Corey's road to success

[Corey]

Shot my match at FWRR yesterday. Actually had a pretty good day. Ended 2nd Lim and 2nd overall. Shot the match clean with only 3 Ds on 6 stages which is an improvement for me. Especially considering I was shooting a bit on the quick side trying to run down another shooter on my squad . No video this time. Maybe one day Ill remember to turn on my video camera.

Going to be an interesting year for me. Not sure how much live fire practice Ill be getting in this year. We are running our Thursday night sessions, but having enough bullets for the season could prove tricky. We'll see what happens. Also, that whole having a new baby in the house might slow me down too.

[Corey]

Yikes, my updating skills are terrible lately!! I've only shot 1 multigun match this year and a couple of USPSAs. Took this past Sunday off and just ran the timer as I wasn't in the groove mentally and didn't have any ammo ready to go. It was actually a good refresher for me. Wasn't in the mood to shoot at all when i got there but once things got going, I was really bummed I didn't bring my gear.

Got my application in for the IN sectional match next month. Need to get some ammo loaded and chrono'd and try to work on some serious practicing in the coming weeks. Hopefully I can sneak away and get in a match or two before the Sectional. Got another 3gun match end of the month for the INMG series.

[Corey]

Long time, no post . Still not much time for a ton of practicing lately, other than a little bit of live fire on Thursday night league night.

Shot INMG last week and finished 4th. Felt pretty good most of the day. won 2 stages and should have won a 3rd. dropped a couple points late in the day because I was in a hurry to leave and wasnt thinking about the best way to shoot the stage and picked a plan that was way too slow. Live and learn

Shot the 2013 IN Sectional Saturday at Riley. Finished 10th Limited overall, 3rd A. considering my lack of practice (both live and dry) this year, I'm quite happy with that finish. I got a little carried away a couple of time and tried to outshoot my skills a little and it cost me on a couple stages. Again, live and learn. Video and more comments to come.

Shot my match at Fort Wayne on Sunday (after getting back into town Sat night close to midnight). Didnt shoot all that well, but managed to win HOA out of 16 shooters, so I can't complain too much. Ill have to check scores but I think I may have had more Mikes in a 5 stage match Sunday than I did in 10 stages on Saturday, haha. My head was definitely not in the game like it should have been. I was just flat burnt out. No video from this one.

[Corey]

Soooo, forgot to update with the Secional video.

Havent dont a whole lot since then. Work and the little guy at home have kept me busy. 3gun season is picking up speed right now and most of attention is going to be placed there for the next couple of months. Will still shoot USPSAs when I can, but with 2 3gun majors, 3 more INMG matches and hopefully the INMG shootoff approaching, any spare time i get needs to be devoted there.

[Corey]

Ran my USPSA match at Fort Wayne today. Great weather and good time with friends. Shooting had its ups and downs. Some stages I felt like I was really on, and others I couldn't hit anything. Had 2 Ds and a dreaded M/NS combo. 3 errant shots doesn't seem too bad, but not as accurate as I'd like to be (only 88% of points shot including penalties). Stage breakdowns felt ok and MOST of my footwork felt good. The video, I'm sure, will tell a different story. That and my "two-step disco" I had on a stage trying to get out of a position too soon before I had hit the steel plates (Thanks RVB ). Won Limited over another good A shooter, ended up 3rd overall behind 2 M-class shooters and I was within 2% of both of them.

Time to get guns/gear/ammo/brain ready for the Pro-Am

[Chris iliff]

Got your vid set to private? No fair dude!

[Corey]

Whoops! Dont know how that happened!!

[Chris iliff]

Oh man, good game on the first stage in video. I didn't see that, duh! Wish I could run that again!!!

[Corey]

Pro-Am is in the books! What a great match again this year! Rock Castle Shooting Center is one of my favorite places to go and I was not disappointed this year! Had a goal of top 50 this year after finishing 66th in last year's Pro-Am. Ended up 51st this year and missed top 50 by less than half a match point. To be fair, I also barely eluded 60+ by only a couple points. A lot of the stages were fast and any kind of screw up would cost a lot in the standings! Shot the match nearly clean. I had one stage that had a 5 sec FTN penalty on paper. Was very pleased with rifle shooting, especially distance targets. Handgun went ok as expected. Shotgun was my achilles this match. Lots of makeup shots on those little plates that you had to just drill or they wouldn't go down. reloads went ok on shotgun, even though there weren't that many to begin with. If I can get some practice time, I'm definitely going to focus on shotgun stuff before Blue Ridge. Ill need it there...

Got 3 INMG events and hopefully a shoot-off to worry about before that though.

