CHA-LEE's Tale

[Thomas H]

I can already see and feel some of the Manny Bragg class tips showing up in my shooting. First, shooting slower and getting hits.

Hmm, where have we heard that before?

[CHA-LEE]

I know..... Some lessons are harder than others

[CHA-LEE]

Here are the video’s from this Sunday’s USPSA match. I was able to capture footage of every stage except for the classifier which was a train wreck anyway. So I am not too worried about missing the footage on that.

Stage 1 – This stage consisted of three shooting boxes with a group of 4 targets near each shooting box. The stage description enabled you to start in any box you liked with the only mandate being that targets should be engaged from all three shooting boxes. I had the hardest time coming up with the best plan on shooting this stage out of all of them. Most shooters chose to shoot it “Straight Up” being that they would go to every shooting box and engage the closes string of targets to that shooting box. I couldn’t decide if doing it that way or picking one box to engage two sets of targets from and then blazing through the middle box firing one round at a target would be faster. Since I like to try things that are outside the normal way of doing things just to experience it I gave it a try this alternate way. Interestingly enough my stage time ended up just about the same as the other guys that engaged the targets from every box. So no time gained or lost this way. But I did make the shots on the other side of the stage harder than they should have been. So my way of doing it was probably not the best way. But at least I tried. The one thing that I am really happy with on this run is my aggressive transition from the left side targets to the right side targets. I decided to take a forward facing stance at the start of the stage then cam my upper body towards the left side targets. This enabled me to whip around to the right really fast and controllable to engage the other string of targets. I need to do more of this in my stage planning.

Stage 2 – This is the 22 round stage that I loaded up 22 rounds on and didn’t make a mag change. All or nothing on the round count for this stage. Watching this video I can see that some of my movements are not optimal, such as getting to the port and poking my gun through then engaging the target. I am also not aggressive enough on my target to target transitions on the back section of the stage. I don’t know if I was looking for holes in the targets or if I was just on the “take it easy and get your hits” pace of shooting. Either way, I ended up winning the stage so I had to be doing something right. I know that not performing a mag change probably saved me enough time to win the stage. Most of the other Limited shooters were performing their mag change either before or after the port in the middle of the COF. This was the second to last stage of the day for me and I knew that I was behind on stage points due to the screw ups on the first couple of stages so I decided to go for it without a mag change to try and gain some ground back. Risky for sure but this time it ended up paying off.

Stage 3 – This was a crazy steel stage. This had it all in forms of steel. Big and small poppers, plates, plate rack, and a Texas star. Then a single wide open paper target at the end of the COF. Since everyone would end up with pretty much the same points on this stage since it was almost all steel I knew that it would mainly come down to who had the best time. My main goal through the stage was to keep moving a much as I could at the start of the stage as that is where most people were wasting a ton of time planting for the poppers and plates. This worked out pretty good for me but on the last string of poppers I had too many misses and was still advancing so it put me close to the 180 for the right side plates and I had to stop moving forward to engage the plates. I was also transitioning from left to right pretty slow which also wasted some time. After the forward movement section there was a plate rack on the extreme right, a Texas star in the middle and the lone paper target and three poppers on the extreme left. The extreme left and right shooting positions were very awkward as the fault line had you pinched in from the edge of the wall. I chose to shoot the extreme right side Strong Hand Only because I could lean out around the wall a lot easier shooting that way and be more aggressive getting out of the shooting position as well. I shot the Texas star starting with the top then left/right down to the bottom and it went really well. I think I am going to continue shooting them this way from now on as it is way easier to pick up the next plate to engage in my peripheral vision. Then the left side had you pinched up in an awkward stance to access the last targets and I did my best to stay balanced and crank out the shots. Shooting off balance rewarded me with some pretty bad hits on the paper target and a make up shot was needed on the steel poppers. Amazingly enough this mediocre performance on my part netted me a second place finish only a second behind the stage winner. If I would have slowed down my shooting a little bit on the way up to ensure my hits I think I would have been able to win this stage.

Stage 4 – This was the first stage of the day. I think that my movement through the stage was good, but I shot some of the far targets too fast and ended up with two misses. I also did a very poor job of timing the double swingers at the end of the stage. I figured that I would hit the activating steel, a stationary paper target, then clean up both swingers. But I ended up waiting for the left side swinger to present its self again and hurried the shots netting me a miss. I should have hit the activating steel then waited a little to engage both swingers on their first pass. Oh well. At least my movement through the stage wasn’t too bad.

