IDPA match at Mecklenburg Wildlife Defensive Shooters 4-28-2012

Finally got back on the horse and shot an IDPA match. I haven't shot an IDPA match since the February match at MWDS which was the classifier. Between weather and being sick most of the last 4-5 weeks, I just haven't much felt like getting outside and shooting. Anyway, it was another quality match put together by Bruce Hurt. It was six stages which had some interesting situations and a steel plate rack which I've never shot before and as bad as I shot it, hope I never have to shoot it again. I only got video of the first five stages and didn't get my times and scores. For the most part, my shooting was decent and I think my times were ok. I was mostly just wanting to get back out there and throw some lead down range and not break any safety rules. This was important as we had two people disqualified on the very first stage.

Stage 1 you are sitting facing uprange, your gun in a box, with 10 rounds in the mag, no rounds in the chamber and your mags on a table. At signal, you get up, go to the table, stow your mags, chamber a round and engage two targets from the table. From there, you move up, and engage three targets in the first room, then two targets in the second room, and finally one target in the last room. Sounds easy, right? Well, I brain farted this course of fire. I did everything right up to the first room. Shot the first two targets just fine and forgot about the third target. Moved on and finished the course of fire. So, procedural penalty, -10 for completely missing the target, and a failure to neutralize. Nice way to start the day. Anyway, here is a video of one of our revolver shooters running the stage. He did a really nice job.

Stage 2 was just a bunch of targets behind hard cover that you had to shoot from behind cover. Differing amounts of each target was available to shoot. Didn't have too much of an issue with this course of fire. I was all zero's and one's with one score of two on this course of fire. I had been working on my head shots at the range last week, so I think that really helped out here. See the video. I think I may have cut off a bit short, but you'll get the basic idea.

Stage 3 had you again facing up range, you turned, drew your weapon and fired at three targets in sequence 1-1-2-1-1, each target gets one shot before any target gets a second shot. From there, you move to cover and shoot each of three more targets from cover with two shots each. Sorry about the video. Lots of people moving around.

Stage 4 had 9 targets and was shot under Vickers scoring. What this means is that you can ONLY shoot the prescribed number of shots per target. No makeup shots. Basically, 3 targets right, 3 targets left, and 3 targets further downrange. You draw and shoot in any order, but 3 targets to either side have to be strong hand only, weak hand only, and the 3 targets downrange are free-style (two handed). I did ok here except for my last shot weak hand. I pulled it right and off the target for a miss. Was really my only bad shot all day except for not shooting that target on stage one. I really need to work on my one handed shooting. Anyway, here is a video of stage 4. Kinda hard to get in all the targets, so sorry for the quality.

Stage 5 had a first for me. It was a steel plate rack with 6 steel plates. After shooting those, you step on an activator panel which releases a swinging no shoot, move to cover and shoot 3 targets while slicing the pie with the no shoot swinging in front of them. What should, if you are a good shot, take you 12 rounds to shoot took me 21 rounds. I missed the first steel plate with 4 rounds. Seems I was high and left with is completely out of character for me. If I miss, 99.999% it's low left. I'm "Grand-Master Flinch" which causes you to pull low left. Anyway, I got through it. It was ugly, but I got through it. Not sure the distance, but I'd guess it was between 12-15 yards for the plates. Guess I need to work those distances a bit more. 

Finally, there was stage 6. Stage 6 was 9 targets. All of which must have been shot from cover. Unfortunately, I don't have video for you, but the first 5 targets are shot from the starting area with four of them at around 7-10 yards and one of them probably 20-25 yards. Reload, move up to cover spot two, shoot 3 more targets in various levels of cover, one of which only gave you basically the head and shoulders to shoot at, and finally, move forward and left to shoot at one more target at basically arms length around a barricade. So, nine, targets, 18 round minimum. I shot 21 rounds total. I know I shot 3 at the long distance target, and 3 at the head of the head and shoulders target because I wasn't sure I had hit it twice. Can't remember where the third extra round went. I'm checking with my friends on North Carolina Gun Owners to see if anyone else has video of stage 6. If they do, I'll update this post and add it. 

Well, that's it for me. Had a great time again at Mecklenburg Wildlife Defensive Shooters. They  put on another great match as usual. 

Remember, shoot safe, shoot straight!

