What is the big deal with IPSC?

[rock jock]

I have been shooting IDPA for about six years, on and off, and recently attended my first IPSC match to see what all the hub-bub was about. Man was I ever disappointed. There were approx. 3 times as many shooters and each stage took (on a per person basis) about twice as long. A typical IDPA match for us will attract 8-10 shooters, include 3 stages, and last about 2.5-3 hours. The IPSC match, OTOH, had about 25 shooters and was only half-finished after 2.5 hours, at which point I left. The scenarios were not nearly as realistic as IDPA and half the shooters were using race guns that looked like they belonged in an episode of the original "Star Trek". Why the attraction to this sort of thing?

I also noticed, for some reason, that the IPSC group included an inordinately high percentage of jelly-bellies. Do they serve fat pills (i.e., donuts) at all IPSC matches?

 

[Jim Watson]

I shoot more IDPA than IPSC these days, but I do keep in touch, including maintaining membership in USPSA and NROI.

IPSC dropped any pretense of "realism" about 20 years ago. Fancy race guns are part of the attraction.
Sounds like you were at a poorly run match, our state match ran over a hundred shooters through a dozen stages in one (long) day.

Whassamatter, were us fat guys doing better than you?

 

[motorep]

Who cares ? People out having a good time shooting. You can take a look at any of a number of competitions- trap, skeet, silhouette, pins, PPC, bullseye, whatever, and think "man, that stuff is boring/impractical/dumb/etc. but everyone's having a great time, meeting people who are interested in the same things.....

ps- check the stats- who wins the IDPA nationals? IPSC shooters. Have a good time and accept the fact that others are, too.

 

[Round Gun Shooter]

I shoot them both

But for the same reason. Trigger time. The USPSA matches in my area are well run and have good high round count stages. (30 round revolver stages are fun )

IDPA in this area is also well attended and well run. IDPA is usually 20 to 25 shooters anywhere from 3 to 7 stages depending on the club with some stages set up as IPSC lite.

USPSA matches are usually 30 shooters or more with usually 5 stages of varied round count from 20 to 36.

Both offer a great place to shoot and an even better chance to meet some real nice friendly like minded folk.

Give it a chance,

Regards,

 

[rock jock]

Whassamatter, were us fat guys doing better than you?

Only in the stages where they didn't have to move much.

 

[LeonCarr]

I shot IPSC for about four years hot and heavy, and then got tired of the equipment race, the "track meet with guns" courses of fire, and providing job security to gunsmiths to keep my 1911s running .

Just my .02,
LeonCarr

 

[mattjoe]

it's just plain more fun. They are both games, there is nothing realistic about either, make a target shoot back, and then maybe you can call one realistic.

You shoot more at a USPSA/IPSC match than you will at an idpa match. No 18 round limit on a stage. Reload anywhere you want, basically, it's a freestyle sport. (with the exception of the classifier system)
Here's your stage, it's up to you how you solve it.
Bunch of heavy guys around? Well, look at the cross section of the population that are gun owners, the majority are middle aged, and the majority of our population is overweight.

Equipment race? I disagree. I use a 7 year old para ordnance 38 super with nearly no rifling left in the barrel and have finished the year ranked #1 in our section for the past 3 years. You can't purchase ability, you earn it through practice and learning from your mistakes.

A large number of shooters gives you a better group of people to measure yourself against, to learn from, to compete against and to become friends with.

A normal match will include 4 stages out here, and start at 930 and go till about 1, you'll shoot over 100 rounds.
If you're going to drive to a match, the set up crew is going to offer you something that makes it worth the time to drive to, none of this shoot and pack up and be done with it quickie nonsense. I drove to a match advertised as a combat shoot a few months ago, went 2 hours to get to it, when i got there, they tell me it's going to be run as an idpa match, shot all of 36 rounds.
Why does Idpa not want their shooters to use more than a box of ammo?

The reason half were using those "star Trek" guns, they compete in open division, against other open division shooters, not everyone else. Same reason some people race top fuel dragsters and others race street cars.
Same game, different equipment.

 

[jdkelly]

Trigger Time

Around here, southern New England, the IPSC matches seem to bring out more of the better shooters then the IDPA shoots do. While many of the better shooters shoot both IPSC and IDPA, they seem to shoot IDPA when they would have to travel to far to shoot IPSC.

The IPSC clubs are pretty much established, while some of the IDPA clubs are just getting started.

The stages the clubs set up, reflect the difference in experience between the established clubs and the new clubs, as well as the apparent difference between IPSC's and IDPA's philosophy. IPSC shoots have a greater number of rounds shot faster. But, the same shooters pretty much smoke me in both (don't they Round Gun? ).


Respectfully,

jkelly

 

[Zak Smith]

Around here - Northern Colorado - we have a ton of matches every month: 4 IPSC, 1 3Gun, 1 IDPA, 1 Steel/Revolver, 1 Magnum Revolver, 1 "Defensive Pistol", 1 Indoor "Combat". I end up shooting about half of them, just because I don't have time for the rest.