Stage 6 – This was an interesting stage with a good mix of close fast stuff and far away tight shots. I think I shot this stage pretty well, but maybe a little too fast on the far away targets as my hits were lack luster on them. I ended up nicking a no shoot blocking one of the tight far away targets so that hurt my stage run. But I still needed better hits on the far away targets to make it a home run stage performance. The strange thing with this stage is that my “Plan” was to get to the back port and engage the far targets from left to right and finish up with the close target on the extreme right. But when I shot the stage I ended up shooting the close extreme right target first and then engaging the far targets from right to left. I didn’t even realize this until I looked at the video too. I know that it is harder for me to slow down my shooting verses shooting slow and speed up and that is why I wanted to engage the close extreme right target last. But that’s not how it turned out. All I can say is that the shooting “Auto Pilot” comes up with some interesting ways of shooting some times. But I would rather have a subconscious stage run verses a commanded one that would end up being way slower.

That’s my shooting for Sunday. Feel free to give me any suggestions if you like.

[SA Friday]

A couple of things I saw:

If you have to leave a port and continue shooting, don't stick the gun in there unless you have to.

Your draw: get your hand to the gun. You are losing time there. Smooth and controlled in the presentation, but get you hand to the gun. Stew ang Glenn are the best examples of this.

I saw you pulling off of targets as the shot broke in multiple stages. Those are your D's and M's.

[CHA-LEE]

SA Friday> Thanks for the advice.

Ports - I am bad about crowding the ports and sticking my gun through. I think its mostly due to wanting to be closer to the targets on where I setup my footing. Which is stupid because being 1 - 2 feet closer to the target really isnt going to make a difference in shot difficulty anyway. Bad habit and I need to break it. Thats why I need you to slap me around when I try to do that at the local matches

Draw - This is something that I tend to get lax on for field courses. For whatever reason I think that if I am moving while drawing it will "Mask" doing it slower. But that is just an excuse for not going after it faster. I guess my biggest fear is getting a poor strong hand grip on the gun if I try to draw really fast. More masking of my poor skills. Right now I am trying to burn in a different way of drawing/gripping the gun based on what we went over in the Manny Bragg class and have been focusing more on proper execution of this draw/grip method verses trying to do it fast. Unlearning and Relearning something is hard to do. But overall, YES I am losing time on my draw due to not being aggressive enough. The same could be said for my reloads.

Pulling off targets - Hhhmmm. I will have to explore this more. I know that most of the time if I move my head off of target before or as the shot breaks it will pull my hits in the direction of the head movement. Maybe I need to be more patient in my follow through post shot on the second shot. Its a fine line to walk. I want to get each target over and done with as soon as possible so I can move onto the next and lingering on the current target after the second shot breaks seems like a waste of time. But if you end up getting crap hits because you are moving your head too soon the extra speed is all for not. Man, this stuff is tuff!!!

[CHA-LEE]

USPSA match on Saturday. Man, what a train wreck of a match performance for me. The match its self was awesome with great stages and great people on my squad. I got to the match early to help setting up and that went well. But right before the match began I started getting a tingling feeling in my hands. It was strange and I have felt it before when my blood sugar got way too high. This tingling was still present when the match started and I was up to shoot the first stage. Needless to say I was feeling a little strange and shot the stage poorly mainly due to being unsure about my physical condition. I had two misses on the first stage and knew that I would need a great performance on the rest of the stages to make some level of decent overall finishing position. The second stage I was still feeling strange but it was getting a little better. I decided to shoot the stage differently than everyone else by shooting a section of it strong hand only and I ended up shooting it too fast and was rewarded with two more misses. At this point I knew the match was sunk so I would instead try shooting the rest of the stages differently on purpose just to see how it turns out. My main focus was to shoot the stages with less movement and more longer and tighter shots. One long field course stage was a perfect stage for testing this. You had the choice of running and gunning about 20 yards with most of the shots fairly close, or having two shooting positions about 5 feet apart and a bunch of long & tight shots. I chose to shoot it from the two shooting positions with the long and tight shots and ended up with a longer time than the other top shooters who ran through the stage. My plan wasn’t the best for the stage, but it was a good experience and that made it worth it.

The only decent performance of the match, funny enough, was on the Classifier. I shot it conservatively to get my hits and not go “Hero or Zero” on it and ended up with a 76% run on it. That is exactly what I needed to bump my classifier average up to 85.3% which would put me into Master class in Limited. The thing that sucks is that I doubt this will show up in the August classification recalculation on the USPSA website because its half way into the month. They usually only include classifiers from the first week of the month but not any more until the next month. So I will probably have to wait until the next recalculation in September for it to show up. Oh well, it will happen when it happens right? Either way, I think its cool that I started shooting USPSA matches in August of 08 and one year later I was able to make Master in Limited. Not many people can achieve that level of progression within a year of starting practical shooting. I have worked hard at getting better and making Master is an achievement but it really just opens my eyes to how much more I need to learn and perfect to become good at this sport. There is so much more that I need do better it is some times overwhelming and frustrating. But I am not going to give up. I will get better and hopefully some day I can look at my shooting and honestly say “I am good at this”. Right now, I feel like I am far from that level. Much more practice and experience is going to be needed to move ahead.

On that note, I am planning on attending the evening USPSA match tomorrow night. I look forward to another opportunity to experience shooting and work on perfecting my skills.

