CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

Last night I participated in an Indoor USPSA match. The Whistling Pines gun club recently expanded their indoor range to have two separate shooting areas. The USPSA club is now able to setup two different stages on these separate shooting areas so they ran their first 4 stage match yesterday. With 30 shooters showing up for the match it made for two 15 shooter squads. We ran though the stages as quickly as we could but it still took us a little longer than expected. Lots of learning lessons that night on how to coordinate things but it was fun and we got to shoot 4 stages instead of the normal 2 in about the same time frame.

I went into the match knowing that I struggle with seeing my sights so I simply took however long it took to let the sights come into focus before starting to shoot. This lead to longer pauses before shooting when coming into shooting positions but yielded a lot better hits. I shot each stage pretty solid, I ended up with 1 miss for the match which I called very marginal but was long gone before I even thought about making it up. Other than that everything pretty much went as planned. Its nice to be able to hit on all cylinders on every stage.

The weather is suppose to turn crappy this Saturday and stay crappy through Sunday so I am not sure if there will be any club matches this weekend. We are still really early in the week though and the weather forecast may change. It would be nice to shoot one more club match before heading off to the Florida Open, but its not required.

I have been looking at the competition in Limited at the Florida Open and there are 6 GM’s registered including myself. I am sure there are also some unclassified IPSC shooters who are very good as well coming to attend the match. Looking at it realistically, if I can finish in the top 5 at this match it will be a significant accomplishment for me. I have never been a fan of shooting a whole major match in one day due to running out of gas at the end of the day. I also don’t get much trigger time on shooting the IPSC “Turtle” targets. But it is what it is. My goal going into it is to have fun while shooting and enjoy the nice weather of Florida which should be a nice change of pace from the current weather in Colorado. I can only perform to a skill level which I have trained. We will see where it lands me in the results listing.

Edited February 5, 2013 by CHA-LEE

[daves_not_here]

Two bay indoor matches seem to run a little faster with three squads. One squad sits out and as soon as one bay is finished it gets filled with shooters. Change over happens once everyone is through the stage.

Socialize time is done off the bay. Much nicer to have a conversation without ear protection.

DNH

Edited February 5, 2013 by daves_not_here

[CHA-LEE]

Two bay indoor matches seem to run a little faster with three squads. One squad sits out and as soon as one bay is finished it gets filled with shooters. Change over happens once everyone is through the stage.

Socialize time is done off the bay. Much nicer to have a conversation without ear protection.

DNH

That is an interesting concept. We had a little bit of squad log jamming last night. When both squads would end up on the same bay the active squads working productivity when into the toilet because everyone started shooting the shit with their buddies on the other squad instead of working. I tried my best to crack the whip on keeping the "Shooting" squad working efficiently but it would almost always end up with more "Watcher Bee's" than "Worker Bee's".

[CHA-LEE]

Its my Birthday today....... HAPPY BIRTHDAY to me !!!

[CHA-LEE]

I shot a USPSA match this past Sunday down in Pueblo. We had a cold front move in over the weekend and it canceled the Saturday match and made the Sunday match pretty cold. Temp wise it wasn’t that bad on Sunday, it was the wind that was no so fun. 35 degrees with a constant wind gets pretty cold. But it was doable and not miserable. I would rather shoot in the cold like that than in rainy and muddy conditions.

The match went pretty good. All of the stages in the match were pretty difficult from a shooting perspective. Lots of partial shots and key shooting positions to hit with long distances in between. This match had very little shooting on the move, it was mainly shoot, run, stop, shoot, run, stop, shoot, etc. I shot the match fairly solid capturing 92% of the points. But I also had two misses. Both misses were a pure failure of executing the fundamentals. The first one was from being distracted by a barrel hit that I wanted to make up, then failed to respect the next target I was shooting before I went back to make up the barrel hit. The second was pushing the shooting too fast on some fairly close partial head shots where I figured I could point shoot them and ended up with a miss that went over the top of the head. The cool thing is that I killed the classifier shooting it over 100% nationally. I was happy with my match performance even though I had some misses. I stayed aggressive on all of the stages and had solid stage plans that I executed well.