Video from Pro-Am:

[Corey]

Shot USPSA at FWAPS this past weekend. Likely will be my last match of the year with my schedule. Was fairly happy with my movement on the stages. I learned i need to aim harder on partials and am probably not ready to be taking them on the move yet. Had 3 Mikes, all on partial NS covered targets. Ended up winning Lim and finishing 2nd behind a M-class Prod shooter. Not a bad way to end the season. Maybe Ill get some practice time in this winter?

[Coach]

Long time no posts?

[Corey]

Long time no posts indeed. Wow.

So yea...didn't do a whole lot this winter.

-Got a little ammo loaded, still need to load more.

-Starting working on shotgun loading for 3gun recently. Still need a lot of time there.

-Got a new front sight installed on my pistol that I broke in Oct at the INMG Shootoff. Got it roughly dialed in last night at 3g practice. Still need to put it on a bench to fine tune and verify its doing what I want it to do.

-Got a new scope on the rifle for 3gun and got it dialed in pretty well over the weekend. Need to stretch it out a few hundred yards to verify holds before the season kicks off.

-Got myself more into competitive target archery than I really wanted to over the winter. It was supposed to be a friendly indoor league to keep the rust knocked off my hunting setup come next fall. Oops.

-Still CrossFitting 4-5 times a week and getting in better shape. At this point, Ill need it. What I lack in trigger/gun skills I hope I can make up for in agility and foot speed, haha. Maybe the two will come together as the season progresses and I can actually become a decent shooter at some matches? Time will tell...

[Corey]

New month, new post

Had a pretty productive 3G practice last night. Mostly worked with the shotgun. Did some shoot 1-load 8- shoot one drills. Total times were floating in the 5 -6 second range. 8-shell loads were around 5 or under, best of the night was a 4.2 shot to shot load. With only a couple hours of practice thus far with the AP QL8s, I'm really liking them. Just need to smooth things out. Ill hit 4 out of 5 loads really well then the 5th is a train wreck. Gotta stop that from happening.

Hopefully will be hitting the INMG match this Sunday at Wildcat. First match of the year...

[Corey]

First match of the year is done. Wasn't terrible!! Ended up 4th in Tac Ops out of about 40 shooters. Should have been 3rd had I aimed my shotgun on the last stage of the day. Oh well.

Stage 1 was the "long range", about 150 yards prone from a shaky bridge prop. Took a little longer getting on the bridge and getting on target but still finished decent.

Stage 2 was a classifier (Flying By 3). smoked the shotgun part and had a decent pistol part. Bobbled the reload a tad but still won the stage for the day.

Stage 3 was a shotgun/pistol stage where the pistol targets were two plate racks. These were optional shotgun or pistol and I opted for all shotgun and put my new quadloads to the test. They weren't terribly fast but I didnt drop any shells and ended up winning this stage as well by over 2 seconds

Stage 4 was another classifier (Times 223). could not find the AR magwell to save my life on the reload and finished at least 1 second slower than I should have. Not great, but not a trashed stage either.

Stage 5 was pistol paper at 10-15 yards then a 50 yard sprint to the shotgun. Finished 4-5 seconds off the pace and i think i lost time here by trying to shoot big poppers with my pistol from 50 yards versus loading extra shells into the shotgun and shooting them from position two. A couple missed shots an emergency reload didn't help either.

Stage 6 was 2 flash target at ~75 yards with the rifle from one of two starting boxes. Box A had a barricade to brace off of but was about 25 yards further away than B which had nothing to brace from. I chose box B and shot them off hand. Missed a couple shotgun targets after dumping the rifle and hit a no shoot as well which killed me here.

Might have some video following. There were a few go-pro cameras setup on our squad that caught a few of the stages on film.

Going to get a little more practice this weekend instructing/coaching/teaching at Hillside's 3gun training day.

[Corey]

The 2nd 3-gun match of the season was last weekend (27th) at Hillside. Wasn't the prettiest day of shooting for me but I got the win (thanks to a DQ from another shooter). I had some good points and some rough points. I'd say an overall improvement from the first match though, so things are moving in the right direction. Actually remembered to get video footage of this one:

Gotta get my reloading under way for some USPSA matches kicking off this month for me. I'd like to try to hi Warsaw this weekend if I can schedule it, otherwise, FW in 2 weeks will be the first USPSA of the year. Time to start shooting As instead of just brown....