[eerw]

The only decent performance of the match, funny enough, was on the Classifier. I shot it conservatively to get my hits and not go “Hero or Zero” on it and ended up with a 76% run on it. That is exactly what I needed to bump my classifier average up to 85.3% which would put me into Master class in Limited.

Awesome!!! you deserve that M. you have worked consistently hard, seeking information, working on technique and questioning.. Well done!!

[MarkCO]

Awesome!!! you deserve that M. you have worked consistently hard, seeking information, working on technique and questioning.. Well done!!

Nice going Charlie. It is nice to see your hard work pay off with such a nice reward. I'm shooting both local matches this weekend, so see you there.

Edited August 17, 2009 by MarkCO

[CHA-LEE]

Thanks guys, and thank you both for all of your help!!! If it wasn’t for MarkCO I wouldn’t have even known about competition practical shooting. He is the one that introduced me to competition pistol shooting, hell pistol shooting its self, and ever since then I was hooked. So I guess you could call him a pusher of highly addictive things

If it wasn’t for eerw's constant presentation of shooting badassedry at the local matches, I would have probably never thought that someone could shoot that fast or well. He was the first GM I ever witnessed BURN DOWN stage after stage all the while making it look like an effortless activity. Wanting to be able to shoot that well was a HUGE drive for keeping my nose to the grind stone on trying to get better. I still have a long way to go and eerw still teaches lessons in wickedness pretty much every match. All you have to do is open your mind and attention to witness all those little things that when done correctly manifest into something awesome. You should sell tickets to your squad mates when they watch you shoot!!!

These are only two of a large humble family of local shooters that have helped me along the way. This sport is needless to say, fun and exciting. But the people you meet and shoot with are truly awesome. I have been in a lot of competitive sporting environments before and sure they all have their fair share of helpful people. But for some unknown reason, the people that participate in the practical shooting sports are all great people that would be willing to do whatever it takes to make matches happen and help out with whatever they have to keep someone going. Making the "Next" level in classification is nice, but I hope that I am always striving to make the next "level" in kindness, friendliness, and willingness to help others. Practical shooting has made me a far better person overall simply because you are surrounded by great people all the time. I could never get any better at shooting and still consider it a WIN to participate in practical shooting simply because I know that being around these great people make me a better person. For this I am truly grateful!!!!

[CHA-LEE]

I shot the USPSA match last night and it turned out to be a completely different type of match. They used ICORE targets and then scored them using a stage time + hits add more time method, kind of like what they do in IDPA. The targets had a +0 time added scoring area that was about the same size as the IDPA targets -0 section in the body. Then the next outer ring was +1 second and the next ring outside of that was +3 seconds. The perforation of the extreme outer ring was probably within the “C” zone of a normal USPSA target but since it was circular it was a lot smaller total scoring area. The +0 scoring zone of the target was really not too much larger than a head shot on a USPSA target so accuracy was a must. To make it even more tuff they made the stage a Virginia count course with only two shots per target. So if you missed the +0 scoring zone on any of your shots you were in a world of hurt because a lot of time was going to be added to your stage score. The first stage consisted of 12 targets setup in a four strings of three targets. The first three you engaged from the extreme left box, then there were two middle strings that you could shoot from anywhere in the middle as long as you could see them from behind blocking walls, and then the last string was engaged from an extreme right box. Since accuracy was a must I chose not to shoot any of the strings on the move but to instead plant in specific shooting positions and then haul ass as fast as I could to the next shooting position. This worked out well for the first stage as I was only down 2 point and had a decent stage time. For the second stage it was pretty much the same but they took out the middle target in the three target strings but then stipulated that three shots be made on each target. So the round count was the same but there were only two targets in each shooting position instead of three. I couldn’t restrain myself any more and chose to shoot the stage at normal USPSA speed but still stuck with the planted shooting position method. On the second run I trimmed off three seconds from the first stage run, but ended up with 8 points down which blew out my stage time. I guess the thing that was the most frustrating was that my +1 hits were mostly less than an inch from the +0 scoring area. I had one +3 hit that I knew was there due to shooting it way too fast. But with it being Virginia count, I couldn’t make it up.

Interesting match for sure and one of my weak points right now is forcing myself to slow down and get my hits, so I actually liked being forced to ensure good hits on the targets. But there was some grumbling from a few shooters about not having a normal USPSA match with USPSA targets. I can see both sides of the argument (For or Against using the ICORE targets and scoring) but I guess I really didn’t care. I got to shoot, learned some more discipline in my shooting, had fun and everyone had the same shooting challenge so I didn’t see what the big deal was. Shooting is shooting and I would rather shoot than not shoot so I don’t get too worried about what “Game” I am shooting. It’s a laid back club match so trying something different was cool to me. Maybe I am less sensitive about it since I will go shoot just about any type of match and most others stick to just USPSA matches? Oh well, everyone is entitled to their own opinion of things I guess. I just try to roll with the flow and have a good time.

