Hey, Mikey!

Yeah…I’m considering a legal name change to “Mike NoShoot.” Three misses over five stages, along with two no-shoot penalties pretty much made a mess out of this month’s USPSA match at Miami Rifle & Pistol Club.

You will also notice a muffed reload on the classifier, which caused the magazine to fall out after the first shot following a mandatory reload. (It also exposed a bit of a flinch!) The upside of the situation was that I did react quickly and correctly to fix the problem, going immediately to a fresh mag from my belt, reloading the gun, and moving on.

Yep…that’s my mag falling out of my gun.

I’ve also done a little thinking on exactly why I haven’t been doing as well as usual. When I look at my time and accuracy, it doesn’t seem significantly worse than in previous years. Maybe a bit, but things don’t seem that much different. I think at least part of the problem is that this is simply that small mistakes…which could have been overcome in a longer match…hurt much more in the shortened stages implemented by my club to deal with the current ammo drought. In an abbreviated match with shorter stages, it’s just much more difficult to recover from what would have just been a small rough patch in a longer match.

Still, it beats sitting home on the couch, and if you’re a new shooter (or just new to competition) the shortened format is much less overwhelming and easier to learn. It’s the perfect time to try your hand at competitive action pistol shooting…take advantage of it!