I leave for the Florida Open this coming Wednesday. I need to get my shooting gear ready and packed up for the trip tonight and tomorrow. Currently the weather forecast for Florida is showing a 50% chance of rain on Friday. Hopefully we don’t get dumped on while shooting the whole match on Friday. I will need to pack some rain gear for the match just in case it turns ugly. The good news is that the temp is suppose to be in the low to mid 70’s, which would be like summer time temps here in Colorado. Being in some warmer weather will be nice for a change.

[CHA-LEE]

Today is my first day back on US soil after my week long Cruise. Being totally detached from "normal" every day life is nice, but its good to be back.

The Florida Open was a really fun and challenging match. 10 large field courses all with "turtle" targets. The interesting twist at the match is that all of the stationary targets were fully open but every single moving target had no shoots on them. Tons of fast swingers with no shoots on them. Shooting this match clean was going to be a major feat. The weather was rainy on Thursday when we checked out the stages and the forecast was calling for more rain on Friday when we were suppose to shoot. We got lucky and missed the rain on Friday which was awesome. The humid weather caused sticky hands so getting an aggressive draw was a challenge. I felt that I shot the match as solid as I could given that all 10 stages were crammed into one day. At the end of the day I had made a few mistakes but nothing super bad. All told I had 5 misses and 1 no shoot. Before the scores were posted I thought that it was a pretty lack luster performance. After the Friday scores were posted I was sitting in 3rd place at 89% of the leader Blake Miguez. I knew that the Saturday/Sunday squads had some more heavy hitters to shoot so I knew my 3rd place standing wouldn't last long. I figured that I would end up in 4th or 5th by looking at who was left to shoot. When the final results were tallied I ended up in 6th overall in Limited at 89% of Blake. I missed 5th place by 1.5 match points. It was a bummer to not make the top 5 but that's how it goes some times. I was glad to go and I hope I can make it back next year.

[Fried Chicken Blowout]

NIce work! I assume you shot the TF and not the M&P?

[CHA-LEE]

NIce work! I assume you shot the TF and not the M&P?

Yes, I shot my EAA at this match. When I get back I will start up the M&P project again. I got a thumb safety version 4.25 inch M&P just before I left for this match/vacation. I am going to build that one up into a Limited Gun but use the unlightened 4.25 inch slide with the KKM 5.75 inch barrel. Hopefully that setup produces better mechanical accuracy than the 5 inch lightened slide setup I was using. We will see how it goes. I still have a lot of tweaking and testing to do on the M&P's before rule it out as a viable option for me in Limited.

[Fried Chicken Blowout]

Wow, got home today to find you laying on my kitchen counter. The cover model for Front Sight. Well.. You were running the timer for the cover model, but you made the cover none-the-less...

Edited February 27, 2013 by Fried Chicken Blowout

[CHA-LEE]

Wow, got home today to find you laying on my kitchen counter. The cover model for Front Sight. Well.. You were running the timer for the cover model, but you made the cover none-the-less...

Someone has to RO the top dogs at the Nationals right? I as just as surprised as you to see myself on the front cover of the Front Sight magazine. Maybe some day I can be the one shooting on the front cover instead of running the timer?

[rtr]

Charlie is a GM RO

[CHA-LEE]

This weekend I was able to get some good practice and match shooting in. On Saturday I went out and did some live fire practice with both my EAA and M&P. I was able to get the locking block on the M&P welded up and reshaped to increase the chamber lockup time as the slide comes back and it helped with the mechanical accuracy a little but it was not enough. From a unsupported position the best group the gun could shoot was 6 inches at 20 yards. With my EAA I could easily shoot a 3 inch group at 20 yards off hand as a good comparison.

