Aiming or Point Shooting?

There has been some discussion over the last month about point shooting or using the sights when shooting a handgun. The discussion has been mostly along the lines of should you use one, or the other, or one method sometimes, and something different at other times. I should mention up front that I am not a highly trained and paid firearms instructor, and I have never been mistaken for Todd Jarrett, Max Michel, or Dave Sevigny at a match, nor is that likely ever to happen. I do shoot a lot though, and I've spent a lot of time over the last few years watching the pros shoot, trying to figure out what they do and how they manage to do it so quickly.

One of the first things I noticed is that most of the top shooters have excellent eye sight. There's not too much you can do about that if your eye sight sucks though, except correct things as best you can.

Another thing I've noticed is that the pros don't miss very often in matches, and when they do, their pickup shot is almost instantaneous. That tells me they are using their sights, since they can tell their misses, "Call their shots", at the time they pull the trigger, rather than waiting to hear or see the result of their shot. It's just about impossible to do that without some sort of a sight picture to go by.

But if they are using their sights, how do they manage to shoot so quickly? I don't know for sure, and I suspect some of them may not know for sure either, but here's what I think they are doing. It's actually fairly simple to describe, but actually doing it is another story entirely. To make it work, it takes tens of thousands of rounds of practice every season. First, they are ignoring the sights completely leading up to the shot, as they can get on, or very close to on target by point shooting, or more accurately, "Point Aiming".

Here's the part that separates the pros from the rest of us. Just before taking the shot, they verify their aim with an instantaneous sight picture to ascertain that they are where they think they are, and if they are not, adjust until the sight picture is proper, then fire the shot. Since tempo is a significant part of speed shooting, holding the shot for that fraction of a second is really hard. Your body says "Shoot Now!" and your instantaneous sight picture says "Don't Shoot Yet!". For most of us the "Shoot Now" usually wins, and we miss the shot! That's where practice comes in, and learning to look for that instantaneous "Sight Picture Verification", and more importantly, learning not to ignore it and shoot anyway.

One of the things I like about true Steel Challenge competition is that each stage, or target layout, has something in it that challenges one specific aspect of fast and accurate shooting. Smoke & Hope, specifically challenges you to not forget to use your sights for that sight picture verification. There are four large plates close in, two on the left and two on the right. The stop plate is much smaller, and much farther away. A good point shooter can hit the first four quickly, but will often miss the stop plate since he will fail to switch back to using the sights for the last shot. Shooting that way also requires two sighting techniques, and changing from one to the other after the fourth plate.

On the other hand, using the point aim/quick verify/shoot method allows you to use the same technique for all five shots. With practice, LOTS of practice, the instantaneous verification can be as fast as straight point shooting on a stage like Smoke & Hope, as all you are looking for is to see that there's some "White" on the other side of your sights!

As I've said in previous posts, though, 95% or more of successful handgun shooting boils down to trigger control. A While back I was watching a shooter shooting with a Crimson Trace laser sight. I could see the laser dot on the plate just before the shot was fired, but his shots would often miss the plate. In pulling the trigger he was pulling the gun off the target. Without good trigger control it doesn't matter what other techniques you use. The top shooters all have incredible trigger control, and winning or losing boils down to the remaining elements.

The next time you see one of the pros running Smoke & Hope in sub two seconds and making it look easy, remember you are watching someone who has practiced that specific stage thousands and thousands of times. Not just shot it thousands of times, but "Practiced" it thousands of times. There IS a difference between just shooting and practicing, and that's a good topic for some other time!

Paul Bunyan Falling Plate Championships Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the Paul Bunyan Falling Plate Club Championships, and I've done a little practice for it, although I don't have access to a regular falling plate target setup. I just hope I can shoot well enough to stay in the match for a while. The first and second round matchups are critical, as both opponents are really good falling plate shooters. If I can stay in the match for a couple of rounds I should start picking up the rhythm of the shooting and hopefully I will settle down and start getting consistent.

Like I've said in the past, when you are up against a shooter faster than you are, you can't beat them if they shoot their best, but they can beat themselves, and you should try to give them the chance to do so by not beating yourself trying to shoot faster than you are able.

I'll try to get a post up, and maybe a few pictures, late Monday. Have a good weekend!!!

Rimfire Falling Plate MAtch at CWSA - 03/05/2008

"It was a dark and stormy day. Suddenly a shot rang out......."

