December 1, 2001

SHOULD HAVE LEFT MY RIGHT HAND AT HOME (again). I could lay some of the blame on The Wife (and she wasn't even there), but I didn't shoot that badly. Still, every target I missed was with the revolver in my right hand, and I was trying to aim ever so carefully, too. It could be my grip is actually the culprit, since I think the rounds are going low and left — which could indicate that I've got my trigger finger wrapped too far around the trigger, pulling the gun down when I shoot. Argh.

The day was beautiful — sunny and ended up in the mid-seventies — and there were a bunch of my usual shooting pards at the match. I shot one stage clean, Number Three, the last one of the day and a nice way to end the match. Personally, I thought I shot Number Six cleanly, too, but was given one miss there; don't know where the spotters thought I missed, since I didn't check my score until a stage or two later. Oh well.

My posse began the match on Stage Four, where I proceeded to miss two targets with the revolver in my right hand. Evidently, I missed something else, too, because I was given another miss that I don't remember. I attributed my poor shooting to "match jitters" and thought I'd be alright for the rest of the shoot. I should have known.

Stage Five was a train wreck. I began seated at a table with the pistols loaded and laying in front of me. The target order was somewhat complicated: with the first pistol (in my case, the left one) I put two on the left-most target, one on the right-most target, then two more on the target to the right of the first one. No problem, got 'em all. Well, with the next pistol I was simply supposed to sweep the targets from left to right, but instead I shot the left-most target then jumped to the right-most — almost exactly like I did with the first gun. Oops. That brain-fade earned me a 10-second Procedural penalty and rattled me enough that I missed two of the pistol shots. Dang. This was the last two-miss stage I had on the day, though, which was nice.

Stage Six was another "sitting-at-the-table" stage, firing both pistols while seated then moving to shoot the rifle at a stationary target and a series of five falling plate targets (which I love to shoot), followed by two shotgun targets, which was what we shot on all the stages. That was fine by me, since I'd much rather shoot the old Winchester rifle and the pistols (when I'm not missing too badly with them...). I still can't figure out which target I was supposed to have missed.

After a short break for lunch we switched to the other bay to run through the last three stages.

Stages One & Two were variations on the same theme: start at the barrel where the empty shotgun is staged, shoot both pistols, move to the window where the rifle is staged, shoot through the window at the rifle targets, move back to the shotgun and take down a pair of targets. I had one miss with my right hand revolver on each of those two stages.

The last stage, Stage Three, was different. I began at the window with 10 rounds loaded in the old Winchester. At the buzzer, I shot through the window at the rifle targets: one shot at the first target, two at the second, three on the third and four rounds on the fourth target, for a total of ten. But I wasn't finished with the old '92 yet! I had to grab two cartridges from my pistol belt, load 'em into the rifle and fire at a steel bison downrange about 50 yards. Bang-clang! Bang-clang! Two hits! I secured the rifle, and moved to the barrel where I ran through a semi-tricky target order. My right hand obliged me by not missing any and I finished with the shotgun targets. A very enjoyable stage, made even more so by shooting it cleanly!

J.M. Brown (SASS #27309) decided to shoot that stage "gunfighter" style, meaning he had both pistols out at the same time. It was the first time I'd seen anybody shoot that way, and I can see why so few do. You really have to concentrate on the target order and which pistol is engaging which target. Yowza! Maybe in a few more years I'll give that a try...

Here are my stage results:

So, I ended up square in the middle of the pack, ranked 18 overall out of 36 shooters. Of course, that's tempered by the fact that I finished last in my class (Duelist), 5th out of five shooters. Bleah. Too slow and too many misses. J.M. Brown won the Duelist class with a time of 260.43 seconds and an overall ranking of 7 — not too shabby for shooting with one hand on the gun. Cape Fear Kid (SASS #31238) ranked 1st overall and also won the Traditional class with a time of 206.66 seconds.