[eerw]

That was challenge. I also had the wrong glasses..so was not seeing the sights as well as I should.

the first stage, I tried to make good hits and found I was shooting high and dropped 9.

the second stage, I said just shoot, you can shoot accurate..and ended dropping 3.

a different pace for sure..and you are right, you can learn from everything. it was good to see you guys.

[CHA-LEE]

USPSA match today. This is one of the matches I help extensively with setup and tear down. It’s a lot of work but I like giving back when I can. Since I was working my tail off all morning setting up stages I didnt get a chance to walk and program the stages from a competition standpoint. This usually has a negative impact on my shooting and it bit me again today. Overall I felt behind schedule all day.

The first stage of the day I was far down enough in the shooting order that I was able to get a good plan programmed. I shot the stage well EXCEPT for the final shooting position. The final position was a port that had a some close fast shots and a long distance small plate. I was so focused on moving aggressively to the port and engaging the close targets quickly that I completely lost track of my footing. I ended up with one foot out of the shooting area and racked up 7 procedurals due to being outside the shooting area while engaging the last four targets. That was a complete novice mistake and I felt like a bone head for doing it. Especially since I had a good run other than that. Not a good way to start off the match. But I did my best to let it go and move on.

The second stage of the day was a complete stage planning train wreck. I was fairly high up in the shooting order and I had not looked at the stage before getting to the berm with my squad. You could shoot the stage probably 5 different ways and I was flip flopping my stage plan back and forth all over the place. I couldn’t come up with a solid stage plan much less program it. Before I knew it I was up to shoot and I mentally threw up my hands and said to myself “You just have to wing it”. Off goes the buzzer and I am chugging through targets as soon as I can see them. It’s a super clunky and a forced performance. I had a lack luster stage time and also ended up with a miss to top it off. I really haven’t felt that “Lost” on figuring out a stage since I first started. It was a really strange experience. Once again I did my best to let it go and move on.

The third stage of the day was a tricky stage with a good mix of fast shooting as well as slow tight shots. I had a completely opposite experience with stage planning for this stage. It was strange how easy I came up with the stage plan and it felt like I didn’t even have to program it. I just knew it. Super strange. It felt no different or more difficult to figure out than drawing to a row of three targets standing next to one another. I still went through my normal stage programming process and when it was my turn to shoot it went really well. I called every shot and much to my delight I also made up called bad shots instantly. The only thing I wish I could take back from the run was racking the slide after the reload. I had a few called poor shots that I made up before the reload and I was already pushing the limits on round count before the mag change so after I did the reload I racked the slide to make sure there was a round in the chamber. I have my gun setup to not lock the slide back on the last round so I don’t really know when it has run dry. Its funny how your mind thinks of these things in the heat of the moment and when I racked the slide after the reload and seen a live round pop out I said in my mind “YOU IDIOT!!!”. But then after the stage I thought about it and the extra half a second it took me to rack the slide and regrip the gun was really cheap insurance verses there not being a round in the chamber and I would drop the hammer on an empty chamber and have to rack the slide anyway which would have easily taken three times longer to recover from. Either way, I must have been doing something right as I won the stage in Limited.

The fourth stage of the day was the classifier called “Front Sight” 99-23. This is a not so hard classifier to shoot as you are fairly close to totally open targets. But the 100% hit factor is insanely high. There are two strings to this stage. First string is facing away from the targets, you turn, draw, and engage three targets with two rounds each. Second string is facing the targets, draw, and engage the same targets again with two rounds each. The 100% hit factor with all the points had both strings shot at 2 seconds flat. At this point in the match I felt like my match was pretty hosed by the first stage of the day blunder so why not go all out on this classifier. Even though I kept telling myself “BURN IT DOWN, BURN IT DOWN” when it came time to shoot I still restrained myself a little to ensure my hits. I ended up being 8 points down, with too many “C” zone hits. But a good overall time of 4.67 seconds. This netted me an 83% run, which was nice.

The fifth and final stage of the day was a box to box stage. You started seated in a chair between the boxes then went to one of the boxes and engaged four IPSC “Turtle” targets each blocked by no shoots. Then moved to the other box and reengaged the same targets. The stage was Virginia Count so if you missed or dropped a shot into one of the no shoots you were in a world of hurt. I shot the stage “OK” but not really well. I didn’t draw my gun as soon as I got up from the chair so when I got to the first box I had to wait to raise the gun before I could start shooting. I shot it a little sloppy with less then perfect hits but I at least got all of my hits. My movement to the second box was good and I had the gun up and ready to rumble as soon as I entered and finished up the last string well. My stage time was pretty decent but my sloppy hits hurt my overall hit factor.