Followed by lots more, as it was a rimfire falling plate match at Central Whidbey Sportsman's Assn. range in Coupeville, Washington. The match format is simple. Each shooter shoots against every other shooter three times. You have to shoot the large plates first, and the small plate last. The first shooter to knock over all six plates wins the run. You get a point for each win, half a point for a tie, and a goose egg for each loss. The shooter with the most points at the end of the day wins.

Tony C. was clearly the fastest shooter of the day, but he was missing some of his shots. "Evil Al" was right there with Tony in terms of speed, and wasn't missing very many at all. I was shooting slower that Tony and Al, but I wasn't missing too many plates. If I was going to have any chance against these two I had better not miss, as I couldn't keep up in terms of raw speed. It was obvious that just about everyone was really shooting well as there were lots of very close runs and even a number of them that were so close they were called ties.

Here's a small video to give you an idea of the speed the plates get knocked down. The quality is down a bit as this was taken with a phone, rather than a regular camera. Even so, you get the idea!

Six shots, six plates. Wish I could do that every time!
(Thanks to Scott for the video)

These falling plate matches are lots of fun as you get to shoot lots, and there's only a few minutes wait and you're back up to shoot some more.

As an experiment, each of the four plate racks was set up with the stop plate in a different spot. It turned out that some lanes were faster and easier than others, so the luck of the draw came into play as to which lane you got against which opponent. The table that gave everyone the most trouble was number two, shown in the above video.I got really lucky and got the easiest table against both Tony and Al who had to shoot a more difficult table, table number two. That was just enough for me to sneak past the both of them. KeeWee was shooting more like she normally does, and ended up 7th. overall.

It was a blustery, chilly, and damp day, but everyone had a lot of fun in spite of the crummy weather.

CWSA Rimfire Falling Plate Match 03/09/2008

(Note: This post is a bit late, as I wrote it and saved it as a draft, then forgot about it..........)

Nothing to it, just knock down the big ones first,
then shoot down the little one.
Oh, and do it in less than two seconds! Piece of cake...............

Sunday just didn't start off on a good note. Some days you wonder if you should have just slept in! KeeWee spilled a bottle of face lotion to start the morning, and it was one thing after another from there. Once we got to the range KeeWee discovered that the magazines for her High Standard race gun hadn't found their way into her range bag, and there wasn't enough time to drive back to the house to get them. Her High Standard uses the slant grip type magazine, whereas my High Standard has the military grip angle like a 1911, so the magazines won't interchange. Bummer!!

I did happen to have my Smith & Wesson 422 rimfire race gun with me, so she decided to give it a go with the 422.

The falling plate matches involve a lot of shooting as it's a round robin format where you shoot three runs against every other shooter entered. We had a relatively small turnout with only twelve shooters (I think the threatening weather had something to do with it), but even so, that means everyone gets to shoot 33 times against another shooter. That makes for a fairly busy morning! My first opponent was Chris C., Tony's dad. I think Chris is possibly the most improved shooter in our club, and he was really shooting well today. In fact, he beat me two out of the three runs, putting me in the hole immediately. "Evil Al" was also shooting really fast too, and guess who I came up against in my third matchup. Yup, Al! Al got me two of the three runs too. My chances were sinking like a stone. Then I noticed something. The top five shooters were ALL beating up on each other. Mike F. and Tony C. were also shooting well, and even Al was losing a table here and there, too. KeeWee was having a bit of trouble shooting the unfamiliar S&W, but she was winning a few, too. Lou G. was shooting well, too, considering he's spent the last several months recovering from a badly broken forearm.

As we neared the end of the round robin, there were four or five shooters within a point of each other. I had started to get my act together, and hadn't lost another table since the first four, but I still had a couple of tough opponents to go. Today the steel gods were smiling on me, and I managed to run the table without losing any more points after the initial four losses.

When the scores were totaled up my 29 points was good enough for the win, with Chris and Al tied with 28, right behind me. Chris and Al then had a 2 out of 3 shootoff to decide second place. Three very close tables later Chris had an ear to ear grin, having got by Al by fractions of a second on two of the three runs to clinch second place. What a great finish to a fun, fast, and furious rimfire falling plate match.

