Practice Week, plus Multigun...

Let's talk about Multigun first...

This past Sunday was our first Multigun match of the year. Four stages: Rifle/Shotgun, Pistol/Rifle, Shotgun/Pistol, and Rifle. Fairly high round count, too. Stages were creative, fun, and challenging.

And my shooting was plagued with issues.

First, on the rifle stage, my right toe touched the ground outside the shooting box while I was prone for five shots, so there were 25 extra seconds of penalty time. Plus, after the first two shots of the stage I had a failure to feed (ah, the joys of Wolf ammo) that took six seconds to clear. Without those two things, I would have had a time of about 121 seconds. As it was, I ended up with 157 seconds. (Ouch.)

With regard to actual SHOOTING, the close-range targets were easy, and I was fast. That's all good. The 100-yard targets were not. Had significant troubles with wind, barricade swaying, and breath control. (Note to self: you can't hold your breath for a full minute after you've just sprinted 30 yards, so remember to breath between shots.) In general, just need practice at 100 yards. Good thing, though---I can GET some practice at that. My gun-and-scope combination will work just fine for it, I just need to do my part. You'll see the 12 (13?) missed shots on that part that I had to make up, and the amount of time it cost me.

Second stage: Rifle/Shotgun (I designed this stage.)
All went well, up until the shotgun. My rifle was good, had all hits, my movement was a little slow and I need practice at mounting the gun faster, but overall not bad. The shotgun shooting was fine, but the gun wouldn't feed correctly, so I lost several seconds making it feed three times. And I missed being first on the stage for my division by 2 seconds.

Third stage: Pistol/Rifle
Actually did quite well on this stage. Guns worked like they should, and I worked like I should. Little slow and jerky on movement, pulled a couple of shots on steel that I should not have, and again, mounting the rifle took too much time and needs practice. That all being said, I'm still happy with the stage.

Fourth stage: Shotgun/Pistol
We were originally told that this stage was going to be thrown out, so we just decided to shoot it for fun. As such, I didn't spend much time thinking about it, other than "Shoot shotgun here, shoot pistol there." ...which was a mistake. I borrowed someone else's shotgun, so there weren't any shotgun problems other than I missed a target once (that I shouldn't have!) necessitating an extra shell load that cost me about 3-5 seconds. However, once I got to the pistol part I hadn't counted the targets, and needed 24 shots to finish---but I only had 22 in the pistol. This is normally not a big deal since I'm used to reloading on the move---but I didn't know about it, so there I was at the end with one target left, performing a standing reload. Probably could have saved several seconds there.

And you know what? The stage was left in. So it counted, and wasn't as good as it could have been.

[sigh] Placed second overall, and second in my division, which is good. However, did not do NEARLY as well as I should have. Some errors were mine, some errors were not, but very few of the errors were actual shooting errors, which actually makes me more annoyed. If I make a shooting mistake, that happens. But STUPID errors set me off.

Anyway, here's the match video:



On to Practice Week:
It is now Tuesday night of Practice week, and thus far, I've put about 700-800 rounds downrange in the past two days. Not quite what I had originally planned, but not too bad considering it has been raining for the past two days.

In the main, I've been getting good practice in. Overdid it a bit today--my concentration was going, and the last 50-60 rounds or so did NOT help. In general, I'm working on trigger prep, and trigger control. From the draw, from transitions, from near targets, from far targets, on splits---it is all about trigger control. I'm not even doing any movement.

The good: I'm getting better at making it reflexive again.
The bad: I'm finding it really difficult to make myself wait and perfect the trigger work when the target is RIGHT THERE and I know my shot will hit even with bad control. [sigh] I've moved the targets out farther (been working with a steel at 40 yards, even) and that helps, plus the fact that I've been shooting at either 2" dots or 3x5 cards. Nonetheless, making myself work "trigger control" instead of "shooting the target" isn't being easy.

More practice coming. Two more days of good solid solo practice this week.