The Difference a Year Makes
Last year I wrote of my experience shooting at my first ever major sanctioned IDPA match, the North Carolina State Championship at Caswell Ranch. During the intervening 12 months, my IDPA experience has evolved and morphed in a direction I never expected as I headed into the 2011 NC State match, held once again at Caswell.
To give a little background, let’s first look back a year ago. Dissatisfied and frustrated with my results last year, right after that match I sought the advice of Dean Brevit, who had a suggestion that caught me totally off-guard. “I think you should try revolver.” What?? Use an old-fashioned cowboy gun for competition? I could barely manage racking a slide and working a magazine release button, and Dean wanted me to learn the complexities of using a speedloader, and in a gun which only lets you know it’s empty by clicking when you expect a bang.
But, me being the stubborn old fool that I am, and certainly not one to fear embarrassment in public – heck, for years I raced a leopard print mountain bike wearing matching leopard print attire… – I naively said “Sure!”, and proceeded to purchase a Smith & Wesson 686 which I promptly brought to Dean for tuning and customizing.
The very first day the gun was ready, I went to Dean for a lesson with it and after that first frustrating hour, he set up some targets and ran me through a Classifier. I won’t go into detail, but let’s just say if there was a division below Novice, I would have been in it. I worked hard to learn the intricacies of revolver skills and practiced every single day for weeks on end, taking lessons intermittently. Then four months later I reclassified. This time I made Marksman, barely missing Sharpshooter by a handful of seconds.
As the months passed, I slowly transitioned from “I HATE this gun” to “I LOVE this gun”, and it wasn’t long before the reload procedure was as natural to me as breathing. The wheelgun began to just feel “right” and after a year of shooting local club matches with it, I felt ready for this year’s NC State match.
Being familiar with Dean’s stage design, I fully expected the match to be challenging and fun, and I was not disappointed. I squadded with three great guys who regularly shoot with us and we set out on the course after the safety briefing.
As it was a shotgun start, we elected to begin on Stage Three – Shooting four targets around a picnic table with three rounds each while advancing. Simple enough, right? Well, I started out okay, but somehow managed to completely miss T2!?! That was good enough for down-15 and a Fail. Yikes.
Stage 3
Trying to be an optimist – completely out of character for me – I chalked that up to shooting so early in the morning, and proceeded to Stage Four, the shoot house. I had shot in the shoot house in previous weeks, but for this match, it was beyond dark in there. In fact, a fellow shooter described the moment the SO closed the door as feeling like “the gates of hell slamming shut behind you!” and Dean had painted some disorienting red and black pattern on the door right in front of your face at the start position, which really gave an eerie feel to the house. This stage had five targets requiring two to the body and one to the head. Despite having never shot a revolver with a flashlight before, I felt like I did okay – until I heard my time called out at 53 and change! At least I had no fails or no-shoots, and even managed to hit the target covered with a black tee-shirt.
Stage Five was a stage I was actually quite comfortable with, where three targets were engaged with two shots each from a supine position on a swinging patio couch. Not screaming fast, but I was okay with my down-3 total.
Stage 5
Stage Six involved the dreaded shooting-from-the-truck scenario with a twist. We had to turn around, retrieve our gun from the dummy-driver’s lap and shoot through the back window which was covered with lattice-work, while a no-shoot swinger waved back and forth across the sight line. My time was okay, but those points down pretty much ate my lunch.
Stage 6
I skipped ahead to Stage Eight for the standards and except for placing a beautiful figure-eight double high on the upside-down 30-yard target in the down-3 zone, had an acceptable run.
Stage 8
By this time, my calculations showed my points down were horrendous and pushing my score to scary-to-calculate levels, so I was rather nervous as I approached Stage Seven, the house-clearing stage. Fortunately, several of my shooting buddies, some of whom regularly work as SOs at the club matches, were at this stage when I arrived and gave me a much-needed pep talk. I managed to slow my shooting down just a bit here, as I worked my way down the various hallways and shot this stage clean, despite having some very tight shooting angles through windows and doorways.
Stage 7
It wasn’t quite lunch time at this point, so our little group decided to head over to the “back side” of the range to shoot Stage Nine. This was a simple three-target triangular array at an ATM, which I managed to clean as well.
Stage 9
Stage Ten was set up as a restaurant scenario – complete with dinnerware nailed to the table! – shot seated, with three targets in tactical sequence and then three farther targets in any order. Getting in a bit too much of a hurry cost me a couple of points, but I felt okay with that stage overall.
Stage 10
Down in the field next to the pond, the golf cart was parked and ready for Stage Twelve. For this one, the gun and reloads would be placed in separate pockets in the golf bag in the back of the cart, and on the signal, I had to get out of the cart, retrieve my gun and handle six fairly distant targets while using the golf cart for cover. I probably shot this one a little faster than my abilities as well, since my points down were a bit more than they should have been, although not terrible.
Stage 12
Since we still had time before lunch, we decided to go ahead and shoot Stage Eleven, the one most folks dreaded but with my vision being so weird anyway, didn’t really bother me. For this one, we had to wear safety glasses with the dominant eye side blacked out. Three targets were shot through a “tunnel”, and the remaining four were shot around a couple of walls, using the walls as cover. This was actually probably my best stage so far, both in time and points down, surprisingly enough.
After lunch, we finished up with the last two remaining stages of the match. Stage One was a gas station scenario that required shooting while retreating, while squatting and from behind cover. I was fairly happy with my hits with the exception of the one makeup shot I took during the entire match, which unfortunately resulted in making up a down-5 with another down-5!
Stage 1
I did manage to finish out the match on a good note with Stage Two. This stage had a 1-3-2 tactical sequence on two targets which would have been fairly simple except revolver shooters like me had to then reload and put a head shot in each target, first addressing the target opposite the one just engaged. Surprisingly enough, I actually made a plan and stuck with it, shooting this stage clean and in the proper order.
Stage 2
When the results were posted, I finished a disappointing second out of two SSR Marksmen, losing by 45 seconds. Despite this, though, I feel the match was a tremendous success for me. Do you want to know why? Because I pushed myself. I stepped outside my comfort zone and shot faster than I felt like I could. Granted, my version of shooting “fast” is still painfully slow for most people, but I’m the epitome of cautious. I don’t take chances. I don’t face challenges courageously. So for me, even though my points down were bad – really bad – and my final score reflected that, I know I challenged myself to do what I didn’t think I could. I pulled the trigger as soon as the target crossed my sights. And I did it every time, on every stage and every target. Many times it didn’t work and there were plenty of down-3s and down-5s to prove it, but sometimes it did and I got a down-0. I didn’t hit any no-shoots and only had two Fails. And I did it all in what a lot of folks consider one of the more difficult divisions.
Many thanks to Dean and Beverly Brevit and all the amazing Safety Officers, volunteers and staff for all their tireless work putting on yet another outstanding match. Also thanks to all my shooting friends for pushing me to try harder, for encouraging me, for making me laugh when I wanted to cry, and most of all, for believing in and inspiring me.