After the falling plate match KeeWee and I drove to Oak Harbor to try out a new fish and chips place, then to pick up some floor tile to replace a piece of carpet that was ruined by an over-flowed drain that flooded our basement last week, and finally we swung by the DQ for our "After Shoot" ice cream.

A great way to spend the day, I'd say.............................

CWSA Falling Plate Match - 10/27/2007

One thing about the CWSA rimfire falling plate matches, you get in a lot of shooting in a relatively short amount of time. It seems like you are either shooting, reloading, helping score, or "On Deck" to go shoot. Saturday was no exception, and the competition was fast and furious. It seemed like just about everyone was shooting faster than usual. It is a round robin head-to-head format, so you shoot three times against every other shooter, and every one of them could beat you if you gave them even the slightest chance. Miss a plate and need a second shot and you most likely will lose that run.

The stop plates, which must be knocked over after the other five plates have been knocked over, were in either position two, or position five, one in from the end. The fastest way, in my opinion, is to shoot the four in a row first, skip over the stop plate for the outside plate, then come back a short distance for the stop plate. This is also the riskiest way, as the last big plate and the stop plate are side by side, and if you miss the big plate, you will already have shot the stop plate before you know you missed the big one, which loses you that run. If you slow up enough to be sure you hit the last big plate, your opponent will get their stop plate ahead of you, so you have to shoot and assume you hit it, and make sure you don't miss! To put it in perspective, reaction time from the buzzer to the first shot for most people is about a second. A reasonable time for all six plates is around 2 1/2 seconds, so that means six shots in a second and a half! Not a lot of time to be thinking about it!

I didn't make any big mistakes until I came up against Rainy, and I missed the big plate, shot the stop plate, and lost the round. I did manage to take the other two, though, but when the results were tallied, this mistake came home to bite me. I even managed to get by Evil Al winning two, and losing one, but they were really close runs. Everything else was going fairly well, until I came up against KeeWee, and I had a failure to fire (good strike on it ,too) but by the time I cleared it she had me. The second table I had a mis-feed after the second shot, and she got me again! I did manage to win the third one, though. Rainy had managed to tie Al on one table.

When the final scores were added up, Al had beat me by one half a point for all the marbles. That one mistake cost me. The failure to fire and the mis-feed cost too, but I still would have been OK.

Some days are like that, but any time I'm even close to Al, I figure I've done OK, and it was a ton of fun giving him a run for it!

Maybe next time..........

..... a busy weekend!

It's Monday morning and it's been a really busy weekend. It seemed like KeeWee and I were on the go all the time. Saturday was a CWSA Bowling Pin shoot. As I have been doing lately I shot every class, using either a Charles Daly 1911 with iron sights, the 9mm.Taurus PT92 'Econo Race Gun', the .357 Taurus Model 66 revolver, the .480 Ruger Super Red Hawk, the High Standard/Volquartzen .22 race gun, or the Smith & Wesson model 422 in .22 caliber. That's a lot of changing back and forth and trying to remember which gun you are shooting at the moment, and where the magazine release is!

Was it Jeff Cooper who said that you should beware the shooter who shoots only one gun? Anyhow, if you shoot only one gun, you can really fine tune your skills for just that one particular gun. If you start shooting many different guns, you will, in my opinion, become a better overall shooter, although your performance with any one particular gun may not be quite as good. A really good shooter can pick up just about anything and shoot it well. Not only that, but the more guns you shoot, and the more classes you enter, the more shooting you get to do in a day, and when you really enjoy shooting, what more could you ask for?

The bowling pin matches are single elimination format, so if you lose against only one other shooter, you are done for the day in that class. Prior to the match we shoot four tables of five pins per table against the clock to determine your first round opponent, fastest qualifier against number two, number three against number four, and so on down the list. Unfortunately with this system, if you have one really outstanding shooter, whoever qualifies second is almost always going to have a very quick exit from the class! In every centerfire class I lost in the first round!

Big bore revolver only had two shooters this time, Evil Al and myself. I talked Al into shooting 3 out of 5 instead of the normal 2 out of 3 so we could do a little bit more shooting, and he agreed. I narrowly won the first table, and also the second. Had it been the regular 2 out of 3, I would have won, but no, it was 3 out of 5, and Al came roaring back and won the next three in a row! Every table was really close, as I was right with him all the way, but he got me every time, but by the smallest of margins. Great fun, and there's something about shooting the big bore revolvers that's particularly enjoyable!

