Sunday, November 6, 2011

First USPSA Competition

I responded to some ad on the Internet for a 15 dollar Action Shooting course. I figure for 15 bucks whats the worst that could happen.

After going to bed at 0300 after a tree fell on bunch of cars in the parking lot and getting back up at 0530 I was already having my doubts.

Turns out the Action Shooting Course is really a USPSA event. Just like the videos you see on YouTube of people running around and blasting targets. which looks like super fun online. Well let me tell you the second you do it in real life you'll be hooked. It is so addictive in fact that if you watch people do it you want get addicted. My dad also drove out and watched just for fun. He is now going to buy a gun to shoot in this event.

I got there early as usual and was the first one there, dang that military mindset. Set up all the targets with the pros so I feel I had an advantage of walking the course once or twice before everyone else saw it. This also included walking full speed and getting knee capped by a trailer hitch. which hurt more then you would think.

After setting up the target we had our little shooters meeting we broke up into squads. Which I still have no idea whats going on just hoping someone will tell me what to do.

The general idea in the event was there are brown paper targets (bad guys), white paper targets (good guys), and steel targets. Each brown guy had scoring rings and you had to put at least 2 bullets in each. The steel targets just had to fall over and the white ones counted against you if you hit it.

The courses consisted of one Action type course were you run around obstacles and pop off targets, and avoid shooting the good guy targets. This was by far my favorite. You start with you gun in condition 1 on a table in front of you, when the timer beeps you pick it up and blast 4 targets then run you the next area where the course starts. It was a 36 shot course, if you didn't miss. So that was 4 mags for me. 



The next course was you stand in a little box and had three sets of two steel plates and one paper target. between each set you had a mandatory reload. Shoot one into each steel plate to knock it over then double tap the paper target and reload. The middle set of targets you had you fire through a slit in a board that was maybe 2 inches wide and 8 inches tall. tricky but doable. (No pictures of this sorry)

The last stage was a running in a straight line, first with brown and white targets then a 6 steel plate rack with white targets. This was by far the most difficult. From your starting point there was a little box and you had to shoot at least one bullet from the box before moving. These brown targets were half painted black to give the impression they were behind cover. Of course as I was sprinting through the course I was getting good groups for one hand firing while running but they were in the black part which counted as a miss. Bummer.



After the brown targets the steel targets were required to be shot through a little window. This was basically impossible for me. I could shoot half dollar size groups at the range at 60 feet but up against the clock and after sprinting and playing police sniper trying not to hit the white hostages it was not happening. As you can see in the picture the window to hit a steel target was pretty small.

All in all I ended up 3rd in my division and was pretty happy. I will definitely be back to compete in future events.

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