ENPS February Pistol Match....

[sigh] Good and bad.

Good: My draw, speed, and accuracy weren't too bad (other than one section of strong-hand-only shooting when I forgot that little detail of trigger control).

Bad: My freaking gun wouldn't run. This is a 6-month-old Gen 4 G17, and it kept having light primer strikes time and again. You'll see it in the video, and you'll understand why it is so frustrating.

I really had wanted this match to make up for the January debacle. (That one went badly ALSO due to gun problems, though those seemed to potentially be ammo-related.) The January match, in addition to firearms problems, also included some poor gun-handling skills on my part. So, I've been dry-firing significantly, plus getting to the range at least once a week (even in the cold) to work on accuracy, trigger control, and precision.

From a shooting standpoint, the extra practice has helped, as least for my freestyle shooting. In general, my accuracy, speed, and consistent trigger control there was significantly better than it has been previously. However, I haven't practiced much SHO (or WHO) and it showed. (This weeks Pistol-Forum.com Drill of the Week is all about SHO and WHO, and that should be a good motivator to do some work. And I really do need work there.)

Here's the video:


As you can see, several stages would have gone excellently well without the gun issues. I still won Production, but it wasn't anything like it should have been.

It just occurred to me to look at the points I got---and I guess I'm shouldn't be as happy about my accuracy as I thought....I only got 82.16% of the total points possible for the match, and never got more than 90% of the points on any individual stage. (Classifier was a whopping 69%.) So---apparently that wasn't great either. Hm. Well, it FELT better than that...just goes to show that "feelings" aren't reliable.

So---it was still better than my accuracy has been previously. (How scary is that?) That being said, more practice is still needed. Too many Cs!

Edited to Add: No, it WASN'T better. In my January match, I got 86% of the total available points, with a range of 79% to 97% of the points available from any particular stage. [sigh] Well, February had significantly more SHO and WHO sections, I suppose. It still felt better! Matter of fact, the classifier (of which half of the shots were either SHO or WHO) was by far the worst stage, accuracy-wise, and it did drag everything down significantly. Nonetheless----90% minimum is the goal.

Goal: never less than 90% of the total points in any given match, with a push for 95% of the available points at speed. (Getting the points while going glacially slow isn't the point.)

And a gun that runs.