Rimfire pin tops was the last event for the day. I entered both the Long Barreled High Standard and the Smith & Wesson 422, and KeeWee entered with the High Standard Sharpshooter 103. I had a couple of bad runs with the High Standard in qualifying, and was slightly faster with the 422, so once again, I was up against Al in the first round, this time with the 422. Also once again, Al won the round, not by much, retiring the 422 for the day. A few rounds later, however, I was up against Al again, this time with the Long Barreled High Standard pin gun, and it was again really close, but this time I managed to retire Al, rather than the other way around! I ended up with the class win, and KeeWee ended up somewhere around fifth or sixth, I don't remember for sure.

After the pin shoot we headed up to Oak Harbor to the Dairy Queen for something to eat. Have you tried the banana cream pie blizzards? Delicious!

Sunday morning we were back to the CWSA range for a rimfire falling plate match. Like a pin shoot, it's also a head to head match, but unlike pin shoots, it's a round robin format rather than a single elimination. That means you get to shoot three times against every other shooter in the match! You better bring lots of ammo for one of these, as you get in a lot of shooting! Final placing is determined by how many rounds you win. We had thirteen shooters, so everyone got to shoot 36 rounds against other opponents. No times are recorded since it's head to head, but there was a whole lot of amazingly fast shooting going on.


Once the dust had settled, KeeWee and Chris were tied for fifth, Johan was fourth, Tony was third, and Al and I were tied for first with 30.5 points. First place ties are settled by a 2 out of 3 shoot-off. I wasn't very optimistic as Al got me 2 out of 3 in the match itself, and he was definitely shooting faster than I was, but he was missing more plates, too, so there was at least hope that if I shot as fast as I could go without mistakes and if he missed a plate I might get him. It turns out that's exactly how it played out. What a fun way to end a match, in a shootout to break a tie!

After the match we helped put everything away, then drove to Burlington to Costco's for hot polish sausages. I love good hot dogs, and those are even better! From Costco we drove a couple of blocks to the new Sportsman's Warehouse to pick up some ammo. I also picked up three more Glock magazines for the 9mm. Glock.

From Burlington we drove back to Whidbey Island, crossing the Deception Pass bridge to get onto Whidbey. We stopped at Deception Pass bridge and also at the state park so KeeWee could take a few pictures and we could go for a short walk on the beach.

After another 4o minute drive we pulled into the driveway at Completely Castle.

It had been a fun day!

CWSA FAlling Plates - 07/29/07

A really important thing to remember when shooting in matches is that every match, every stage, every shot, once completed, is now history, and good or bad, it should not be allowed to influence the rest of your shooting. This, of course, is much easier said than done.

How often have you seen a shooter have something go wrong, only to let it foul up his next shot? At the Limited 10 IPSC Nationals a few weeks ago in Missoula Doug Koenig had a magazine slip out of his hand just as he was about to slide it into the pistol. It was in the match, and he was moving between shooting stations and he was reloading quickly as the clock was running. The magazine went over his shoulder, but without a wasted motion, he grabbed another magazine from his belt, got it into the gun, and resumed firing, without losing any time at all.

How easy would it have been to have the whole stage fall apart at that point? When the reload went wrong he just mentally hit the "Reset" button and went back to the "It's time to reload" procedure built into his muscle memory from lots and lots of practice.

Saturday in the CWSA Steel Challenge match I just couldn't quite get things to click. I was missing shots I would normally hit, and slowing down didn't seem to help, all that did for me was produce the same missed shots and slower times too!

After every match, regardless of how I did, I always spend some time mentally going back over the day, looking for what went right, what went wrong, and most importantly, looking for things that need to be worked on to keep them from happening again. Here's what I looked at from Saturdays steel match: The biggest problem seemed to be that I was missing the 10" plates at the farthest distances. When you are missing targets in a match, often it's just that you are trying to shoot too quickly, but slowing down a little didn't seem to be helping. If I could have seem exactly how I was missing, I might have figured it out in the match, but I couldn't tell for sure what was going on.

