That was a great match. There were some excellent stages, and probably the single best/funnest IDPA stage I have ever shot.
I started out kind of slow and inaccurate. My first couple of stages were not very good. One stage I couldn't buy a down 0 hit, second stage I decide to shoot all of the targets an extra time for some bizzaro reason, plus I shoot a hostage in the love handle.
AHaslem designed an excellent stage that had a few unique features. You start laying in bed, at the buzzer you jump up, grab your gun and magazines from the night stand and fight off a bunch of home invaders. One of the targets was a turner that was visable for a couple of seconds. You shot a steel, and as if fell it activated the turner. I saw some of the fanciest shooting ever by THR member JohnL. He miscalculated the number of rounds in his gun, shot the steel, his slide locks back empty, the turner turns to begin its couple seconds of visability, John does one of the quickest speed loads I have ever seen anywhere, and nails the turner 3 times in the -0 before it went away. Amazing shooting.
The funnest stage was one designed by the guys from the North Eastern Utah club, who I have never shot with before. It was a blind stage. You entered a house, and then the fun began. As I was standing outside I could hear the SOs yelling at the shooter, "COVER! COVER!" So I could figure what kind of stage it was.
As you entered there were a pile of targets, some were activated as others were knocked down, there was a mover that was visable for a few seconds, and other vertical movers that jumped up and down from behind cover. All of this reveals itself as you slice the pie and move through doorways. I was on for this one, and I actually had an adrenaline rush when I left the stage. You know that that is some good course design.
There were some other stages that in my opinion... kind of sucked.
No offense intended to the guys who designed them, because hey, I've designed some stinkers myself. One stage had a really confusing course description, that led to a few of us standing there like idiots looking for a last target that did not exist anywhere other than on the course description.
Another stage was one of those damnable "memory" stages. You start with your back turned while washing your hands, then you turn and draw and engage 4 bad guys. No problem, except the order of engagement is, shoot each with 1 to the body in tactical sequence, (nearest to farthest) THEN starting on the farthest, shoot each in the body again, then shoot them all in the head in any order. So of course when I do this it turns into, face Correia in direction of enemy, turn him loose.
I got a little confused by the 1,1,1,2,1,1,1,2,1,1,1 crap about half way through and just hosed them. Why on earth would I go and start shooting the farthest away bad guy when I have a perfectly good bad guy standing three feet away who is still standing? Second string was a much more sensible double tap to each, followed by one to each head. Burned through that one clean and super fast.
At the awards banquet we got to find out how we all did. All of the guys that I know did really well. Personally I got shafted, and I ain't joking I'm pretty ticked off about this one. Let me explain.
I get the score sheet. I'm 2nd overall in sharpshooter CDP. Ok, pretty good. There are over 10 shooters in that division. But who beat me? I'm going to with hold his name, but he knows who he is and he knows that he is a sandbagging piece of crap. It is a guy who is classified freaking Master in SSP, who normally shoots a Glock 21. So what did he do? So desperate to win, he down loads his Glock 2 rounds, enters in CDP, (which apparently he hasn't classified in for like 7 or 8 years) and beats us all. Not only did he beat us, but he killed us. All of us regular sharpshooters went from 220-270, so we were pretty obviously shooting about the same level. This guy had something like a 170 that beat about half the Master class shooters and most of the Experts. That is like being an NBA player, coming to a high school game and beating up the teenagers. Hope he enjoys my trophy. Jack ???.
All in all it was an excellent match, with some really excellent stages. But all that is moot, because next week is 3 gun. And that is where the fun really is!
(plus luckily there are 2 other guns besides pistol to shoot!)