When the dust had settled and everything was cleaned up and packed away I felt disappointed about the huge blunders on the first two stages of the day. But overall I achieved most of my little goals I set for myself on the stages. One thing I have been battling to do better is to vary my shooting speed depending on close/open or far/tight shots. I felt that I executed on that really well today. That was a really big win for me. When the results were posted, not surprisingly my overall finish was not so good. I ended up 6th out of 22 shooters in Limited. The foot fault procedural penalties completely bombed my overall match points. If I didn’t have those foot fault penalties I would have finished 3rd overall and about 95% of the winner of Limited. Oh well, some lessons are harder than others. I have another USPSA match tomorrow and this time I will not be setting up the stages so I will have a lot of time to preprogram the stages and get my head screwed on right for the match. I look forward to shooting tomorrow and with any luck I can do some damage in the overall finish department.

[CHA-LEE]

USPSA match on Sunday. I can sum up my performance for day in two words “Train Wreck”. I haven’t had a match this bad in quite a long time. Pretty much all of the stages were fairly easy. Not to technical, fairly easy shots and really came down to executing the fundamentals solidly. Every single stage I had some screw up or another. Misses, No Shoots, Extra Shots, Botched mag changes and the best of all, failing to top off a magazine from a prior stage and reloading to it during the next stage run and running the gun dry during the most critical point of the stage where you had to engage two swingers one right after another. Was it fun to shoot, yes. Was it a disappointing performance, absolutely.

I knew I was in for a long day when I first got to the range and had a feeling of “Here we are again”. Almost like it was a task that had to be done verses something fun to do. I have had this feeling once in a while before where I just felt detached or not totally “There”. Basically going through the paces like a machine. I think that the match from Saturday really wiped me out. Working my tail off and with it being really hot all day took a lot out of me. Then it was hot again on Sunday and that was really taxing as well.

Some days you are on, and others you are off. This was an off day for me and instead of trying to overcome it I just plain gave up and plodded through the match not caring much about it. This showed tremendously in my shooting results. I have a lot going on in my life right now and its hard to keep a sharp focus on shooting. I just hope that this does not bleed over to next weekend as that is a big state match. All of this “Practice” at club matches is intended to enable me to execute well at the larger matches. Time to reign it in a little bit and shoot solidly for the match that counts. I am eager to step up to the challenge and hit a home run. There are 30 competitors in Limited with 3 GM’s as well as a bunch of solid Master shooters. My goal is to make the top five at this match. That would be a great accomplishment for me. Now I just have to earn it, one shot at a time.

[Bigpops]

USPSA match on Sunday. I can sum up my performance for day in two words “Train Wreck”. I haven’t had a match this bad in quite a long time. Pretty much all of the stages were fairly easy. Not to technical, fairly easy shots and really came down to executing the fundamentals solidly. Every single stage I had some screw up or another. Misses, No Shoots, Extra Shots, Botched mag changes and the best of all, failing to top off a magazine from a prior stage and reloading to it during the next stage run and running the gun dry during the most critical point of the stage where you had to engage two swingers one right after another. Was it fun to shoot, yes. Was it a disappointing performance, absolutely.

I knew I was in for a long day when I first got to the range and had a feeling of “Here we are again”. Almost like it was a task that had to be done verses something fun to do. I have had this feeling once in a while before where I just felt detached or not totally “There”. Basically going through the paces like a machine. I think that the match from Saturday really wiped me out. Working my tail off and with it being really hot all day took a lot out of me. Then it was hot again on Sunday and that was really taxing as well.

Some days you are on, and others you are off. This was an off day for me and instead of trying to overcome it I just plain gave up and plodded through the match not caring much about it. This showed tremendously in my shooting results. I have a lot going on in my life right now and its hard to keep a sharp focus on shooting. I just hope that this does not bleed over to next weekend as that is a big state match. All of this “Practice” at club matches is intended to enable me to execute well at the larger matches. Time to reign it in a little bit and shoot solidly for the match that counts. I am eager to step up to the challenge and hit a home run. There are 30 competitors in Limited with 3 GM’s as well as a bunch of solid Master shooters. My goal is to make the top five at this match. That would be a great accomplishment for me. Now I just have to earn it, one shot at a time.

Reading over your last few posts....well it sounds like you need a pep talk!

Saul Kirsh speaks of the "self image" and visualization. You know you have the skill, you can nail down everyones stages and good/bad habits.

Go kick some tail and have fun!

[CocoBolo]

Cha Lee - Sounds like we been on the same train. Thursday I head out to VA for Area 8 Championship, this following the worst two matches in more than a year. After Saturdays match 8 of us at lunch, at the table I asked "Someone tell me you rocked" well we all had the same story line, bad day. Mike this no shoot that, brain skip, bad plan, high primer and on and on.

Attitude and confidence are very huge factors. If you have something you have not done well take a practice session doing that, get to feeling good about your ability, now go to the match with Confidence. Follow the Benos advice take it one target at a time, don't think I got to make top 5, just shoot when you see what you need to shoot. 12 stages is a marathon not a sprint. Keep focus on hits and not making mistakes. Don't let the negative in and find something positive in every stage that you did.