After the match was over I got a chance to shoot the worst stage over a few times for practice, and I could see that I was shooting over the top of the plate every time. Finally the light came on, and I figured out what was happening. I adjust the red dot sight sight to be about 3/8" low at 25 feet, which is just about dead on at 10 yards. Bowling pins and falling plates are usually shot at 25 feet. That means that at 25 yards or so I'm about 6 inches high. BINGO! I was forgetting to aim at the bottom edge of the plate! Hitting 6 inches high with an aim point of dead center on a 10 inch plate puts you one inch over the top. Some shooters like to sight in at 25 yards, and then everything will be within a couple of inches, but bowling pin tops are the smallest speed targets I shoot, and I want the be really accurate for them. It really doesn't make a whole lot of difference what method you use, as long as you understand it and more importantly, remember what you have to do to get the results you want. Now that I knew what had happened I could "put it to bed". If I don't figure out what went wrong it can nag at me for weeks!

Yesterday, Sunday, was a rimfire falling plate match, and the distance was 25 feet. Big targets, in close, and shoot just as fast as you can go and still hit them. CWSA falling plate matches are head to head matches, so there is no clock running, just the shooter next to you trying the knock over his six plates be fore you knock over your six. Each shooter shoots three times against every other shooter, so you shoot a lot of ammo! These matches are fast and furious, and no one gets through the match without losing a few runs.

Evil Al was looking unbeatable, with Tony C. shooting probably even faster, but a little more inconsistent. Tony's dad Chris was shooting better than I've ever seen him shoot, too. Jim P. was shooting fast enough to win it, and Lou G. Rainy, and KeeWee were all going to beat up on some shooters too. In fact, KeeWee almost beat Al on one run, it was almost a tie! Tony had started the match with an iron sighted gun, and lost a few runs early on, but then switched to a red dot sight gun, and from there on was just about unbeatable. After some of the fastest and closest matches I've ever seen, the dust finally settled, the range was quiet, and the final scores were added up. As the scoring was underway, KeeWee and I loaded up our gear and got set for the drive home. To no one's surprise, Al, with 28.5 points, had once again prevailed. Second place, however, provided a surprise! Tied, with 26.5 points each, was Tony's dad Chris and I! There was going to be a shoot-off for second place! I unloaded the gun case and the ammo, and Chris and I went up to the line.

"Shooter's to the line, load and make ready!"

"Ready on the left?"

"Ready"

Ready on the right?"

"Ready"

"Standby"

"Honk"

bambambambambambambambambambam!

"Winner on the left!"

WOOO HOOO - That's me!


Same thing, then:

bambambambambambambambambambam!

"Winner on the right!"

One for Chris, now it all comes down to roughly two seconds of fast and furious shooting ,while trying to not let the adrenaline take over your shooting!

And finally, the last run to decide second place:


bambambambambambambambambambam!


Not pretty, the adrenaline had taken it's toll, but

"Winner on the left!"

What a rush! It just doesn't get any better than that, when shooters are so closely matched that it's any one's guess as to the outcome. Chris is a fine shooter, and he just keeps improving match by match! Jim P. wound up third, with KeeWee, Lou G., Rainy, and Tony all withing a point or so of each other, as I remember.

I had managed to put Saturday's match out of my mind and focus on the match at hand. More importantly, I managed to not forget that club level shooting is only a game, to not take it too seriously, and most importantly, have fun shooting the match.

It was a fun day!

CWSA Rimfire Falling Plates 06/23/07

Brandy and KeeWee. KeeWee takes no prisoners......

Saturday morning KeeWee and I headed North to the Central Whidbey Sportsman's range for the Rimfire Falling Plate match. The weather was looking pretty good, with a few clouds and blue sky peeking through in spots. Rimfire falling plate matches are fast and furious, and you get in a whole lot of shooting, since it's a round robin head-to-head format, and you get to shoot against every other shooter three times! If we have more than sixteen shooters we split it into two groups and the winners of each group shoot off for the final winner. Today we had fifteen shooters entered, giving us almost the maximum number of individual matches.

Overall scoring is determined by the number of individual tables you win. After a coupe of matches one of the shooters dropped out with mechanical problems, so we ended up with a total of 39 matches for each shooter. A perfect score would be 39. There were lots of very close tables, many decided only by fractions of a second. Tony C. was shooting really well, and "Evil Al" was, well, "Evil Al", and smokin' fast! Lou G. and KeeWee were also mowin' them down very quickly. This was perhaps one of the closest matches we've had at CWSA, with everyone winning some of the tables. The matchup between KeeWee and Lou G. was very close, and the slightest mistake meant certain defeat. Lou had a misfire on one, and KeeWee won the other two. I came up against Al early in the match, and narrowly lost two, and managed to tie him on the third. Against Tony I managed to take two of the three. Final score ended up with Al with a score of 36. I ended up with a score of 35.5, just half a point behind Al in second place. Tony was third, and KeeWee and Lou G. tied for fourth place. It doesn't get much closer than that!