The USPSA/IPSC matches draw more attendance than the IDPA matches, by a factor of 50-200%. And there are 4X more IPSC matches than IDPA matches per month.

A well run IPSC match seems to average about an hour per stage, so you start at 9AM, finish about 1-2pm. It feels to me like the IDPA matches drag on, but that might be because of: higher round count in the IPSC stages, on average. Look, if I'm driving between 40 and 90 minutes to attend the match, I want to get in some shooting. IPSC just has more trigger time.

The props in the local IPSC matches are more sophisiticated and challenging, like activated targets, moving targets, disappearing targets, moving no-shoots, texas stars, windmills, etc. I also enjoy the freestyle nature of IPSC, vs. the prescribed nature of IDPA.

As for the "equipment race", that's not really accurate anymore. Your basic Open Division pistol hasn't really changed in 10-12 years, same with Limited. No new "disruptive" technology has occured in the meantime to change what people run. But that's not saying it's cheap: a good Open or Limited gun will probably run you close to $3000 when you consider the gun, mags, holster, gear etc.

However, if you shoot in Limited-10 or Production class, your box-stock Glock, SIG, or single-stack Colt 1911 will be competitive - if you are.

For history, I shot IDPA off and on for 3 years, and then this year started shooting IPSC a lot.

-z

 

[Correia]

There is more difference in quality between individual clubs within either organization than between IDPA vs. IPSC.

You can go to a poorly run IDPA match, or you can go to a poorly run IPSC match. Beware generalizations about either.

The leadership of your local club is what determines if the match is going to be good or not. My local IDPA club is hardly average in that we usually run 6 stages and our round count is usually over 100 rounds. Our 3 gun matches run around 300 + rounds and 9 or 10 stages. Our attendance is between 30-50 shooters, and we usually run from 9:00-1:00 or 2:00.

But that is because we have a solid crew of folks who work really hard to pull off great matches. The COFs are planned weeks in advance and distributed to other officers for everybody to check for potential problems and bottlenecks. For big matches crews organize and set up the props and target stands the day before.

I know of IPSC clubs who run the same way. Tight and on the ball.

At the same time I've gone to IDPA matches where I have wanted to strangle the match director to death.

Personally, and this is me putting on my moderator hat for a minute, frankly I get tired of the us vs. them mentality in competition shooting. As was pointed out above, the very best shooters shoot both. Now if somebody who has shot both types for years wants to weigh in on why they like one better than the other, that is perfectly all right. However don't go to one match, at one club, and make a blanket condemnation of the whole sport.

My sport is 3 gun, but I went to a match once that sucked beyond all comprehension. Hours of bottle necks, no written COFs, no rules that made sense, scoring that nobody understood, and a stage that I won thrown out because half of the squads shot it wrong. I left with 2 stages left because frankly I was bored, tired, and hungry.

Now if that had been my first match, I could have thrown down a blanket condemnation on all of 3 gun and never shot another match. Then look at all of the years of fun and entertainment I would have missed.

I've poked fun at IPSC guys (usually about your spandex running shorts and coat hanger style holsters ) but in reality some of the best shooters I have ever seen or gone up against have been IPSC guys who have absolutely WHOOPED the pants off of me. My philosophy is that if they can whoop me, I best not make to much fun, they might just know something I don't.

 

[Zak Smith]

I concur with the comment about differences in clubs being the key factor.

-z

 

[Ankeny]

I shoot both and I seem to do OK. I shoot SSP or CDP in IDPA and I shoot all five divisions in IPSC. I like IDPA because most courses of fire are close and over in just a few seconds. I prefer IPSC because there is more variety and it is much more intense. Both are great games. FWIW, I am also a middle aged fat guy but I shoot fast and I understand the concept of ecomomy of motion so the fast running youngsters don't pose much of a threat.

 

[mattjoe]

"However don't go to one match, at one club, and make a blanket condemnation of the whole sport."
I know that statement may not be directed at what I wrote, but it certainly does encompass some of what I touched on.

I certainly had not set out to make a blanket generalization on idpa, as i'm sure there are good clubs out there.
I have shot plenty more than one match of idpa out here, just used one recent in particular as an example. I'll shoot it again, at a different location, any competition is good practice as far as i'm concerned. And it gives me a reason to use some of my "normal" guns.

 

[Correia]

Matt, I wasn't singling anybody out. I just hate to see shooters short change themselves from fun experiences is all.