Ok, maybe not so much advise but what I have planned. Good Luck and I'll check to see how you did next week.

[CHA-LEE]

Thanks for the advice guys. I think I will take some time in the middle of the week and go do some live fire practice where I can reinforce the confidence in my shooting. I know I can do this stuff. I just need to do it. I also realize that everyone has their good and bad days. I think I do a good job of putting bad stuff behind me and not letting it linger in the back of my head. For whatever reason, I just think that my overall motivation to shoot well wasn’t so good and my results showed that.

Having confidence is a huge thing though and knowing you are able to do what you set your sights on is strong factor in doing well. I don’t fear any shooting challenges. I know I can do what I need to do. I just need to do a better job of putting my “Game Face” on when its time to shoot. If you are not properly motivated or mentally not “There” it does not matter how much confidence you have as your performance will be dictated by your overall focus level.

[eerw]

Like I always try to end a practice on a positive. if I stumble in a match(s) leading into a regional/national match I definitely get back out to range to build in those back to basic drills to reinforce the positive in my mind.

[CHA-LEE]

I went out and got some decent live fire practice yesterday. We setup a normal USPSA style stage and shot a subsection of it to start off with. Starting off with some accuracy stuff and then running through the whole stage a couple of times in different ways. The stage had a good mix of close, medium, and far shots. It was a good test of many different skills.

Then we setup some targets at 65 yards to replicate one of the stages this coming weekend. This stage is pretty brutal so we figured that some practice shooting at those distances was needed. The stage is setup as three different strings shooting at the same 6 targets, one shot each, using 5 second par time on each string and starting from a surrender hand position. First string is at 65 yards, shooting free style. Second string is at 40 yards, shooting Strong Hand only. Third string is at 25 yards, shooting Weak Hand only. No penalties for Misses or FTE’s. So basically, whoever gets the most points wins the stage. Shooting a pistol out to 65 yards is tuff, adding a 5 second par time makes it super tuff. We shot it a couple of different ways and I think the best plan of attack is to pick 2 – 3 targets to get very solid shots on for each shooting position. Then if you have time left send some marginal shots at the rest of them in the hope of picking up any more points. But really, at 65 yards and a 5 second par time its tuff to get 3 - 4 well aimed shots down range before the time is up. So I think this stage is going to be won by quality of hits, not quantity. This stage is where the open guys will probably have a significant advantage over the Iron Sight shooters.

Overall it was a good practice session and it helped boost my confidence level which was the main goal. I think I am going to try and make it out to the range once more this week for another live fire practice session to try a couple more things. More rounds send down range will hopefully boost my confidence even more.

[CHA-LEE]

I shot the 2009 Mile High Showdown this weekend. What a great match!!! The guys from the Weld County Practical Shooters club pulled out all the stops to put on a great match. The event was attended by 97 shooters from all over the state and even from out of state. The biggest division was Limited with 33 shooters followed closely by Open with 30 shooters. The match consisted of 9 stages that tested the full skill set of shooting. It was a great mix of challenging shooting scenarios. A one trick horse would have a hard time doing well in this match.

My goals going into this match were to make the top 5 in Limited and finish at least 80% of the overall winner of Limited. Both of these goals were lofty with 4 GM’s and 5 M’s in attendance, not to mention myself and another A class shooter that have been shooting like a rock stars lately.

I went into the match telling myself to focus on shooting points and to scale back the shooting speed 10%. It was a feat in its self to restrain myself on some of the stages as they were begging to go Hoser crazy on them. But I stuck to my plan and called every shot in the match “Good” before I would move onto the next target. From a points perspective, I think that this match was my best match ever. I shot the whole match with only 5 D hits, and two of those D’s were on the 65 Yard shots stage. I will take whatever hits I can get when shooting a pistol at 65 yards. So really, only 3 D’s on the regular stages. I was collecting Alpha’s and Charlie’s like they were going out of style. My shooting speed was a little slower than “Normal” but I was 100% in control and tried my best to give every shot the respect it deserved. Zero misses or No Shoots for the match. The only screw ups I had during the match were both stage planning/execution errors, but nothing huge. I will get to the stage runs later though. Overall I was very happy with my performance. I felt that my shooting was great and that I was competitive on just about every stage.

After the match was over and when the results were tallied I was very eager to see the results. I ended up 6th in Limited and 79.8% of the Limited winner. I missed both of my goals by 10 match points. To be totally honest, I was pretty let down. To be so close to making my goals but to miss it by 10 points felt like a kick in the shorts. I had given it all I had and came up short by the narrowest of margin. Then set in the second guessing “Did I play it too safe?”, “What if I would have not accepted those few D hits?”, “Why didn’t I give some of the steel more respect so I didn’t need the few make up shots on them?”. I felt like a failure. Maybe I felt this way because I was so close to making my goals but just missed them?

