The lesson I learned today, is that I need to know how to do things for myself. If you are not 100% sure of your gear, or depend on someone else to help, you will pay the price. I had been shooting a little high with the AR, and yesterday when I went to walk stages, I headed to the range early with some folks, and asked one of the to zero my rifle to make sure that my being high was not "user error". At 50 yards he was about an inch high and to the right, he handed me back the rifle and told me that as long as I knew my holds, I'd be fine. Maybe I'm wrong, but if I'm using the Strelok App it assumes that my rifle is zeroed dead center, so no way for me to know my holds if the rifle is not properly zeroed. If I'm wrong, hope someone let's me know....
That's an inauspicious start to the day, but my issues on my first stage were entirely my own fault, and I don't believe had anything to do with the way my rifle was zeroed.
Stage 10:
A fairly straight forward type of stage, but I went down on the wrong place on the platform, and could not hit the 2 long steel. I was able to hit the 3 steel at about 130 yards, but had my typical "fish eye" problems, meaning my face was not in the right place on the stock, and I never saw or shot the 2 longer steel at 307 yards. Huge penalty (20 seconds each) for not hitting them, plus penalty for not engaging them.
In addition, the targets were so tight, some nearly on top of each other, with perhaps 5% of an "A" zone showing, I dug myself a hole and took some misses. Again, my fault on the rifle, something that I can't let happen tomorrow when I go out to 400 yards. Tonight I'm going to spend another 20 minutes or so in dry fire making sure I get proper cheek weld, and can see.
Don't watch this video if you are faint of heart, you'll see some serious stuggle.
Stage 1:
I was excited about this stage, I thought it promised to get my match going. That said, I was nervous about the rifle, because the first 5 targets were mini-IPSC targets, I had 2 misses on one, and only 1 hit on a second target, and things were not going well. I expected to do well on the slugs, but I'll be honest, I blew it, I did not line up my sights like I did in practice and I paid the price.
The first pistol target was a hard shot, it was a head shot at about 20 yards with no shoot all around it. I put the first shot into a no-shoot before getting it, and my pistol is shooting about an inch lower than I'm used to. Again, on me, but I tried to adjust it, and I think the Black Nitride locked the adjustment up, so that's another thing that has to go back to Hayes Custom Gun and be looked then.
The biggest issue was that either the gun was struggling with 124 grain factory ammo, or I was having mag issues, or both. I suspect the 124 grain factory was the bigger issue and that's why I was going single shot. In addition, the guy who was helping tune the mags, I'm not sure he knew what to take off (I definitely did not) and mags were going salt shaker, and not feeding. With an all pistol stage ahead, this was a disaster waiting to happen.
Stage 2:
Pistol! Something I know, and like. These were tough shots, one side was 4" steel plates at about 20 yards, the other side was 4"x 10" high plates. I knew the gun was shooting low for my normal sight picture, so I was prepared to adapt, and while I did not do great, I was happier with this part than anything else to date in the match. While loading mags, we noticed that all mags were salt shaker, so we tried to fix 2, and then I borrowed 2 from another shooter. I ran his mags first with the Fiocchi 115 grain ammo, and had no feed or eject issues, which felt really good. When I got down to the end though, I had to go to my mags, and the first one went salt shaker, and I had to drop it, and I ended up running out of ammo before I was done.
Bottom line, I took way too many make-up shots, small steel at that distance is no joke, and it's something I can, and will practice going forward.
Stage 3:
Finally something kind of went my way. To start with, I nailed both flying clays, which made me feel good, but I left a clay on the wheel rather than drop in my match saver or reload and get it. Probably not a good decision on my part, but I'd rather say the bad decision was missing 3 times before that, and I know why I missed. There were 2 longer arms on the wheel, and I kept my shotgun in place to ambush as they clays came by, but that meant that I would miss a long one, and if I were to move it, I'd miss the next, which I did. Gotta say, prime reason to keep up with the cardio and working out, right there, the rifle run!
Other than that, got all my hits on the stage, again a ton of make ups on the steel, especially on the plate rack. I was shooting low again, and what I need to do is adjust the rear sight, if I do that then I don't have do anything else, so not having the gear set-up right is really killing me.
Summary:
After I shot Stage 1, I was ready to go home I as so down, and no matter how much I was telling myself that it was okay, and I just needed to shoot, it was hard to buy into that. Stage 3 started, and stage 4 built some confidence. After Stage 4, I hit the zero range, and zeroed the rifle at 50 yards, so tomorrow for the long range I'll stand a chance of getting my hits. It's a hard lesson to know that your gear is not right, and I'm not sure if I'm going to have to borrow pistol mags for the rest of the match, or if Hayes has some inventory of MBX, and I'd buy a couple.
Great squad, fun to be shooting 3-Gun, finally, with Jay Carillo. He's the guy who tried talking me into 3-Gun from about the time that I started shooting USPSA, it may have taken a few years, but now I'm doing it.
Tomorrow I'll bring my best, some fun and interesting stages, I really want to nail my shotgun work, and do far better on the long range rifle. I'm intimidated because I've had more failure at it than success, but I can do this. I will do this. I'd like to believe that tomorrow is the day I'll start to get better at this.
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