Written by Randy Mays
July 12, 1998. Perfect weather. The Al Kimery Memorial Trophy Match was held today in Missoula, Montana and for the fourth year in a row, I managed to show up and compete. As always, there were more lessons to be learned, more new and different mental mistakes to make, and more fun than ever. Last year, I tried to tell more of the story of the Al Kimery Match in pictures. This year the pictures were made with a regular film camera, so it may be a few days before these appear on the Web. In the meantime, here are some details on the various stages and what I learned from each one.
The Big Sky Practical Shooting Club in Missoula publishes a course book each year. The book contains diagrams like this one...
The idea here is to hit each target once. When I shot this stage, I walked up there with two things in mind: I could get by with a 10 round magazine because I was only going to fire six shots regardless, and I was only going to fire six shots. See the little word "Comstock" up there under scoring? This means I could have fired as many shots as I wanted in order to get one good scoring hit on each target. As it turned out, I got an "A" zone hit on the last target right under the "hard cover" black diagonal line. I could have fired another shot, but because I was certain I was only going to fire six, I just stood there and wound up with a miss. This happened to be the last shot of the last stage for me today, and while I wasn't happy with that finish to the match, it did teach a good lesson or two. Read the course book. Read the course book again. Think. Do not assume. Not thinking got me 52nd place out of 57 competitors on "Bodyguard."
Another stage was called "Back Alley." Here's what we had to do...
I thought about this one ahead of time and knew I needed to reload before opening the door. That would give me 16 shots to finish the stage. Since I would have a round in the chamber, and a new 15 round magazine going into the gun, that should have been just right. Here, for some strange reason, I remembered the Comstock part and decided to fire an extra round through the door to make sure I got good hits on all the targets. By the time I got to the barrel, I was a round short and had to reload. Although I had good hits all along the way, that extra time cost a lot. On "Back Alley," my standing was 37 out of 57. The gravity moving target didn't move very fast, unlike some of the movers that appear for less than a second. I managed to hit the moving target twice.
Banditos! was the first stage I fired at today's match. Since I was using a Beretta 92 (9 mm) I had a little trouble knocking down one of the Pepper Poppers at the beginning. The rest of the stage went pretty well. After I finished, the range officer adjusted the Popper and fired another 9 mm round at it, and it fell over. One of the other R.O.s mentioned that I could have shot the stage again, but I said I wasn't sure I would have done much better. As it turned out, I should have listened to him because my score of 49 out of 57 was not a good as it might have been.
This stage was interesting because before we started the range officers looked at T5 and decided that it would be legal for someone to take a position to the right, shoot through the wooden "hard cover" at T5 and then have a good angle on the other targets from the same position. To discourage that sort of "gaming," a no-shoot target was stapled to the board so that you had to shoot from different angles. Another interesting angle was the one between PP6 and TT1. We had to shoot the Popper then look on the other side of the barrier to see TT1 and shoot it.
I was amazed this was my best stage of the match (36/57) because I hate barricades and I like shooting from places like Box C even less. At least all the Poppers went down on this stage.
The stage I liked least, but learned the best lesson from, was called "Hoser #1."
This looks so easy, but everybody I saw who had troubles, including me, ran into problems with the reloads. The stage required two reloads. I nailed the first three targets, then tried to insert a Beretta magazine with 16 rounds, and it didn't go in all the way. The round in the chamber fired, but since the magazine wasn't seated, another round didn't go in and the gun misfired. I did what I practice and tried to fire the round again by pulling the trigger (Beretta has a double action trigger on the first shot). That was followed by a very fast "tap-rack-back" drill. Needless to say, I ran into 9 mm versus Poppers problems again, hitting one of the Poppers at least 4 times before it went down. Shot placement is always important. When the Popper didnt' fall, I moved the aim higher and over it went. Later I could see that my first shots were hitting just below the center of the round part. Any caliber larger than 9 mm and it would have gone over on the first hit.
Although it's possible to put 16 rounds in some Beretta 92 magazines, it is not wise to do so (unless it is the first magazine you load, and you load from an open slide). Putting 16 rounds into the magazine causes the magazine spring to compress all the way, and doesn't allow for any "give" when you try to push it up into the grip. This happened to me in Idaho and I blamed it on cold weather. I missed the message then and got the message in Missoula on July 12th.
Other than the one reload problem, which was due to a "senior moment" (a momentary lapse of either memory or a lack of common sense by an older person), the setup I picked for the match worked great. I brought the old reliable Beretta 92 FS with a Dillon holster, and two Helweg magazine holders. Since, in the grand scheme of things, it is a minor expense, I decided to use Very Good ammunition for the match. I picked up 50 rounds of Winchester "Silvertip" 9 mm at a Friday evening gun show in Bozeman, Montana and got another 50 rounds at the Axmen store in Missoula. I had never fired Silvertips in the Beretta before, but both the gun and ammuntion have excellent reputations and there were no problems. Silvertip ammunition used to be considered state of the art before bullets like "Black Talon," "SXT," "Golden Sabre," and "HydraShok" arrived on the scene. The Dillon holster is all broken in now. It's not as fast as some of the special competition rigs, but it's a practical holster.
In addition to using a "real" gun (the Beretta is a standard sidearm of the U.S. military services and many police departments), and a standard holster, I always fire these matches "from concealment." While many of the other competitors have their gun belts and holsters made just for IPSC, I try to wear an open shirt or vest so that I have to draw from under some item of clothing. This always slows me down, but I'm forced to practice a real world skill that might pay off some day.