I'm On Fire!

At least it felt that way during my July 25 USPSA match at Miami Rifle and Pistol Club. Temps were well into the 90s, and the humidity was…well, I don’t know what it was, but let’s just say there was an ample supply of swamp butt.

The first thing you will notice is some blurry video right at the beginning. I think what happened was that my GoPro had gotten chilled from lying next to the cold water bottle in my range bag, and then fogged up when I got it out. It didn’t take very long to warm up, however, and the lens clears up pretty quickly.

I started out pretty strongly, with a very good (for me) showing on the classifier. However, you’ll also notice that what would have been the third stage ended up being thrown out by the Match Director. Check out the big black steel “doughnut” in the middle of the stage…there is an array of five mini and full size poppers behind it, all of which must be shot through the hole in the doughnut. The problem that occurred was some shooters were getting some of those poppers to fall from bullet fragmentation, even when they were clearly not shot yet. I’m not an RO, but I think that would count as a range equipment failure and require a reshoot. With that problem occurring so often, multiple reshoots would have been a big problem, and counting the fallen targets as hit is not fair to other shooters. So the decision was made to not count the stage for score.

The only other real issue I had was a failure to seat a magazine fully on the next stage, and it falls out while I am shooting. But I recognized it quickly and replaced the magazine and continued to shoot without much delay. Still, getting in so much of a hurry that you don’t properly seat a magazine doesn’t really save you any time!

You actually lose time when you go too fast to seat your magazine fully!

Thanks to all who came out to shoot, and big thanks to the Match Director, ROs, and other staff which make the match happen. I wouldn’t be able to come out and stumble through a hot, sweaty, sleep-deprived match without you!

PS - August is National Shooting Sports Month, so #LetsGoShooting …and bring a friend!