Last weekend we traveled to the great state of Pennsylvania to shoot state and regional action pistol matches. The Keystone Cup matches are held at a fantastic range in Chambersburg PA, home club for many of the best shooters in the sport, including Bruce Piatt, Doug Koenig and some of the Border Patrol team shooters. After two days in the car, we were all a bit fried, and I can’t say that my shooting on Saturday was where I wanted it to be. I managed to drop 7 points on each stage except the plates and ended up with a 2nd place Production Optics finish and a score of 1893. Bruce Piatt came in first overall (open division with a score of 1920-177X), SSGT Anthony Heinauer of AMU came in second (open division with a score of 1920-173X), and Doug Koenig came in third with a score of 1918.
On Sunday I was feeling much better and managed to shoot a 1918, dropping (actually raising) what was probably my very last shot of the match at 50 yards. I came in 1st in Production Optics and 3rd overall, my highest finish to date. Bruce Piatt also shot a 1918 with his open gun, but his X count was quite a bit higher than mine, so he took second place. SSGT Walter Johnson of AMU shot a 1920 to win 1st overall. He also shot a second gun (Open Rimfire) at one of the matches and shot a 1920 with that gun. Great shooting!
Though that was my highest score to date at a major match, and my highest overall win to date, the interesting part is the shot I “raised.” I say raised because though in common shooter parlance, I dropped a shot (2 points), I actually shot high in the 8 ring, rather than the more typical miss that goes low. This is a bit of a rookie mistake, as I think that I didn’t give that last shot the consideration it deserved. Had I followed through a split second longer, I likely would have shot my first 1920. Lack of follow-through may be a rookie mistake but over the course of 192 shots, it can be difficult (that’s an understatement) to do everything perfectly.
Since this blog is mostly about improving shooting performance, and we’ve already looked at the necessity of failure, the benefit of making the mistake that I made is that it gives me a very good point to focus on in my training and competition going forward. By doing so, I hope to not repeat that same failure. This way, if I can fix how I failed last weekend, next time I can hopefully focus on other ways that I can improve. Of course, I have made this same mistake before, so it’s not new to me. Only making it once (I made it more than once but only once was it bad enough to lose points) in this match is good, now I need to eliminate it from my performance.
When I shoot a 1920, the mistakes will be less obvious, but they will still be present. Shooting a 1920-192X has never been done, but is certainly a worthy goal. Two more major matches for the season and Pistol-Training.com will have two special guests shooting at those upcoming matches, so stay tuned for more Action (Pistol).