I had all day today to think about my match performance and now I am feeling better. I gave it all I had and never gave up or lost focus. I called every single shot and earned great hits. Before the results were posted I felt really proud of my performance. This was the best combined shooting effort I had done to date. Today, I can look beyond the printed results and see the good performance for what it is. I had a great time and a lot of fun shooting this weekend. In the end that is more important than anything else really. Some times you just need a day to mull things over to put them into their proper perspective.

[rtr]

Dude you shot well beating 4 Masters and a GM. Congrats.

[CHA-LEE]

2009 Mile High Showdown Stages

Stage 1 – This was more of a test of gun/body/magazine manipulation mechanics than shooting. You start the stage with the gun unloaded on the table along with all of your mags as well. After the buzzer you retrieve your gun/mags and engage the paper targets, reload and then go prone for the steel poppers down range. This is a stage where having a magnet mag pouch/holder on your belt will save you a good second over the people who don’t. I didn’t have one so I was forced to pick up both mags at once, place one in my belt and then load, rack and start blasting. I got the load rack & blast down, but putting the extra mag in my mag pouch killed a lot of time. I had never shot from a prone position before much less jump down into a prone position during a stage run so needless to say I was a little leery. Before the match I gave it a couple of practice runs getting into the prone position and felt “OK” with doing it but still not confident. This was the last stage of the day for me so I didn’t worry about it until we got to it at the end of the day. I was more worried about sweeping myself more than anything. Since this was the last stage and I knew I had a decent match up until this point I turned back the throttle a little more and just got my hits. I ended up only being down 1 point for this stage but the lack of aggressiveness on the paper/steel and fumbling with the mag pouch didn’t do my hit factor any favors.

Stage 2 – This was the first stage of the day for me and to start off with a Texas Star can really be a humbling experience. This was early in the morning and the steel was pained dark blue. They setup two large poppers in front of the Texas star to block the left and right plates on the star. Then they had another plate in the middle of the star’s axel point. I had three make up shots on the steel which killed some time. One miss was bogus because I was tracking the plate on the star and then it passed behind the stand for the middle plate and blocked my shot. I then felt like I shot the paper a little too slow. The one good thing for this stage is that I got all A’s. Zero points down on any stage is usually not so bad.

Stage 3 – This was a nice timing stage. There were two swingers on opposite sides of the wall that you actuated with a step pad in the shooting area. Basically you started by stepping on the step pad to expose the swingers and shoot your way out of one side then clean up the rest. I started on the left swinger and then there were two mini poppers, once again painted dark blue. Black sights, dark poppers in the shade, and feeling that you shot the last stage too slow = misses on the poppers. I turned up the wick too much on my shooting speed and paid for it dearly on this stage. The two make up shots needed on the left side popper screwed up my timing for engaging the right side swinger. I had to wait for the right side swinger to come back out to reengage it to ensure my hits. I am glad I did, because I ended up with only two hits on the right side swinger even though I slung three shots at it while it was going back behind cover. The extra shots needed on the steel and having to wait for the right hand swinger really hurt my stage time. This was my first screw up for the match. Not a big one, but big enough to put a decent dent in my stage points earned.

Stage 4 – This was the “Memory” stage for the match. Lots of targets on both sides of the shooting area and a boat load of different ways to shoot it. The “Trees” in the middle of the COF were considered soft cover but with them being cut out of ¾ inch plywood, expecting your hits to pass through them on their original trajectory was not to be expected. I spent the most time on this stage in the morning trying different plans. Lucky for me Ron Avery was checking out the stage at the same time and showed me the least “Drama” way of shooting the stage. Since I didn’t feel too excited about any of the plans I had come up with before that I went with his plan which worked out pretty good. The strings of targets on the sides had no shoots placed in the middle to make at least one target in the string harder to shoot than the others. I went through the stage the best I could, but it felt pretty clunky. I don’t think there really was a smooth way to shoot the whole stage with all of the trees in the middle and the no shoots near the targets. I was more worried about getting caught on or tripping on the trees more than anything.

Stage 5 – This was the “Standards” style stage. Everyone was whining and crying about it. There were three strings of fire, each with a 5 second par time and only one shot on each target. You start each string from a surrender position. The first string was at 65 yards shot free style grip. The second string was at 40 yards shot strong hand only. The last string was at 25 yards shot weak hand only. My buddy and I had done a couple of practice sessions shooting at 65 yards so I was prepared for the long range stuff. I shot the stage pretty decent and ended up with 10 total hits and 41 points. I didn’t video this stage as it was pretty boring stuff.