[Corey]

Did some pistol dry fire today. Wait, what?! Yea I did! Kinda surprised myself too. Worked on reloads with the USPSA season kicking off for me soon (possibly this weekend at Warsaw). I have no idea where the speed or smoothness of my reloads have come from, but I'm not going to complain. Had a couple fumbles when I tried to get too fast with it but most of them were great. Had the timer out and got down to 2 seconds for a draw-shoot-reload-shoot. Granted my first sight picture may have been a little sketchy at times, the reload was what i was focusing on. That and just getting my hands to work quickly.

Got the 550 changed over last night to run 40s and cranked out 200 rounds. Need to load a couple hundred a day for awhile to build up a little stockpile again, then I want to work on trying a minor load for 3gun. Not that I need it, I just want to try it. See how low I can get to still run with my existing setup. I may need to get a lighter spring if I want to get it down pretty far. We'll see. That's not an immediate issue for me.

[Corey]

Ended up getting to Warsaw yesterday. Didn't shoot great but it wasn't a disaster either. Had a couple Mikes on the last stages of the day but still managed to win Lim and HOA for the day. Working on a video now

[Corey]

Forgot to video a couple of the stages but got 4 of them on film. Felt pretty good about most of the day. Reloads weren't blazing but they were better than they have been in the past with this gun. Had a couple makeup shots that cost me a bit of time on the 2nd stage in the video. Not shown was the classifier CM13-04 The Roscoe Rattle. According to ClassifierCalc, it was ~92% run. We'll see what the actual is when an update gets run. I shot it a tad slower than I could have but wanted to get my hits which I did for the most part (1 D and 3Cs).

For the day I had 4 Deltas and 3 Mikes so there is plenty of room for accuracy improvement.

[Corey]

Shot FW this weekend. Won limited and finished behind 3 Open Shooters (1M and 2 As). Did not shoot that well. 2 Mikes and 2 NS over 6 stages makes it pretty tough to do well at the end of the day. 1 of the Mikes, i cant explain and the other was paired with a NS about 1 inch down from the Azone. Thought I had a good sight picture on it but it dropped just low. The last NS cut the edge of the perf so I at least go the A behind it. Maybe I need to show them a bit more respect and shade away from them a bit more? Other than those, I only had 2 Deltas for the rest of the match.

On the positive side, it looks like I shot my first 100% on a classifier, 09-02 Diamond Cutter. With this and the ~92% from last week, Master may not be that far off...

Forgot to put an SD card in my main camera so no much video. Did get a downrange vid with my little portable camera of the classifier so I will try to post that later if I can.

[rvb]

On the positive side, it looks like I shot my first 100% on a classifier, 09-02 Diamond Cutter. With this and the ~92% from last week, Master may not be that far off...

Great shooting!

-rvb

[CB45]

Congratulations on the 100% run! It was a pleasure shooting at Ft. Wayne. I really liked the stages and had a lot of fun.

Edited May 19, 2014 by CB45

[rvb]

[Corey]

Thanks for the pictures Ryan!

3gun practice last night as Hillside. Worked on shotgun loading for most of it. Did a few match saver reloads and worked mostly on quadloads. Was under 4 seconds for an 8-shell load on the timer pretty consistently (as long as i didn't throw shells over the range-which i did on a couple of them trying to push myself too hard). My fastest time was 3.38 seconds which felt great to do live fire. Obviously a match wont be that fast but its good to know the speed is there. Need to work on being a little more fluid with them which i can do in dryfire at home. a couple of hem i tried to do without looking down at the actual shells on my belt...bad idea. Just need to focus on being smooth with them. Smooth is fast. 3gun at North Porter this coming weekend.

[Corey]

Forgot to update from last week. Shot the INMG match at NPCCC. Great facility and they even had a food stand there serving what is probably the best hot dog i've ever eaten. Didn't shoot bad but just wasn't on point like I wanted to be. Maybe it was the heat, or maybe it was just an off day but I seemed to jus be slow all day. Ended up 6th which is about what I deserve. Won't be shooting 3gun for about a month or so with my schedule. Hopefully Ill be a bit more focused on the next one.

[Corey]

Good little accuracy practice last night at the Thursday night shoot. Did an accelerator type drill with wide open targets up close and progressively harder targets with closer no shoot coverage as they got out there to about 20 yards. Worked them near to far and far to near. had problems with a certain target array in particular. Full no-shoot with the shoot target popping out from behind it at an angle. For some reason jus could not get myself to shoot As. had a couple Ds and M's here. Most of the others i was just fine on. Guess ill try to incorporate more of these types of arrays in practice and on my stages for a little while. Also ran a couple of "closest to the center drills" with about 6 of us. One shot, closest to the paster wins. was fairly happy with 7 and 15 yard shots but rushed the 20 and pulled it off. I liked this drill and will do more if it too.