When I was working on fitting the locking block I did notice that the locking lugs on the rear hood of the barrel was not fitting very tight to the breach face side of the slide. You can shift the barrel left and right a little bit and where it ends up isn’t very consistent when you dry fire the gun. I also noticed that the barrel shifts around left/right in this “slop” when you dry fire it so that could be the root cause of this inconsistent poor accuracy issue. I am going to get the rear locking lugs on the barrel welded up so I can precision fit the locking lugs to the notch in the breach face. Doing this should eliminate the left/right shifting of the barrel when its locked up. Hopefully this WILL improve the mechanical accuracy of the gun. The only other thing I can try is putting a 4.25 inch slide on the pistol to see if that produces better mechanical accuracy. I might just try that before welding up the barrel as it can be easily swapped over to and tested out.

Since the M&P still wasn’t accurate enough I didn’t use it much during practice. Most of the live fire stage based practice was done with my EAA. My main focus for the training day was to get my draw to first shot at or under 1 second. The stage we were using required you to start outside of the shooting area then step in and shoot after the buzzer. I was able to produce consistent 1.10 – 1.20 first shots with a couple of 1.0x times. I wasn’t able to get under one second during the practice session. But I think that given the requirement of stepping into the box and having to index to the left for the first target there was too much foot work and body movement to get it under a second and produce reliable hits. Other than that it was a good practice session and I enjoyed shooting with friends.

On Sunday I attended a local USPSA match at the Aurora Gun Club. We recently had some snow and there as still some snow in the bays so the stages were setup a little differently than they usually are to avoid the snow. We had 5 stages in the match which were all challenging and fun. On the first stage of the day I had a strange nose dive jam in the middle of the last shooting position which cost me at least 2 seconds to recover from. I think that my magazine springs may be getting old and that would be a common cause to this issue. It only happened once during the match, but it happened. Other than that I shot a fairly solid match. I ended up with 2 misses, one on the classifier, which I called bad but couldn’t make up because it was a Virginia count stage. The second miss was on a really tight target blocked by no shoots about 20 yards away, basically a head shot target. I called the shots good but only ended up with one hit. I think I was aiming too high on the target to avoid the no shoot and one of the rounds went over the top. It was a fun match though and I was happy with my results. All of my draws were aggressive and efficient which is what I was focusing on for this match.

An interesting side note to Sunday was a bunch of shooters talking to me about my “Cameo” appearance on the cover of the Front Sight magazine. One shooter even wanted me to autograph his magazine which was cool. I never thought that being on the cover of the Front Sight magazine as an RO would make me so popular. Either way it was fun to talk to my fellow shooters about it.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I shot the Texas State Open match. This was the first time I have gone to this match so it was cool to shoot at a new range with new people. The match was 12 stages and all of them were medium or long field courses so lots of blasting was in order. I ended up on the “Rudy Project” Squad which included Blake Miguez so it was cool to get to see him shoot. The Rudy Project guys are great and the whole squad worked hard through the match. The initial match schedule was to shoot 8 stages on Saturday and 4 on Sunday but rain in the forecast for Sunday had the match staff pushing the shooters to complete the whole match on Saturday. Our squad was one of the “Lucky” ones to be able to finish all 12 stages on Saturday even though we finished the last stage when it was getting dark. It started raining on Saturday night and continued through Sunday morning so the shooters who had to finish the match on Sunday were in for some really sloppy and muddy shooting conditions. It was rugged to cram all 12 stages into Saturday but I think it would be worse to shoot stages in the mud on Sunday.

