Revolvers and Practical Pistol Competition?

[mcb]

Mostly just a curiosity thread. How many of the revolver shooters here shoot Practical Pistol Competitions (USPSA, IPSC, IDPA, etc)? If you do participate in Practical Pistol Competition do you shoot the matches with your revolvers?

I am a fairly avid revolver shooter presently shooting USPSA, IDPA competition with a revolver, I hunt with a revolver, carry a revolver as a woods/tractor gun and I conceal carry a revolver. But I came to all of this from the competition side first. My first double action revolver was bought for USPSA competition. I find it colors what I look for in a revolver and what cartridges I want my revolver chambered in even for the other applications I use a revolver for. Most of my revolver are moonclip ready revolvers and I love rimless cartridges in a revolver.

Before I moved I had a nice core of revolver shooters I shot with. At local area club USPSA matches we could usually get 3-6 revolver guys going. Currently where I live now I am usually first and DFL in Revolver division when I shoot a match with my revolver, still fun to see how many of the bottom feeders I can beat but it is nice to shoot with other noble round gun shooters.

So do you shoot Practical Pistol Competition with a Revolver?

 

[Jim Watson]

Closest I can get is No 4. But I shoot Many competitions, relative to health and weather, Some of them with a revolver although most with an automatic.

 

[MrBorland]

I voted as a (nearly) exclusive revolver shooter, but have to clarify that 1) due to a change in life's priorities, I haven't competed in a few years, and 2) it's never been my mission to beat semi-auto shooters - to hold them as any different than me was to mentally handicap myself. I've won HOA (in IDPA matches) while shooting a wheelgun, but mentally, my gun was simply my gun. One of the biggest mistakes I saw early on was how willingly revolver shooters mentally handicap themselves with the Great Revolver Narrative - that life is oh so hard with a wheel gun. Buy into it, and you're giving yourself permission to underperform before you've even come to the firing line.

Anyhow, as far as me, I started off in USPSA & ICORE, but found I prefer L-frames and speedloaders, so I drifted to IDPA, and did so exclusively when the ICORE matches disappeared. I was also very fortunate to live in a fantastic area for IDPA and have many very excellent shooters regularly attend.

When I needed a break towards the end, I shot a semi-auto. When I started to feel I needed a break from IDPA, I bought a nice 5" 627, a boatload of SC brass and a speedy holster. I ended up really shifting gears and shooting High Power Rifle for a season instead .

 

[9mmepiphany]

Your tittle threw me off a bit because I thought the thread might be about PPC shooting that was popular in the 80s....Pythons and bull barreled S&W K-frames. I usually refer to USPSA, ICORE, and IDPA as Action Pistol

That's where I started shooting handgun competition before trying USPSA and IDPA with my DA/SA SIG 226 and 220.

In the last couple of years, I've been shooting IDPA almost exclusively with a revolver...L-frame with speedloaders.(moon clips aren't competitive due to different PF) Like MrBorland, I don't specifically target semiauto shooters and don't let my chosen platform set a glass ceiling as to my performance. The greatest difference in times is usually if I have to reload while engaging an array of targets. If I'm reloading between arrays, the only advantage they have is a option of taking "insurance" shots at harder targets

The hardest thing about shooting a revolver in Action Pistol is finding a better revolver shooter to gauge your skill level against. At my local clubs, there are seldom more than 4 (usually 2) revolver shooters in the monthly matches...so I do sometimes rib bottom feeder shooters about how they can't keep up with a wheelgun shooter. I took our State Match in thee Revolver Division last year. But was recently crushed at my first sanctioned match, last weekend, by a shooter who only placed 3rd in his division at the Nationals last year...so there is a bit of work to be done.

 

[mcb]

Thanks for the responses guys.

Grew up a hunters and competitive rifle shooter. I did not own a handgun other than my Ruger Mark II 22LR until after grad school. I was looking for something to do with my newly acquired handguns that was more fun than standing in a booth in an indoor range and shooting at a static paper targets. I started doing some research and found USPSA at a club relatively close to my home. I read the rules and when I realized that reloading was done on the clock and effected your score and that your were required to run around with a handgun and shoot targets in awkward positions and sometimes the targets moved too. I was hooked before shooting my first match. I went to the next match the club hosted, found a couple good shooters to mentor me and have been having fun ever since.