Stage 6 – This was the “Hoser” stage of the match. The front section had you unloading bullets in a hurry on a varying array of no shoot or hard cover blocked shots. The end of the stage had you picking off some plates and poppers one of which activated a swinger on the left. All of the steel had some form of hard cover blocking steel targets in front of them. You could basically turn it into a couple of shooting positions to make the steel mostly accessible or pick one shooting position with partial shots on all of the steel. I chose the later method, probably not the best decision, but I figured it would force me to slow down and get my hits on the steel. It did just that and I only had one make up shot. I was pretty proud of the steel hits as a lot of the shots were only half exposed plates and poppers. I ended up waiting for the swinger to come back out and tracked it through its swing with for shots and ended up with 4 hits on it. I could have saved a couple extra shots on it but I didn’t feel ultra comfortable about my first two shots so I took a couple more.

Stage 7 – This was an easy stage for me. Not much planning needed. I had a couple of make up shots on the steel which cost me some time and I think I could have shot the paper a little faster. I like that I stopped moving backwards while engaging the two small plates on the left to give them the proper respect they deserved. I thought I shot the stage pretty decent.

Stage 8 – Another unloaded gun and mag on table stage. I feel that this was my best stage of the match. Everything just clicked on this stage. I got gun loaded and racked quickly and shot the targets in control and on the move. This really could have been a “Hero or Zero” stage for me if I let loose and went Hoser crazy. I know I could have shot it way faster, but I also know that I could have only called about half my shots good if I did that. So I restrained myself and focused on being smooth instead. I was rewarded with a decent time and great hits.

Stage 9 – This stage was a strange one and was my worst performance. You could start anywhere in the shooting area. There were four poppers setup in a line and on the back corner of each side of the stage. The last popper activated a clamshell target that left a partial head shot when it was closed and you had to engage that in the middle section of the shooting area. This is where I feel that I got bitten by not having other GM, Master or A class Limited shooters on my squad to watch or consult with. I was somewhat lost as to what the most efficient stage plan would be. The main bottle neck of the stage were the two steel sections. The steel was slow to fall and you had to wait for the front one to fall before you could engage the one behind it. They were not perfectly aligned to one another and you could see the other ones poking out to the left or right at the tops about an inch. But given their distance, trying to make super precise shots to hit the next popper before the next one dropped out of the way was a wash because it would take too much time to aim the following shot. All of the poppers were rearward falling so on the right side I took the strategy of “Hammering Them Down” my engaging each twice aiming at the very upper portion of the popper. I don’t think the double shots made much difference though. On the left side poppers I was aiming for the top of the poppers as well and my second shot clipped the last popper which activated the clamshell while I was still mowing down the steel so by the time I got to the middle section I was left with two not so fun head shots. When I looked at the results for this stage my time was 3 – 4 seconds slower than the top pack of shooters so I must have shot the stage really slow or totally wrong to loose so much time. I know that my movement from the right to left was slower than I liked but I was really concerned about breaking the 180 while performing the reload from the right to the left so I ended up back pedaling out of the shooting position while completing the reload. Doing that really killed my movement aggressiveness to the left side, but I would rather be a little slower and not break the 180, verses going balls out and getting DQed. I wish I would have been able to see the other top shooters tackle this stage as I am sure I didn’t shoot it in the best fashion given my slower stage time.

[rtr]

Here's how I shot stage 9.

Started at left rear of shooting area. Engaged far right target through right port. Ran up to break in the walls on left side shot left to right ending on activator popper, ran to middle break in walls to engage clamshell as it came up, reload, kept going to right side wall break and shot right to left finishing on activator popper, ran to middle break in walls to engage clamshell as it came up and finished on the two static paper.

IIRC Jeff Morgan and James Casanova shot it the same way.

[BritinUSA]

Nice videos... On Stage 9 most on my squad shot it differently.

We started on the left target array (shooting all four), a quick pivot and then two hits on each of the first three poppers, one hit on the last one. Run to the middle port and engage the clam-shell and one or two of the full size targets, no need to even stop moving. If you were quick you could do 1 or both of the static targets before the clam-shell. Then a reload (easier moving left to right) into the port on the right, hose the four targets, pivot to the four poppers, drive them down and zip back to the middle to do the last static (if not already done) and the final clam-shell. That was 21 seconds with an open gun.

[BritinUSA]

On Stage 1 : I thought you did the prone bit okay. To see some alternative methods check out Brian's book (page 105-106 with pictures). It's also a good idea to take your hat off as the brim can obstruct your vision when prone.

On Stage 6 : For the steel I stood at the far left of the shooting area and had full size targets on all of them except the steel plate on the right. I shot the visible steel and then just leaned right a touch to see the plate on the right hand side... My timing got off and I had to wait for the swinger

[CHA-LEE]

rtr> That way of shooting Stage 9 makes a lot more sense verses how I did it. When I read the "Start anywhere in the shooting area" on the stage description I was instantly like..... oh boy, here we go with too many choices on how to start shooting it. I should have picked a starting position on the left knowing that I could be more aggressive moving to the right with a reload. See this is why I need you on my squad to slap me around when I am being a dumb ass