Since I thought that we were going to only shoot 8 stages on Saturday I brought enough food for that amount of time on the range. Cramming an extra 4 stages into the day along with 4 more hours than expected left me high and dry on the nourishment department. I was running out of gas on the last 5 stages of the day and it showed big time on my stage 9 performance. Up to that point I was shooting a fairly solid match with a few errors here or there, but on Stage 9 I ended up with 4 misses and 4 D’s along with a crappy stage time. Giving up at least 80 match points on a single stage is a bitter pill to swallow, but it was a good reality check to force me to buckle down and push through the rest of the stages. Other than stage 9 I had three other misses and a no shoot. Two of those misses were purely due to trying to point shoot really close targets and not watching my sights and the last one was on a hard cover target on the last stage of the day when I couldn’t see my sights at all due to the low light situation. I know I could have avoided the two point shooting misses, but not the low light one. I was actually surprised that I only had one miss on the last stage of the day since I couldn’t see my sights at all and had to use the “FORCE” to will my hits onto the targets. Some times you get lucky, some times you don’t.

I ended up 2^nd in Limited behind Blake Miguez at 85%. Without the stage 9 train wreck I would have been at 90% - 95% of Blake which would have been nice. But it is what it is. Lesson learned, take more food than you need to these major matches. Drinking a gallon of water and eating two low carb power bars isn’t enough to sustain proper energy while at the range for 10 – 12 hours. There is always a lesson to learn at these major matches, some are just harder than others.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend was really busy with local matches. On Saturday I had to run the local club match for the High Plains Practical Shooters as I am the club president. We setup 6 fun stages for the match. The forecast called for rain in the afternoon so we all worked hard to get the match setup, shot and put away before the rain came. We succeeded in getting the match done before the rain which was good. Nobody likes slopping around in the rain/mud tearing down stages and putting them away. I shot a pretty crappy match myself. I worked my ass off all day and actually shooting the match was not a priority and it really showed in my match performance. I also forgot to bring my normal winter coat to the match so I was really cold while shooting the match. My hands were so cold that I couldn’t shoot fast at all which also screwed up my timing on several stages. Oh well, the match its self was a success and the shooters had fun so that was the primary goal.

On Sunday I shot the Weld County Practical Shooters local match up in the Ft. Collins area. The weather forecast was suppose to be colder than Saturday so I brought my cold shooting gear. By the time the match started the weather warmed up nice and we were all shedding our coats and extra layers of clothing. Its nice when the weather turns nice on a day that is suppose to be cold. Since I could focus on my shooting at this match my match performance was a lot better. I had a pretty solid match. No misses or no shoots, but I did have 4 D’s. I screwed up the classifier pretty bad. We shot a classifier called Paper Poppers where you shoot 6 poppers, reload, then two paper. I have shot this classifier many times in the past and decided to use a wide stance so I could transition between the two paper better. This was a bad idea because it completely ruined my solid stance for the steel in the middle. I knew I was in trouble after breaking the first shot and the recoil pushed me back onto my heel s and I had really poor recoil control. I proceeded to miss just about every other steel several times taking forever to get the steel down. I ended up with a 9 second run when it should have been in the mid 5 seconds. That is how it goes some times when you try doing something different. Even with the classifier stage screw up I felt that I had a really solid match. I shot 95% of the available match points with aggressive and efficient stage execution. I ended up second overall to Paul Clark Jr by 13 match points, which I easily gave away on the classifier. Even though I didn’t win the match I felt very happy with my match performance. It’s cool when you can walk away from a match and feel good about your performance regardless of where you actually end up in the results.

Tonight I am going to head down to Colorado Springs and attend the ICORE match and drop off some Nooks that I Rooted and loaded PractiScore on. Its looking like I am going to be the “Nook Dude” for the section so I am doing my best to help the local clubs get setup with the Nook/PractiScore solution. It will be nice when the whole section has moved away from the Palm Pilots over to the Nooks. At least that way every match will be scored the same and the shooters will get a lot of experience in using the Nooks and PractiScore for the local matches.

[CHA-LEE]

Last night I shot the indoor ICORE match down in Colorado Springs. They recently expanded the indoor range to include a second separate range so now we can run two squads and 4 stages instead of one big squad and two to maybe three stages. Shooting the ICORE match with the tombstone style targets and time plus scoring is really not by cup of tea, but it’s an opportunity to get some shooting done. I had a few misses throughout the evening but I wasn’t really taking the shooting too seriously. Seeing my sights indoors is still a challenge. I don’t think I will ever figure out a fix for that issue.