Due to the equipment I had (XD-40) when I started I shot a lot of Limited-10. But I liked the reloading part so much I stuck with Limited-10 and when I started looking for another division to play in Revolver was the obvious choice. I had a deal on a S&W 610 fall into my lap that was too good to pass up and my Revolver shooting was off. Shot USPSA with that for the next few years along with still shooting Limited-10. The local clubs I was shooting would let you shoot the match more than once especially if you came and helped setup. So I shot a lot of Limited-10 and Revolver for several years. Late 2011 I finally landed a good deal on a 625 and switched to that for about two seasons and then late 2013 I decided I was going to give the National Match a try in 2014. I bought a 627 when I heard the rumors of the rule change. I started shooting club matches in 2013 with my 625 in Revolver and then my 627 in Production. I managed to win Production division at a few club level matches with my 8-shooter and that was always gratifying.

The 2014 Revolver Nationals was great. Got there early and watched the super squad finish the Single Stack Nationals and the shot the match the next day. I did ok at the match and got to shoot with some great revolver shooters including getting squad-ed with shooter that would take 5th overall..

Later that year I picked up an old Model 10 and started also shooting the occasional IDPA match with it.

The 610 did not become abandoned, it transitioned to my hunting revolver. I worked up a good 10mm 200gr XTP load for it and took two does with it in 2015-2016 hunting season.

 

[MrBorland]

The hardest thing about shooting a revolver in Action Pistol is finding a better revolver shooter to gauge your skill level against.

True dat. He have (had?) a good group locally, and we could count on 7ish in a local match. That's still not a lot. I'm a competitive type, so while I mentioned I don't specifically measure myself against semi-auto shooters, I do enjoy competing against them, simply because, to a large degree, they are the competition.

I started competing with a revolver because my 686 is what I had. I was fortunate in that I intuitively understood there was a lot to learn that didn't have anything to do with the gun I was shooting, so rather than chase equipment, I decided to "master" the game with what I was shooting. Of course, one never really "masters" anything, so I ended up shooting that 686 almost exclusively (by the time I relegated it to back-up status, it had about 70k rounds down the pipe. It was still going strong, but I picked up another low-mileage 686 and used it as my primary).

What I liked about shooting a revolver in IDPA is that, in local matches, the round counts and courses of fire are such that a good revolver shooter does have a realistic chance of winning HOA (even though HOA isn't officially recognized, it's sure noticed when a wheelgunner takes it ). But, to do that, the revolver shooter must have strong fundamentals, and execute those fundamentals excellently (which is the other reason why I enjoy shooting a revolver in IDPA). And their gear must be dead-nuts no-excuses reliable. I recall that during the LAMR at a match, I discovered that I brought exactly 12 rounds for this 12-round stage (which included some steel). The SO asked if I wanted to run back for another speedloader. When I said "no, let's just go", he howled with laughter, as if it was the craziest thing he's ever heard. But hey, if you run the stage like you should, you'd only need 12 rounds .

 

[CraigC]

Never appealed to me but then I do most of my fast work with a single action.

 

[mcb]

I was lucky in regards to competition early on. I had a much more experienced Revolver shooter that was a regular shooter at several of the clubs I shot at. He also shot a 610 and I would not have even know a 10mm revolver existed but for him. He taught me a lot and after a year or two I was finally able to compete with him in the scores if only because I was younger and faster afoot. A few year later suffering from older eyes he moved on to mostly shooting Open but by then we had recruited several new Revolver shooters. That group of revolver shooters had quite a fun rivalry and we pushed each other to improve. I was proactive on the Revolver front. If you showed up to my home club's matches and shot revolver I would give you a home-made de-mooner. I would buy old golf clubs from the local junk/estate shop and would make de-mooners for 45, 40 and 38/9mm and give them to any new revolver shooter that showed up to our matches. Not a big thing but the fact I did it got people's attention and we had a small but healthy group of revolver shooters.

