Triangle Tactical Podcast and Blog on Guns, Gear, and Competition Shooting
Last time, good stages. This time, the problems begin.
To start with, the first malfunction I’ve had in this gun in at least 2000 rounds. Last match season, this gun was incredibly finicky, but this year, it’s just kept running and so I kept “forgetting” to clean it. Eventually, I got bit in the ass, to the tune of adding 6 seconds to what should have been an 18 second stage.
This stage is a bit of a shit sandwich. The malfunction clearance after the first shot was caused by a case that failed to extract. Fearful of a double feed, I dropped the magazine before clearing it, but I would have been fine dumping the stuck casing and letting the slide rack forward. As it was, I had to grab my first reload and rack in a round before finishing the stage.
That was followed by a good reload, knocking down four poppers on the move, another good reload, and knocking down two more poppers coming in to position. But that’s pretty much where the goodness ends. After that, it’s trigger freeze on a close target (to the left) and a sloppy sight picture meaning a makeup shot on steel in the middle. This one hurt.
Stage 7 ended up being my second best placing of the match, third out of fourteen, despite racking up a no-shoot. Without that, it would have tied my first stage, stage 4, for a second place finish. Still, an aggressive stage plan of taking two targets (one of which had a no shoot) on the move helped a lot. Sometimes you do well on stage plan, and sometimes you do well on execution. Given my poor execution (no-shoot, anyone?), I credit this one to stage plan.
That last target was deliberately placed so that most right-hand shooters would have to overextend to get it, and I just trusted that I could double-tap before my foot fell to catch me outside the fault lines, and it worked out. Sometimes shooting is just like that.
I’m still not sure what to chalk my poor finish up to here, aside from that long and laborious last shot, but in terms of drawing while skip-hopping to the first shooting position, I’m pretty happy.
I wasted my one makeup shot early on a paper target instead of saving it for the steel like I’d planned, but I’m definitely happy with my slide-lock reloading moving across. In a sport where that’s supposed to not be too common, having an IDPA background where that is commonplace helps.
That’s it for now. Join me next time, when you can see how my brain forgets how to load a full magazine in to a 1911!