After the match we headed up to Oak Harbor for Chinese food, and to pick up some cat food at Wally World. KeeWee found some plants in the garden department too.......

By now the day was getting kinda warm and muggy, so we stopped at the Dairy Queen for some cool desserts.

I sucked up a giant sized Cookie Dough Blizzard in no time.

YUMM!

Falling Plate Rack Details

A blog reader sent me an email asking about how our rimfire falling plate racks were made. After the falling plate match on Saturday I took a few pictures.

Shooter's view of the plate rack.

We C-Clamp the plate racks to the steel tables that we use for pin shooting. If you don't have pin tables, some heavy duty tables or saw horses made out of angle iron will have to be built. They have to heavy enough so that when you pull the rope to re-set the plates you don't pull the table over.

The "No Pull Rope" end view.

The plates can be moved from one position to another by pulling out the hairpin clip and sliding the pivot pin to the side. Then the plate can be lifted out and moved to another position. The big plates are 6" in diameter, and the smaller stop plate is 4" in diameter. Since we only shoot rimfire at these plates, they are only 1/4" thick steel.

The pull rope end.

We have four racks, two with the pull rope on the left end, and two with the pull rope on the right end. We have snaps to go on the end of the pull ropes, but they aren't installed yet. Big ugly knots do the job for now.

One last modification was to weld a small piece of angle iron to the very rear of the flat bar pieces to hook over the rear edge of the table. We found that the racks would work loose and creep forward when the rope was pulled, but this ended that problem.

Hope this helps other clubs to build their own plate racks.

CWSA Falling Plate Match - 04/07/2007

Yesterday the weather was absolutely beautiful, partly sunny, and temperatures in the low 70's. Last night at sunset it still looked promising for a good day today. This morning we awoke to a gray overcast sky, and a little bit of light rain. Not nearly as good as yesterday, but still, not a bad day for a pistol match, by golly!

If you are unfamiliar with the Rimfire Falling Plate matches, scroll down the page two posts and there's lots of background info and pictures to get you up to speed.

KeeWee, LarryW, and I all jumped into my state of the art super luxurious German transportation and headed off to the CWSA range. (OK, it's a Plymouth mini-van, but Daimler IS German! Close enough.....)

Larry is an old friend and retired gunsmith who lives a few miles from us. Larry and I had put together a Browning Buckmark and Red Dot combo for him this last week, and he hadn't had much of a chance to figure out how you shoot with a red dot sight yet. We'd fix that today! Larry is 89 years young, and he shot well for his first time out with a new setup.

LarryW gets his first shot off.

We had a some of shooters visiting from the Custer club, since their range is still flooded, so we had a good turnout of 23 shooters. Not bad at all for a small club like CWSA. "Evil Al" was the match coordinator, and he split the shooters into two groups. Each group would shoot against each member of their own group for three tables. After both round robin's had been completed, the top scoring shooter from each group would shoot against each other, 3 out of 5 table, to determine the match winner. The second highest scorer from each group would shoot it out, again 3 out of 5, to determine 3rd and 4th place.

Brandy has a one plate lead.

MikeF on a roll. He's only been shooting for a couple of weeks! I attribute his success to an outstanding coach and gunsmith (heh!)

With the round robin format, you get in a whole lot of shooting, and you are shooting every few minutes, all day long. Each shooter shot head to head against another shooters at least thirty times, and our group had one more shooter, so we all got thirty three tables. That's quite a bit of shooting, and several shooters figured they each had used close to 300 rounds of ammunition.

With the constant shooting all day I didn't have a whole lot of time for taking pictures, but I did manage to get a few. The fact that the camera was full didn't help, either....

As I watched the individual matches go by, it was really apparent just how closely matched all of the shooters were. There were lots and lots of really close tables, often with only a plate or less difference between the winner and the loser. The bugaboo of shooting the stop plate early bit a few shooters, too. It's really hard to shoot three plates in a row, then skip over one, shoot the remaining two, then come back for the stop plate. The temptation to pull the trigger when you see the stop plate pass in front of your sight is tough to overcome!

