I went to the Wednesday night shoot last night at our club expecting to shoot steel. Turned out that only one other guy showed up, and he brought a Smith Model 19 and wanted to shoot the PCC course instead. This was fine with me, although if I'd known we were going to do that I'd have brought a revolver. As it was, I shot it with my red-dot equipped P320, which made the reloads a little unfair. We shot it a few times and my scores hovered right around the 280 mark...not great, but not horrible. I did see on the calendar while I was there that there's a local USPSA match on the 13th of April, and I'm off that day. I may try to attend.

Shot a larger indoor local (35 shooters) the other night. 3/35 overall and 1/14 in carry optics. I was beat overall by an open GM and a limited optics A class guy that I think shoots more like an M.

I'll take it. That's three division wins in the last five matches. I'm ready for outdoor season to start. Those matches around here tend to be bigger and better attended. Looking forward to being humbled.

I’ve shot 3 IDPA matches. It was the most boring time I’ve ever had at a range. All day sitting around waiting to shoot. The pace was ridiculously slow. I doubt I had more than 2 minutes of total shooting time. I enjoy shooting, not waiting to shoot. I’ll never do that again.

It's like bowling and golf. The better you are at it, the less you do of it.

It is an interesting realization, "I spent 3 1/2 hours to shoot for 57 seconds."


As to the thread title, "Go shoot a match", I agree, especially with a carry gun or one you're betting your life on. Locally we have USPSA and "IDPA style" matches. The latter, because of the smaller stages/matches, lower round counts and lesser requirements gear wise and "regular guns" make it where the new people usually start. It was always an eye opener for people to see how much their stuff didn't work. Guns they're owned for decades, with thousands of trouble free rounds through them, suddenly seeing them repeatedly choke on them when they tried to use them at speeds. Or malfunctions related reloads that they'd never had because they're never really tried to do them in a hurry. You can learn a lot.

I shot a little four stage USPSA match last Tuesday. I drove two hours there, shot for a total of 78 seconds, and drove two hours home. I did not personally feel bored or like I wasn't getting my time's worth. I enjoy the process and like to watch other shooters, particularly the good ones.

If it's not for you, I get it, but I think there is room to use shooting competitively to inform your training. You see what is not working under so-called match pressure and then train those specific skills for a while. Then you shoot another match to try to gauge your progress.

There are also a lot of people that are shooting matches with no real training goal. They're shooting the match to shoot the match. That's okay, too, but it's hard for me to see wanting to be so mediocre at something and then doing it repeatedly for years and not caring. Maybe some of them just don't know how to train. Hard to say.

6/46 overall and 2/16 in CO at this last match. It included a classifier that I did okay on. I should be sitting at about 73.5% once the classification routine runs next week, so very close to my goal of making A class this year.

I shot at the local match yesterday. My shots were okay (not great, but mostly good), and my time sucked. My method really sucked on the first stage. I'm okay with it; I got better as the day progressed.

My first stage performance sucked so badly I apologized to the squad leader for it. And this is where shooting in a group pays off: he said, essentially, "look, man, we all have bad days. Today is yours. We want you to come back next time, don't worry about it. Keep improving."

It's not a substitute for actual training, but shooting with this group helps me way more than any shooting I could do on my own -- I get instant feedback on my methods and performance, and great coaching for the next stage or match. I wish I'd gotten into it sooner.

Made it out to the club this week for the Wednesday night shoot. It's finally warm enough and light long enough that we could shoot steel outside. Only two of us showed up, and the other guy wanted to shoot rimfire, so we threw together an outlaw steel challenge stage and went at it with .22s. It was even more informal than normal, but neither of us was in it for ego so we tried a bunch of variations, including RHO, LHO, and just burning it down two-handed.

It was cheap, we both got to shoot a bunch, the MkIV ran pretty well, and I had a good time. IIRC my fastest run on 5 plates was 3.25.

 https://youtube.com/shorts/6f2...?si=x18ZqN4h9KFL2F8S 

I concur, this isn’t a match above in the video though we do set up stages for the weapons staff to progress their skills. Before I left 85% of the staff shot matches. It’s a much needed culture shift. For example you can do a lot with a set up like in the video. Change start positions like running it backwards or moving the target around.

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