This week I need to put in some serious time on reloading ammo. I need to load about 2500 rounds this week to get stocked up for the next wave of major matches and club matches I am planning on attending in April and May.

My project list is also growing as I have to get the barrel welded up on the M&P to see if that improves the accuracy. Then I have to build up my new Tanfoglio Limited gun to replace the current work horse EAA Witness Limited I am using right now.

There is plenty of stuff to do and not too much time to do it. I am glad that I don’t have any major matches until the end of April as that should give me enough time to get these projects finished. If I can get the M&P accuracy issues resolved I might take that out to the Space City match in Texas.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend we had a really heavy snow storm so all of the local matches got canceled. With 20 degree weather and snow it didn’t make sense to even try to go out and practice. Since I couldn’t shoot, I spent a lot of time working on my guns, tuning up gear, and loading ammo. I was able to get the M&P’s KKM barrel welded up and fitted to the slide. It now has zero left to right slop but still locks and unlocks without binding. It took me about 2 hours to fit the barrel properly, which was a lot more than what I expected it to be. The next time I get to the range I am going to do some group shooting with it to see if the accuracy issues are finally resolved.

Since I just got a new Tanfo Limited gun I also had the slide cut down to 10oz and did some extensive dremel work on it to smooth out the rough edges and all that good stuff. I still need to work on the frame and am hoping to get that done this week. Once all of the dremel work is done I need to get the parts sand blasted then dropped off for hard chrome. It will probably take about a month for me to get this new Tanfo finished and ready for action.

On top of all this gun work I still need to reload out about 5000 rounds to build up my local/practice and major match stock of ammo. Over the weekend I loaded about 2000 rounds and that was just to rebuild my major match ammo. I am hoping to get at least 3000 rounds of local match/practice ammo loaded up after work this week. I am not looking forward to all of the mindless time running the press, but it’s not going to load its self.

I am pulling together a Competition Pistol training class for this coming weekend. There have been several people inquiring about doing some training with me and the weather this coming weekend is looking good so its time to take advantage of the good weather while we can. I really enjoy presenting the training classes and look forward to working with a different group of shooters. It’s a lot of fun watching shooters try doing things outside their comfort zone and see the light bulb come on when they make a new discovery. That is a very rewarding experience.

[Chris iliff]

Hey, I know this might sound dumb, but why don't you just hook up a small flashlight to your hearing protection? Screw the lens out so it's not a focused beam, more of a flood light type beam coverage. I can't think of a single rule that violates, heck, guys run around with cameras mounted up there.

Edited to say: This is in reference to indoor shooting and poor visibility.

Edited March 31, 2013 by Chris iliff

[CHA-LEE]

Hey, I know this might sound dumb, but why don't you just hook up a small flashlight to your hearing protection? Screw the lens out so it's not a focused beam, more of a flood light type beam coverage. I can't think of a single rule that violates, heck, guys run around with cameras mounted up there.

Edited to say: This is in reference to indoor shooting and poor visibility.

I have actually tried that and it makes it worse because it lights up the rear sight too much and then I can't see the front sight at all. Good idea though, at least I thought it was when I tried it.

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend was pretty busy with shooting stuff. I presented a competition pistol training class on Saturday. Since ammo and reloading components are so hard to find right now we augmented the training with a lot more dry fire than live fire to conserve ammo. I would have the students dry fire the drills 3 – 4 times then shoot it a couple of times and that seemed to work out pretty good. Everyone seemed to learn what they needed with this method of training and everyone appreciated the conservation of ammo. I like doing training classes and its always fun to see people get better as the day goes on.