By early afternoon the round robin rotations had been completed, and the score cards were turned in and added up. Evil Al had the best score in group one, with Kim from Custer second. I had the best score out of group two, with Tony the Kid in second. KeeWee had shot well all day, and was easily in the top third overall, but the final results haven't been posted yet. Larry was a bit rusty, not having done any competitive shooting in quite a while, but he did well for his first try at falling plates, and more importantly, he had a whole lot of fun, which is what it's all about! New shooter MikeF shot exceptionally well, well up in the standings overall, and Wayne, Mike's dad, also shot very respectably, particularly considering he's also a new shooter.

Once again it was Al and I, head to head. This time, three out of five for the match. Al shoots a well set up Smith and Wesson model 41, and I was shooting my Volquartsen barreled High Standard Supermatic Citation.

The horn sounded, and we shot as fast as we could go. Al shot an amazing time and beat me solidly. I had shot my fastest table of the entire day, possibly my entire life, and got trounced! YOICKS! (I talked to another shooter after the match who had been running a timer, and he said that I was shooting sub two second tables.)

I knew that I couldn't shoot much faster, so I concentrated on trying to do another run the same, and hope for the best. If Al keeps shooting like his first table, no one's going to beat him today!

The second run I narrowly managed a win, but it was close.

The third table Al got bit by the stop plate bug. When you are shooting as fast as you can you really don't have the time to see if you hit all of the plates, at least the last couple of them, you just assume you did, and shoot the stop plate with your sixth shot.

There's a magic thing that happens when you are shooting in competition, and I suspect there's something similar in most competitive sports. You get into a "zone" and it's almost like you become a spectator, watching the match through your red dot sight. When the dot appears over a plate, the gun magically fires all by itself, all you have to do is watch it as it happens! My last run was one of those magic runs. The horn went off, the red dot magically leaped from plate to plate, and the High Standard went off at exactly the right time. Six shots, six plates, and the match was over. I was so full of adrenalin my heart was pounding like a bass drum! It was an amazing, and somehow humbling experience. Words really fail me in describing just how it felt, but it was incredible.

Tony and Kim has another battle royal for third place. Kim won two, Tony won two, and Kim took the fifth and deciding table for third place.

Al and I have had some wonderful match ups, and this was no exception. I had managed the win today, but it's usually the other way around. It doesn't get any better than that!

After helping to sweep up the brass, (we figure close to 7,000 rounds!), we packed everything back into the van and KeeWee and I took Larry to the Tyee Restaurant in Coupeville for three plates of beer battered halibut and chips. It was excellent!

After a great late lunch, we headed home.

........ then I took a nap. I was bushed!

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KeeWee's post on the match is HERE.

Mad Gun's post on the match is HERE.

Off To The Match

KeeWee and I are off to the CWSA Rimfire Falling Plate match this morning in Coupeville, Wa. Last I heard the Custer Club's range was still under water, so we may see some Custer shooters today. Although it's high overcast, it doesn't look too much like rain, so the weather might just cooperate today. I'll try to get some pictures and get a full post up for you all either tonight or in the morning, depending on when we get back.

Maybe today would be a good day for YOU to head out to the range, too! Take along some e-Postal match targets and shoot some entries, maybe? The entries are starting to come in, so join in on the fun!!

CWSA Falling Plate Match This Saturday

KeeWee has a new favorite match, the rimfire falling plate matches as put on at Central Whidbey sportsman's Association. Next Saturday, April 7th, will be the second CWSA Rimfire Falling Plate match of the year. Bring LOTS of ammo, as it's easy to go through several hundred rounds in one match! You also should be sure to arrive before 9am. to get signed in. Late arrivals can't be added to the round robin format, once the chart has been made up.

For more info and pictures on CWSA Falling Plate matches, check these previous posts:

Mr. Completely Post

Mr. Completely Post

KeeWee's Corner Post

Mad Gun Post

These matches are a whole lot of fun, so come on out and give it a try!

CWSA "Plate" Match Tomorrow

Tomorrow morning KeeWee and I will be off to the CWSA club range at Coupeville, Washington for a handgun match, but we won't know for sure what it will be until we get there. The schedule calls for a Rimfire Hanging Plate match, which is held near the backstop berm end of the CWSA 75 yard range. If it's raining, though, since there's no weather protection at that end of the range, if it rains it gets muddy, and you end up getting soaked.

