PackedPanniers.com

Yesterday, Sunday 27th February 2011, I was introduced to a great, new shooting discipline that I had never tried before. It was a local Steel Challenge Match at the above gun range & actually hosted by the Austin LoneStar Practical Pistol Club (ALSPPC, who are based there). My friend, Chet, who I’m staying with, in an almost acquiesce kind of way, knows exactly what I like to perk me up. 🙂

In Steel Challenge, you have set Courses of Fire (stages) that you shoot at. You often have to fire at 4 steel plates and a 5th ‘stop’ plate. The stop plate is just a visual cue for the Range Officer to see that you’re declaring you’ve finished firing the course of fire. The shot timer device records the time from its’ initial buzzing sound (the shooter then draws) to each shot fired and then the last shot. The last shot is the recorded time. You get 5 strings (attempts) at each stage. Your ‘throwaway’ time is the least. Your shortest times of each stage are added up at the end of the day. The person with the shortest total time is, not only on average the fastest shooter of the day, but also the winner :O) Such simplicity and such excitement! I think of it as like Saturday Qualifying sessions in F1 racing.

Having not shot a live round in just shy of 3 years, I was nervous about how I’d perform. The safety, sight picture & timed scoring are similar to my main shooting sport, Practical Shooting. Would I forget my safety principles of muzzle control & direction and trigger-finger safety? Would I do something fundamentally wrong like handle ammunition in the Safety Area and get DQ’d? Chet was really supportive of me and I’m so ever grateful. I can’t underestimate or ever emphasize just how great it is when someone believes in you. Growing-up in this tough world, I believe it’s a priceless & immeasurable force that can just nudge someone in the right direction.

I’m not sure if it’s because I subconsciously knew that the ammo was light power loads, but this time round I didn’t even think about the recoil putting me in a freeze. Maybe it was the excitement of discovering something new. Maybe, it was the relief and joy that I’m actually doing something again (if only for 2 weeks) that I’ve not done in 3 years. I had purposefully chose not to partake anymore in IPSC matches in Europe around 2009. I was just coming out of redundancy and had decided that after 2 years trying to make a go of it in London at that point, I had to make a full, concerted, all-out effort to move to the US. London was dead to me. It had brought more faux-amis, duplicitous work folk, extremely territorial and self-righteous commuters & misery than happy memories. I had a notion I could do better and live better elsewhere in the world. Specifically, Texas, as it appears to have everything I need to get by, to live a modest means but I was also impressed by the standard of living out there when I visited earlier in 2008. A board member of my local wing wasn’t being sympathetic and kind of suggested that I may have to pay full years memberships for each subsequent year that I was intending to take a sabbatical from. So, if I wanted to return in 2012, I would have had to pay £80 and the additional £40 for the 2012-2013 season. This wasn’t going to wash with me. So, quite painfully, I decided to leave and have vowed not to go back to them ever, but instead, to join an IPSC wing of a region that I want to live in.

In short, today, had fun! I was starting to feel better as each string seemed to get faster. I was building a good cadence (like rhythm & timing) between each plate of each stage. I was starting to gain confidence back in being able to go back or stay & hit a steel plate again if I wasn’t sure I had hit it. You do get to hear ‘ding’ sounds of the plates if you had. I was trying to rely on a good sight picture instead. I had shot Open Division, so you get to use visual aids like this C-More red dot sight, so you can index the target quicker. Nice gadgetry, too!

At the end, we had a go with my friend, Roy’s M2 Browning chambered for .308/7.62mm. It was like a THUNDEROUS cannon!!!! 😀 Awesome!!! As he is a gunsmith, he had made his own mini, cute version of the M2 chambered for .22 Long Round. The attention to detail was very intricate and you can tell it was a labour of love for him. Unless I’m mistaken, I think it took about 1 month to build with lots of testing.

As well as, another day of firsts, I actually got to see a past champion in action. An enigmatic shooter who was squad with us was a potentially returning shooter who was a former Handgunner Junior Champion in the late 90s. I remember the late 90s as an era I wish I could live again but at the age I’m at right now. It was a time of funny teen movie flicks, the hedonistic-type getaways and fun to be had. It’s quite hard to imagine then, that this shooter is now a father! It really is scary how time does fly if you’re not careful. This is what I love about the world of action shooting sports, you get to see miraculous things happen and see ‘stuff of legends’ stories play out in front of your eyes. There’s a new underdog, every year 🙂 There’s no where else I’d rather be at that point. He was shooting times that were sub 3 seconds. Some strings were sub 2 seconds! You couldn’t believe your eyes!!

Afterwards, we went to a local burger joint that was called ‘Ghost Town‘. The Ghost Town burger was yummy! 😀

From there, we went to the Cabelas outdoors outfitter store was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! It was like the Academy store I went to in 2008. It had a WIDE variety of outdoors stuff and…guns!!! Lots of guns! It had Benelli M3 shotguns popular with current law enforcement and military. I couldn’t believe I was actually looking at one. As well as, a .44 Magnum revolver. I bagged myself some gun mags and a groovy long sleeved shirt for the next British Winter. 😉

A great day!