 

[Jakes10mm]

Never shot IDPA

Can't even claim to have been within miles of an IDPA match, but have competed in USPSA matches since 1989. It has changed considerably. I would equate it to racing rather that tactical stealth. I have to admit that popping off 30+ rounds in 15-20 seconds (for me, considerably less for the serious shooters) while moving through a target array is an adreneline rush. My club sets up a 8 stage course monthly and turns away shooters each match. They limit the squad size to 10 so the match can move respectively quick (usually about 4 hours). On the average, the match will call for 120-160 rounds. The serious shooters do have pistols that resemble the one used by Robocop. The rest of us use mild modified pistols from Colt, Para Ordnance, Springfield Armory, and the likes. This coming season I'm debating between "Production" with a CZ75BD or "Limited 10" with a SW1911. Neither of which have been modified from factory spec (well, I did disable the mag brake on the CZ).

Would you complain at a bowling pin shoot about the lack of "Cover and Concealment"? Same goes for USPSA/IPSC. The tools of the sport are similar, but the rules are totally different.

 

[Ankeny]

Actually, there are some very "serious" competitors in all divisions. I have won my share of matches with a CZ 75 or a 1911.

 

[motorep]

Ditto the (stock) 1911. Carry Commander and P14.

 

[standby]

Let's see 8-10 people at your IDPA match (we'll use 10 for comparison's sake), 3 stages, 2.5-3 hours (we'll use 2.5 for comparison's sake). That comes out to 50 minutes per stage or 5 minutes per shooter. At the IPSC match you described, there were 25 people, 2.5 hours to get half completed with the match (we'll use 5 hours for comparison's sake) and since you didn't state how many stages were included in the match, we'll use the "average" of 5 stages. That comes out to 60 minutes per stage
or 2.4 minutes per shooter. So I'm not sure how that comes out to "each stage took (on a per person basis) about twice as long".

Let's not even start the "realistic scenario", "uber-tactical", IPSC vs. IDPA stage design discussion again.

As for the "inordinately high percentage of jelly-bellies" comment. I have shot a few (less than 10) IDPA matches and lost count of the number of folks using the "lift the belly to reach the weapon" draw technique. Of course, there were also plenty of folks in great physical shape (like any other cross section of our society).

Now we all know personal preferences differ, but personally I would be very disappointed to load ammo, gather up all my gear and drive to a match only to find out we were only shooting 3 stages.

Did you really leave half way through the match because it was taking too long or were "them IPSC shooters" really as good as everybody says they are? Some of the "jelly bellies" can really move, huh?

Please don't take this as a flame, as that is not how it is meant. It is just a blunt reply to a blunt post.

 

[rock jock]

Did you really leave half way through the match because it was taking too long or were "them IPSC shooters" really as good as everybody says they are? Some of the "jelly bellies" can really move, huh?

No offense taken. I was probably unduly harsh on the IPSC match I attended. I do not like sitting around for nearly an hour waiting to shoot though. The local gun club is 20 minitues away, so I like to shoot for no more than 3 hours and move onto something else. I will, however, give it another try later this year.

 

[BerettaNut92]

Depending on my mood, I like to hose on some Saturdays. Other Saturdays I like to be tactical.

As for the guys on the fat pills, they can all kick my butt!

 

[Wakal]

I run most of the local IPSC matches.

I run all the local IDPA matches

I run all the local SASS matches.

Hell, I'm the match director for the upcoming Texas State 3-Gun Championship (plug plug).

I just like to shoot. Give me targets and a start box and I'm just a happy camper. That said, I really hate going to matches and having the stage mapped out so that the shooter can ONLY shoot it one way or face harsh penalties. My IDPA SO class didn't recommend overstating the COF, but it sure seems that most of the "away" IDPA games I shoot are that way.

Shooting is probably the only sport where a short fat guy can be considered a top athete (with all due props to Benny Hill of www.triangleshootingsports.com , IPSC Grandmaster and really amazing gunsmith). Sure is scary seeing a slow moving chubby fellow explode off the line with a compensated laser sighted gyro stablized ninja-issue racegun!

Shooting is shooting, and the more the merrier



Alex

 

[Correia]

Alex, I watched Benny Hill shoot in Vegas. That guy is awesome.

He may not look like a traditional athlete, but he sure as heck is in my book.

 

[cornbread2]

One of the best IDPA shooters in the state of Ky is overweight more than just a little to say the least.

He moves as fast as he needs to and shoots faster than anyone I have ever seen.

 

[BerettaNut92]

I think the big guys control recoil better too

 

[Beorn]

Well, let me think... I suppose I would be considered one of the "jelly bellies." I am about 6'7" and around 500 lbs. I do not move quite as fast as some of the other competitors but then again, I shoot as fast as I need to hit the targets and not the hostages/no-shoots/friendlies.

It sounds to me as if you were at a rather poorly run match that was populated very heavily with Open Division race gunners. Try again and ask questions. Many people travel and would be more than happy to plug their local IPSC or IDPA match for you to try next week. That's how I did the IPSC stuff; I met a guy at an IDPA shoot who wanted us to give it a try.

Truthfully, IDPA may be a smidgeon more realistic, but IPSC gives you higher shot counts and more trigger time. But then again, we play because we like to play.

I hope you get some match time that you enjoy.

Be safe and have fun!