Idaho IPSC Shooting

Last year the shooting season started in April in Montana.  This year's season began in March in Idaho.  After hearing about the South East Idaho Practical Shooter's club, and their excellent range, I made plans to be in Idaho Falls on Saturday, March 28th for their regular match.  I came equipped with my cold weather outfit, and an all-weather pistol:  a Beretta 92FS.  The club range is to the west of town, out Broadway to 65th street and then up a dirt road, over a bumpy dirt road to a place that looks just like Big Fork, Montana except there are fewer trees around.  There are at least four large shooting areas at the club range in Idaho, each with plenty of room to set up complex stages.

There were four stages on the 28th.  Because of recent snow and rain, and the possibility of some serious mud, the stages were set up to fire from one shooting box per stage.  It's nice when you don't have to run as much on a stage.  Even though there were no field courses, there were lots of targets, lots of complexity, lots of reloads, and one (I hate barricades) barricade.

One stage started off with the shooter sitting at a table, elbows on the table, holding something to read.  At the start signal, you had to get up and shoot a total of 12 targets, four targets in a group and some of the targets were obstructed by black areas representing hard cover.  With the Beretta, I had to reload once after firing two shots each at the first eight targets.  It's handy to have a 16 round magazine sometimes.

Another stage had that barricade, three IPSC targets and three poppers and three stop plates, and the "rules of engagement were tricky:  you had to reload between the 6th and 7th shot.  There were a couple of ways to "game" (strategize) that stage.  I opted to shoot from left to right and did ok.

The other two stages were different, but pretty standard in terms of IPSC stages.  Of greater interest were the people who came out to shoot.  Because I was there for the first time, I was placed in what I guess was the "new shooters" squad.  We had several people with different types of pistols.  One person had a Glock 27 sub-compact, not your typical IPSC gun.  Another had a nice custom .45 with a Bushnell "holo-scope" on it.  The scope blocked the ejection port and caused problems.  The rest of the group used regular 1911 style pistols.  I had the Beretta because of the weather.  Any design that passes all of the military environmental tests is going to run pretty good on a cold windy morning in Idaho.  The cold did get to me on a couple of stages.  I didn't seat the magazine all the way in the grip and had to rack the slide a few times.  You learn something at every match.

After the match was over, we had a choice of paying $5 to drive back into town, or helping to take down the target stands and get to drive back to town for just the cost of the gas.  Even though a war veteran, I helped take down the target stands.  You can get a decent meal in Idaho Falls for $5 day or night.

I've mentioned the benefits of shooting in matches before.  The main benefit is the development and refinement of mental skills.  There are some other side benefits when you shoot in Idaho or Montana.  The scenery tends to be awesome in all directions.  There aren't many places where you can see a range of snow covered mountains off in the distance.  When the weather is nice, and even when it's cold and windy as it was on the 28th, you walk away from a match feeling better.  If you were tired or stressed out when you got there, you won't be when you leave.

Most people who live elsewhere might think that there's not much in Idaho Falls, or the rest of Idaho for that matter other than mountains and potato fields.  This is not true.  Idaho Falls is a center of high technology.  Long a center of nuclear research, Idaho Falls has a large regional Internet Service Provider, street lights, and running water.  Many private homes have telephones.  One example of this high tech is the way IPSC match scores are posted.  Most clubs mail out the results.  Not in Idaho Falls.  We shot our match on the morning of the 28th.  There were about 26 shooters and four stages to score.  On Sunday, March 29th, I checked the SEIPS Web site and the scores from Saturday's match were posted!  I didn't have to wait for several days to get back to [bad word deleted] Virginia to get the mail.  I knew right away that I had placed 16th overall, and a little higher than 16th in the Limited category.  The stock Beretta paid off again.  Although I've had every kind of limited gun you can imagine, I shoot my highest scores with the old '92.

There was another story from the match.  On the first stage, I used my regular glasses and didn't do very well.  On the last three stages, I used the Gargoyles with the prescription inserts.  I could see the sights!  Sight alignment is far more important than sight picture, and that sure was the case at the match.  With the shooting prescription, I could get the right sight alignment and nailed a bunch of "A" zone hits for the last three stages.  Trigger control and all the other factors are still important, but sight alignment counts for a great deal.

For more information on IPSC shooting in Idaho Falls, check out the SEIPS Web site.