 

[MrBorland]

I was lucky in regards to competition early on. I had a much more experienced Revolver shooter that was a regular shooter at several of the clubs I shot at. He also shot a 610 and I would not have even know a 10mm revolver existed but for him. He taught me a lot

You are fortunate.

I, too, was fortunate, that the owner of my range was a very excellent revolver shooter & IDPA competitor who'd spend a lot of time with me early on. A little bit of good instruction goes a long way, and I was fortunate to have had a lot of good instruction. I tried to pay it forward as much as I could.

 

[BrianBelanger]

Try NRA PPC:
https://lecompetitions.nra.org/police-pistol-combat/

Civilians shoot for no score but great people and fun.

 

[mcb]

Try NRA PPC:
https://lecompetitions.nra.org/police-pistol-combat/

Civilians shoot for no score but great people and fun.

I shot PPC in a winter league one year. It was fun an somthing to do when the snow was need (lived in Ohio at the time) but it is not the same as USPSA or IDPA. I like moving and reloading on the clock.

 

[DukeConnor]

Oh great, I have to stand here and wait for this guy to reload. Let's make this day longer.


Sorry, you asked.

 

[9mmepiphany]

Oh great, I have to stand here and wait for this guy to reload. Let's make this day longer.

Unless you're doing a <2 sec reload you won't be waiting for very much longer.

I just came back from a little practice for a match this weekend. Standing reloads were running around 3.2 to 3.5 sec during a F.A.S.T. Drill...I'm working on getting them down below 3 secs

 

[mcb]

I am not Jerry Miculek (yet ) but I do OK. The video clip below is from dry fire practice about two weeks ago in prep for my local club match. I set a 3.6 sec par time on my timer with a random start beep. On the start beep I did: draw, double tap, reload, double tap. The reload is 1.95 seconds bang to bang (click to click in this case).

 

[MrBorland]

The reload is 1.95 seconds bang to bang (click to click in this case).

That's smokin'

Dry fire is an excellent way to get the fine (and fast) motor movements down, so long as you're mimicking the movements and sight picture you'd do during live fire. IIRC, MattG had a video a few years ago of a "sub-1second" dry fire reload, but he started (and ended) with the revolver at about waist level and close to the moons on his belt. Yeah, he's an awesome shooter, it was super quick gun handling, and he can call it a reload if he wants to, but good dry fire reloads are more than beating a par time by any means necessary.

All else being equal, faster reloads are better, but personally, in a match, I'd give up a bit of that "smokin" if it meant consistent bobble-free reloads and a pair of clean shots made immediately before and after the reload.

The video clip below

No workee for me.

 

[9mmepiphany]

It says the video is unavailable for me also

 

[ATLDave]

I shoot a pretty decent amount of USPSA. I have never shot an entire match with a revolver, although I have re-shot classifiers with revo gear. One of these days, I plan to shoot the ICORE match that is in my area on a monthly basis. So I'm not quite literally a "never" on revolver, but "sometimes" would give a misleadingly high impression. It's fun to play around with, but I don't think it will ever be my "real" division/game.

 

[mcb]

Sorry about the video clip guys. I think I have the issue fixed.

 

[mcb]

That's smokin'

Dry fire is an excellent way to get the fine (and fast) motor movements down, so long as you're mimicking the movements and sight picture you'd do during live fire. IIRC, MattG had a video a few years ago of a "sub-1second" dry fire reload, but he started (and ended) with the revolver at about waist level and close to the moons on his belt. Yeah, he's an awesome shooter, it was super quick gun handling, and he can call it a reload if he wants to, but good dry fire reloads are more than beating a par time by any means necessary.

All else being equal, faster reloads are better, but personally, in a match, I'd give up a bit of that "smokin" if it meant consistent bobble-free reloads and a pair of clean shots made immediately before and after the reload.


No workee for me.

I agree, in a Match I bet I very rarely hit a 2 second reload except maybe on a stand and shoot classifier that I am really trying hard on. On a big field stage with movement you rarely need to reload that fast. But when I am dry firing I like to push it just to see what I can do. After trying to beat the par time for awhile I just do it without the timer and focus on being smooth and thing real do flow well then.