Photographed by Randy Mays
Camera by Sony Mavica
Photographed by Randy Mays
Camera by Sony Mavica
In the past, these notes have been about the technical details of an IPSC match, or who won, or what new mistakes I managed to make. There will be some of that here, but it turns out the best part of going to a shooting match in Montana tends to be the people you meet. The first picture is of Amber Peters. She and husband Joel kept score for the Big Sky Practical Shooting Club's Concealed Carry match held on October 4, 1998. The match was conducted at the Deer Creek range just east of greater metropolitan Missoula. Notice the large caliber shell sitting next to the computer. People go to extraordinary lengths to achieve "major" power factor. I believe this new caliber is called the "3.57 SIG."
Here's
a picture of Paul and Dennis standing beside the BSPSC equipment shed.
On Saturday a few club members show up to set up for the match. Those
who help with the setup pay a smaller match fee. I was assigned to
the target detail, and my primary job was tearing old targets from sticks
and then removing staples from the sticks. This is considered an
entry level position in the match setup business. It didn't take
long before my supervisor saw some real talent and I was permitted to use
a saw to shorten a couple of sticks. A lot of people don't get to
this level until their third of fourth match. It was fun to set up
the targets first thing on Sunday morning. In the past I've missed
targets that someone else made. This time I got to miss targets that
I helped make.
As I was putting up targets on one of the stages, I looked up on the side of the mountain and saw a mule deer and two of her cubs (I'm still not clear on some of this wildlife terminology...) walking behind the range. Deer season isn't for a few more weeks so I guess these deer were just checking out the hunters, while the hunters were checking out their rifles, scopes, ammunition and orange vests.
Jim
was the Range Officer for this stage. He's the one on the right.
Dennis Gentry from Bozman is on the left. The R.O.'s main job is safety.
He watches the gun while the score keeper watches the shooter's feet to
make sure he or she stays behind any lines for the stage or within a designated
shooting box. The R.O. makes sure the shooter understands the course
of fire, is ready, stays safe, and unloads and holsters the gun at the
end of the stage. In this picture you see the correct firing grip,
as well as an extended magazine. Notice that everybody is wearing
mandatory eye and ear protection. The first time I ever shot in an
IPSC match was at Deer Creek a few years ago. Jim was the R.O. on
my first stage. Now he knows my name and I can't use the "This is
my first match" excuse any longer.
The Deer
Creek Range is one of the best outdoor ranges in the country. Although
I haven't seen the NRA's big range in New Mexico, I have been to the rifle
and pistol range at the Quantico Marine Base (where marksmanship has never
lost its importance), and a very nice community range near Los Alamos New
Mexico. Deer Creek has lots of places to shoot pistols, rifles, shotguns,
and bows and arrows. Those of you who live in other parts of the
world where it's hard to find a place to shoot may not want to look at
this next picture. This shows just one of the ranges at Deer Creek.
I should mention that this is just the road leading up to the range.
The actual range is beyond the covered area and extends to the side of
the mountain in the distance.
This is the range itself.
Here
are Nate and Jim scoring one of the stages.
The
first time I attended a match at Deer Creek, a few years ago, I said afterward
that parents taught their children shooting skills and character in the
same afternoon. On Sunday Ty Marbut showed up to compete with a Ruger
.22 pistol. The R.O. is Mike Garrity. Gary Marbut, Ty's dad, is in
the black hat. Fred Jacobi, red hat, and George Thompson, blue hat, provided
a lot of encouragement.
Unless you live there, one of the more difficult aspects of attending a match in Montana is having to go back to somewhere else. One of the last views of Montana as you head south along I-15 is the area around the Monida Pass. Not too many people live there. In the winter, the road from Dillion, Montana to DuBois, Idaho is closed from time to time. Yesterday as I drove over the Monida Pass and started down into Idaho I saw a pickup truck on the side of the road. In that part of the country, you stop and help people so I slowed down. I saw both people in the truck looking off the road. When you see animals looking in one direction, more often than not they're looking at another animal, and out west this is true with people. I looked in the same direction and saw a large moose walking up the side of the hill. A moose appears to have been designed by a government committee: large head and body, with thin legs that don't look strong enough to hold up the rest of the moose.
As I'm writing this, I don't know how well I did in the match, but as usual, I learned some good lessons. I've been shooting the Glocks so much in the past few months that I forgot a couple of times to let the trigger move forward on the SIG 226 pistol I was using on Sunday. Glock triggers reset with little movement, but the SIG takes a little more travel before it is ready again. Also, there is a reason for a "press check" (to make sure there is a round in the chamber). One one stage, I thought I had loaded a round out of one magazine and then put in a full one to have 16 rounds, but I didn't load the first round and had to rack the slide - losing a few seconds in the process. Another lesson was that at a concealed carry match the magazines can't be visible either. Everyone concentrates on concealing the pistol, but if magazines are visible that's just as much of a problem.
One of the main reasons for shooting in competitive situations is to improve things like situational awareness. It is so easy to narrow your focus, or anticipate the next thing to occur that you forget something simple. On one stage there were three poppers to be engaged from the left hand side of a barricade. I hit two of the poppers just never engaged the third one. When I finished the stage, I was surprised to see the popper still standing. This doesn't help your score, by the way.
The SIG 226 worked fine when there were no operator errors. The new Safariland 5181 holster had no problems either. It stays put and holds the gun in place, and holds the gun high enough so that a vest or jacket covers it. Since I was shooting a 9 mm pistol, I wasn't too worried about using fancy ammunition. I got a couple of boxes of plain old Blazer 9 mm with 115 grain bullets. Those were a welcome change from a foreign brand that had a couple of misfires at a recent match in West Virginia. Blazers are excellent for practice, and the occasional match, but it is always a good idea to practice with "real" (premium) ammunition whenever possible. The upside down bi-focal shooting glasses got another workout. As long as I remember to tilt my head forward to look through the right corrective part, I shoot pretty well. I do wish the SIG had a narrower front sight sometimes. In theory, I'd like to take the front sight off my Makarov and put it on the SIG and see how that works, or at least find a front sight that's not as wide as the current one.
None of this tinkering is a substitute for remembering the fundamentals
or practicing a lot. Those are always going to be the key elements
of shooting well. This is true if you're shooting an old SIG 226
with the bluing starting to wear off or just starting out with a Ruger
.22.....