After the class was over I stayed at the range to test fire my AR that I have been working on. I have been battling a strange jamming issue for a while and I think I finally got it figured out. After that I wanted to work on my one shot draws to see how close I could get to my dry fire par times. I set a target out 7 yards and shot about 25 rounds doing one shot draws as aggressively as I could. Simply point shooting at the target firing as soon as the gun was on target I could produce consistent 0.7x draws. I had a few 0.6x draws and a few 0.8x draws. My hits were on target, but not pretty. I then spent some time doing more draws but waiting slightly to get a refined sight picture before breaking the shot and I could produce consistent 0.8x draws to an A-zone hit. Then I moved back to 20 yards and did the same drills putting a lot of focus on getting the gun up and out aggressively then being patient to see a solid sight picture before breaking the shot. At 20 yards I was able to produce consistent 1.1X draws with A-Zone hits. It’s always hard to draw and mount the gun aggressively while engaging far targets but then be patient to allow the sight picture to settle down. I still need to spend a lot of time live fire training this draw to first shot skills but it was nice to build some confidence in the skill that day. Every little bit helps.

On Sunday I attended a local USPSA match in Boulder. This match is unique because they usually have 2 stages on the indoor range then 3 outdoors. That and all of the rounds have to impact the back berms so there is no side shooting at this match. We started on the indoor stages and the lighting was pretty low. I couldn’t see my sights worth a crap and ended up with 3 D’s and a No Shoot on one stage, then 3 more D’s and a Miss on the other stage. Not being able to see your sights and being forced to point shoot stuff sucks, but it is what it is. Once we got outside though, it was on like donkey kong. I shot all of the outdoor stages very solidly and was happy with my runs. My outdoor stage runs were solid enough to allow me to win the match. But it still hurt to give away 40+ match points on the indoor stages. Every stage had a funky start so I really didn’t get a chance to test my aggressive “Normal” draw.

Tonight I am planning on going to the Colorado Springs indoor USPSA match. Hopefully I will get a few opportunities to test out my “normal” draw to see if I can get it into the 0.8x range in match conditions. We will see how it goes.

[CHA-LEE]

The indoor match last night was fun and frustrating at the same time. We shot 4 stages with two of them being in low light. I was not able to see my sights at all in the low light stages and my lack of quality hits was very evident of that fact. Oh well it is what it is. We shot classifier 99-40 called Partial People eaters which was a 4 second fixed time multi string stage. This classifier is a pretty tuff one as it tests your long distance shooting, Strong/Weak hand shooting and up close blasting shooting skills. My goal was to get all of my hits on every string as that seemed to be an unobtainable feat that my squad couldn’t obtain. I was able to get all of my shots off in time on all four strings, but ended up with one miss, just into the hard cover on the weak hand string. Otherwise I had pretty good hits. It was nice to execute pretty well on the classifier, but doing well on it was still not enough to overcome the Misses and No Shoots I had on the low light stages. I was able to draw aggressively on all of the stages though which was nice.

Next weekend I will be ROing the Area 2 Multi-Gun match at the Colorado Rifle Club. I am not shooting this match, just ROing. It will be cool to see how a Multi-Gun match goes. I am going to bring my pistol and AR and shoot the stage I am ROing for fun when there is down time.

[Chris iliff]

Hey, I know this might sound dumb, but why don't you just hook up a small flashlight to your hearing protection? Screw the lens out so it's not a focused beam, more of a flood light type beam coverage. I can't think of a single rule that violates, heck, guys run around with cameras mounted up there.

Edited to say: This is in reference to indoor shooting and poor visibility.

I have actually tried that and it makes it worse because it lights up the rear sight too much and then I can't see the front sight at all. Good idea though, at least I thought it was when I tried it.

Darn, I really thought it was going to be a lightbulb moment, stupid pun intended. Sorry it didn't work out..