If it IS raining, we have a dry alternative. We move the match to the CWSA bowling pin range and shoot a falling plate match instead. The pin range has brand new steel roofs over the shooting stations and the spectator/competitor areas just behind the shooting stations. With the new steel falling plate targets we don't even have to come out from the weather protected areas to reset targets, as that is done with the pull of a rope.

The nature of the two types of matches is completely different. The hanging plate matches require only modest speed, but good accuracy and consistency. Falling plates, on the other hand, require a lot less accuracy, but all the shooting speed you can muster. In short, practicing for one messes you up for the other! Even shooting a pin shoot the day before a hanging plate match makes the hanging plates a lot more difficult, as you have to force yourself to slow down and be accurate.

It should prove an interesting day...........

CWSA First Ever Rimfire Falling Plate Match

The weather wasn't quite as crummy as last week, as 23 hardy rimfire shooters converged at the Central Whidbey Sportsman's Assocuation range in Coupeville, Washington for the very first Rimfire Falling Plate match ever held at the CWSA range.

Five 6" disks, and one 4" disk. The smaller plate, called the Stop Plate, is actually painted yellow, but in the picture they all look white.

The brand new plate racks were clamped to the rear of the tables that we normally use for bowling pin shooting. The object is to knock over all of your plates before your opponent does. You can shoot the plates in any order you like, as long as you shoot the "Stop Plate" last. Once the plates are knocked over, a pull of a rope stands them back up for the next time.

The round robin match format meant that everyone would get in a lot of shooting. If there are 16 or less shooters, everyone shoots against everyone else three times. Since we had more than 16 shooters, we broke it into two groups and everyone in each group shot against everyone else in their group three times. Each shooter gets one point for winning a run, or one half of a point for a tie. After the group shooting was over, the points are added up to determine the group winners.

Mark shot some very good tables. He's improving every time I see him shoot.

The group totals showed the amazing "Evil Al" had mowed down the competition, winning every single table he shot in his group. Although we didn't have any timers going, I would estimate that he was shooting all six plates in between 2.5 and 3 seconds just about every time. WOW!!

It's not easy to get a picture of Al, he just moves too fast for my camera! Here he is ready to win another table.

I had a whole lot of really close tables, that today went my way, and I ended up by dropping only one table to Johann, and winning all the rest. Fortunately I was not in Al's group!

KeeWee shot some amazingly fast tables, easily beating a number of shooters and putting pressure on some faster shooters that were a bit surprised at how fast she was shooting!

Now it was time for the grand finale, 3 out of five, to decide the overall match winner.

"A hush fell over the crowd......."

(Actually, just about everyone had packed up and gone home, as it was wet, rainy, windy, and getting miserable.)

The first table was actually closer than I expected, but Al got me by about half a plate. At least he hadn't completely blown me away! The second table I actually managed to edge him by just a fraction.

The third table Al got bit by an ammunition gremlin and had a round fail to fire. By the time he cleared the round and resumed firing, I had taken the table. Even with Al losing time by having to clearthe round, I still just barely beat him! Dang, Al's fast!!

The fourth round. I was ahead two tables to one. If I could get lucky just once more, the match was mine. I tried to shoot just a little bit too fast, missed a plate, and Al put round four in his pocket.

Now it was winner take all, one table to decide the match. All I have to do is shoot probably faster than I've ever shot in my entire life, but hit every plate too. Yeah, right.....

I did the best I could, and didn't make any mistakes, but Al is Al, and he was not to be denied. I was close, I made him work for it, but he proved once again why he wins most of the matches at CWSA.

Now some folks get upset when they lose, but I wasn't upset at all. I knew I had shot my best, and just got beat by a better shooter. I was happy I was able to make it to the final, and more importantly, I managed to make Al sweat a little, and that's almost as much fun as winning!!

It was a grand day, excluding the weather, of course, with lots and lots of shooting. I went through well over 200 rounds of ammunition. There were lots of really close matches, and everyone had a great time.

KeeWee and I can hardly wait for the next one!

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KeeWee has a post up with a couple of more pictures HERE.

Mad Gun has a post up on the match HERE.