi-caps. In UK the Tanfoglio/Browning were the hi-caps to have, though the UK Gold team (WS) used some custom made S&W 9mm at the World Shoot. There were problems with the alloy in Tanfoglio's back then, they could not handle the loads. John Slough invented the Spitfire 9mm handguns that addressed that issue. They were expensive but well made. Then the ban came and it all came crashing down.

Spitfire Open Gun

The 90's were amazing in IPSC, the best of times !!!

[kevin c]

Our matches in Richmond have most of what Carlos mentions. Range size prohibits 50 yd shots, but I think 6" square plates at 15 yards plus and 9" rounds at 10 yards WHO are an approximation.

Interestingly enough, our round counts have drifted down. 40 round stages were common when I started back in the mid 90's, but now it's rare that we invoke the Level I exception to 32 rds max.

Question on attendence: were there really more shooters then, or fewer clubs where folks gathered together to shoot?

[HoMiE]

I am fairly new to the sport, so hearing bout' the ol' times is cool.

Maybey, there could be a 'Vintage Division' and you can use pre-90 (or pick what ever year cutoff), run heads up like they used to.

[ChuckS]

Ha...I was uploading videos to YouTube and found one where we had to come out of a rocking chair. Seemed appropriate to this thread.

What about this one?

[shred]

Question on attendence: were there really more shooters then, or fewer clubs where folks gathered together to shoot?

'back in the day', there were 3 or sometimes 4 matches within 2 hours drive per month (and you could get further in 2 hours back then too). We hit pretty much all of 'em. Now there's a match nearly every weekend day within 2 hours, more if you want to include IDPA and steel and so on. We could pull 40 shooters to a club match, but it was pretty much the same 20 traveling shooters and 20 locals at each stop. I've noticed less of the travelling crew lately-- there's 5-10 that hit everything, but the days of 'see all y'all next week in San Antonio' are gone.

[Flexmoney]

ChuckS...that is way too funny.

[uscbigdawg]

I say heck yeah it was harder. My first major was the 1998 (I think) Area 1 in Reno, Nevada. One of the 10 stages at that match (3-Day format) was 50 yard "tuxedo" Standards. V-Shaped hard cover and they were on a pneumatic actuator so they truly disappeared. There's NO WAY you'd see that these days.

Too, at this match you were there for 3 days. You shot 2 half days and worked a half day (taping/setting steel, etc. This was great as match staff had an 8-10 person work detail and could concentrate on RO'ing. And yep...the Super Squad taped and set steel too....no ego either.

Rich