[CHA-LEE]

This past weekend I served as an RO for the 2013 Noveske Multi Gun Championship. I ROed Stage 1 with a fellow local shooter Terrance Jackson. The stage was spread across two different bays, with Rifle on the first bay, then Pistol and Shotgun on the second bay. The shooters had to engage a bunch of paper targets on the first bay, dump their rifle then run over to the second bay and engage a bunch more paper with their pistol then dump the pistol and engage a bunch of steel plates with their shotgun. I was the “Timer” RO for the whole match so I had to run every single shooter through this stage which made for an exhausting weekend. When you have to basically do a 75 yard sprint every time you run a shooter the legs and feet start to complain about the situation. I tried my best to run hard with all of the shooters while ROing and felt that I only got left behind a few times towards the end of the shooting days when I was really worn out. But I got it done and it was an interesting experience.

Being able to see all of the shooters run through the stage was really fun. The shooters that had the best times were usually shooting the rifle portion a lot more aggressively than the rest. I was actually surprised at how many shooters didn’t actually “RUN” between bays. Quite a few of them put in a half ass effort of jogging between bays which cost them quite a bit of time. It just does not make sense to me that people would be willing to give up 5 – 10 seconds of stage time by simply not running when they had to run.

After the match was over I had a chance to shoot the whole stage myself. I used my home defense AR and borrowed a friends shotgun. It was fun to shoot the stage with all three guns. Its probably been at least 20 years since I shot a shotgun so that was really interesting in its self.

Everyone kept asking me when I was going to start shooting 3-Gun matches. But I don’t see the allure in it. I really like shooting pistol matches and feel like I still have a lot of improvement that I can make in perfecting my pistol shooting skills. Trying to learn and perfect three guns at the same time sounds like too much work and expensive to try to get really good at all three. Maybe I will get into it if I win the Powerball some day when I don’t have to work and would have a mountain of time and money to invest in it. Until then, I will keep working on perfecting my pistol shooting skills and be happy with that hobby.

[dravz]

Everyone kept asking me when I was going to start shooting 3-Gun matches. But I don’t see the allure in it. I really like shooting pistol matches and feel like I still have a lot of improvement that I can make in perfecting my pistol shooting skills. Trying to learn and perfect three guns at the same time sounds like too much work and expensive to try to get really good at all three. Maybe I will get into it if I win the Powerball some day when I don’t have to work and would have a mountain of time and money to invest in it. Until then, I will keep working on perfecting my pistol shooting skills and be happy with that hobby.

I haven't started shooting it yet myself but that's exactly the allure of it to me -- that no one can practice enough to be perfect at everything so you have to prioritize your training. Those who can practice better can beat those who practice more (though obviously we'd like to do both).

I don't even know if that's true but that's my thought. The expense is really off-putting though.

[MarkCO]

Thanks for your work out there "Red Blur".

[CHA-LEE]

Everyone kept asking me when I was going to start shooting 3-Gun matches. But I don’t see the allure in it. I really like shooting pistol matches and feel like I still have a lot of improvement that I can make in perfecting my pistol shooting skills. Trying to learn and perfect three guns at the same time sounds like too much work and expensive to try to get really good at all three. Maybe I will get into it if I win the Powerball some day when I don’t have to work and would have a mountain of time and money to invest in it. Until then, I will keep working on perfecting my pistol shooting skills and be happy with that hobby.

I haven't started shooting it yet myself but that's exactly the allure of it to me -- that no one can practice enough to be perfect at everything so you have to prioritize your training. Those who can practice better can beat those who practice more (though obviously we'd like to do both).

I don't even know if that's true but that's my thought. The expense is really off-putting though.

Whatever floats your boat man. I hope it didn't come across that I thought that 3-Gun competition was any less fun or entertaining than only doing pistol stuff. Everyone is unique and likes different stuff. For the shooters who prefer to do the 3-Gun stuff or any other shooting sport for that matter, more power to them. I am just saying that my personality leans towards figuring out one thing and getting really good at it before I move onto the next thing. This is probably the main reason why I have pretty much shot Limited division exclusively in USPSA matches. I don't see the point in changing divisions all the time when I can focus on one division and get good at it.