Sunday at the range

Decided to do a little shooting today with my youngest son. He was a little let down today as he expected to pickup a new video game today, but alas, it releases on Tuesday, so to pick him up, I decided to break out the CMMG M4 with conversion and let him shoot that while I worked on head shots with my M&P 9mm.

We set the target out to 10 yards and I let him blast away with the rifle. I put 59 out of 60 rounds into the head area of a standard IDPA target with one just low and outside of scoring. After that, we moved the target out to 15 yards and continued our shooting. I fired off another 50 rounds at the head and well, the results weren't nearly as good. I only had 34 out of 50 in the head box. Out of the 16 that missed though, 7 were just outside of scoring but on target, seven would have been total misses of the target, and two were dropped well low, but on target. Of those total miss 7, 5 were high, but within 2-3 inches of scoring, 1 was left within 2 inches of scoring and 1 was a Scott Norwood "Wide Right" Superbowl miss by about 4 inches.

Overall, while not happy with the 15 yards shooting, I wasn't un-pleased. I could feel the tension coming up as I took longer and longer to try to line up the shots and my sights would get more fuzzy. I'm hoping that by focusing on a smaller target at a longer distance, it will help me focus on the center mass at shorter distances and make the target seem larger. Well, psychologically speaking, that's the hope :)

That's it for me! Remember, shoot safe, shoot straight!

2011 IDPA World shoot dominated by Glock and S&W

I kinda figured they would be the predominant firearms used in the 2011 IDPA World Championship and it's true. Turns out that 67% of the competitors used Glock and Smith and Wesson firearms in the competition. You can find a total break down on the IDPA blog site here: http://www.idpa.com/blog/post/2012/04/20/Glock-and-SW-Make-Up-67-of-IDPA-World-Shoot-Guns.aspx

That's it for me. Remember, shoot safe, shoot straight!

Wow, it's been a while

Guess it's been a while since I posted. Not much going on. I haven't done an IDPA match since my last qualifier. This time of year, I always wind up with allergies, sinus infections, strep throat, thrush, etc and this year is no different. I should know some time on Monday if I have strep throat or not once the results come back from the lab. I think it's thrust (trench mouth) which I had been dealing with and almost had gotten rid of and then it came back with a vengeance. Don't know why.

Also have an update on the migraine front. For those who may have been reading for a while, you know I'm a chronic migraine sufferer and definitely get them when outside in the heat and sun. Well, a month ago, I had a migraine every day for almost a week and a half and I had had it at that point. I went to the doctor and we decided to try one more medication before going to a neurologist. I'm not taking the generic version of Topamax twice a day and it is definitely making a huge difference. I have kept a migraine log for the last four weeks and I usually need to take about 8-12 migraine pills over a 4 week period. This period, I've needed 6, and 4 of those were in the first two week and were for 2 migraines. Success! I even get workout induced migraines and have been pushing my workouts harder. I did get a migraine after my last kick butt workout, but was able to manage it with regular pain reliever, relaxing meditation music and just cool air and some darkness. Much better than in the past where I would have been popping $15 pills and curling up in the fetal position wanting to die.

So, now, back on to what this blog is all about, which is shooting and yes, while I haven't been shooting IDPA matches, I have  been shooting. I've shot every weekend for the last month, just working on my fundamentals and for fun, did shoot my first bowling pin match. That was a lot of fun. I actually won the "B" group of the shooters there. Had a clean first run under 7 seconds (6.7), but pretty much fumbled after that. Still, had a great time with the folks over at Elite Training Academy in Indian Trail.

I also decided to trade in my Glock 19. It's not that I didn't like the Glock 19, I did, but sometimes it felt like when you hit a lamppost with an aluminum baseball bat. My hands would ring after shooting it quickly. I also felt that the transition from my IDPA weapon which is a full size Smith and Wesson M&P 9mm to the Glock 19 left a little bit to be desired, so I found a fellow shooter over on the North Carolina Gun Onwers website and we swapped firearms. He got the Glock 19 and I got his M&P9c. I now carry the 9c regularly. I did get some X-grip adapters so I can use the full size mags in her which gives me 17 rounds. Also seemed to balance it out a bit for me to. I shot both today switching between them at the range. Other than the sight radius being different and the center of gravity being a bit off, they both shoot fairly similarly.

Well, the plan is to shoot next Saturday at the IDPA match at Central Carolinas Shooting Club down in Rock Hill next weekend. Hopefully I'll have an update for you after that.

That's it for me. Remember, shoot safe, shoot straight!