To shoot this match all you need is really the desire to attend, after that look at your equipment requirements. There was a lot of passing around gear depending on the stages, so you have a chance to see what works and what may be a disadvantage and or doesn't work as advertised. If you have a handgun, rifle, shotgun and magazines for reloads your good to go. If you show an interest in shooting one of these matches there will be plenty of shooters willing to help you get started, so its not an excess to say you don't have the right gear.
Sign up was at 9:00 am and match briefing at 10:00 am. There was four stages set up by the range staff at the 200 yd, 50yd, pistol bay and at the shotgun range. The first thing you notice is how friendly everyone is and willing to answer questions. We were very lucky to be on the same squad with KeithU, fast351 and some other IDPA shooters. Keith and fast351 are very impressive to watch, you learn just by watching. On our squad I think we had 5 first time shooters, the regular shooters showed a lot of patience when it came to our inexperience. Bob Mills was also on our squad and he shoots in the open division again very impressive.
We were split into three squads, our squad started on stage two the rifle/hand gun. This stage is on the 50yd range starting on the left side with the rifle, your handgun is empty in the holster. Start position is in a square box with rifle at low ready on the start signal you can take any position as long as you remain in the box, most shooters just stood and shot. I think there was seven pairs of card board targets, to neutralize the target you had to shoot once in the A zone or two hits on target. I think everyone in our squad just shot them twice, so about 28 rounds. From there you ran to some barrels and engaged another set of four, then ran to another barricade and set of four. The you drop the rifle mag and eject the the chambered round, put the rifle in a rack and run to the far right hand corner of the range drawing and loading your handgun to engage a bunch of targets from behind barrels.
Stage three is pistol only at steel poppers, dueling trees and plate rack. This stage start position is one side of the range, your choice. On start signal you start shooting moving across the range engaging the steel, but it is hidden behind barrels and some of them are only visible from one spot. You had to be careful not to miss any, I think we had 28 targets on this stage.
Stage four shotgun. we were comparing bruises this morning.
This stage is all about reloading a shotgun, I think there was 34 targets on this stage, poppers, two Texas Stars and mini clay pigeons. Start position was square box where you shot about half and moved to second box for the rest. Two sets of poppers when knocked down launched two mini pigeon in the air, if you hit them this knocked 5 seconds off your overall time. Its one thing to thumb a round or two into a shotgun bird hunting, it is hell trying to feed the shotgun as fast as you can shoot it.Stage one rifle/shotgun on two hundred yard range. Start position rifle low ready on start signal move to standing barricade and engage steel 8" plates at about 100yds and two hundred yards, then to a table for prone shooting and then to the barrel horse. After engaging the steel from the three positions unload rifle and move to shotgun and engage ten paper targets with slugs.
Finally its happy hour and feeling you really accomplished something.
