The match tonight was generally pretty good for me, but when it went bad, it went bad.

First, the good. Due to common squad logistics, I shot stages 1, 2 and 4 first. The first two were pretty straight forward. For stage two, I had two procedurals. The first, I think, was a cover call in which I fired before moving back into cover. The other was wherein I moved with an empty pistol to another shooting position before reloading. In my defense, I didn’t realize the pistol was empty until after I moved, but the procedural still stands. The pistol was not ready for me to move with it (rules 3.9.1) and I missed it. No biggie, really. If I’m going to have a procedural, I prefer something kind of obscure like that.

Stage 4 was probably the most fun. Begin seated facing three targets. At the start, place one head shot in each target. Get up and move to a barrel behind those targets and take low cover. Place two in each of three targets from one side of the barrel, then move to the other side of the barrel and place two more in each.

Inspired by one Master shooter who elected to take the first three from the left with his weak hand, then move to the right with his strong hand and an easy reload, I modified this approach to better suit my current skills. My weak hand is just that, weak, so I decided to engage the right hand targets first with my strong hand only, reload, then take the left hand targets with a standard double handed grip. It must have worked pretty well because that was a zero down no procedural stage! It may have been my first stage with zero down and no other penalties. Granted, all the targets were no more than 2-3 yards, but I’ll still take it, especially negotiating the barrel from the floor 🙂

I can’t put it off any longer.

Stage 3 (my last to shoot) had 6 targets to engage. Begin seated facing up range with pistol in a box on a podium behind you and to the left. At the start, stand, retrieve weapon from the box and engage three targets while in retreat to cover. Two targets have hard cover on bodies, so heads need one each. Third is a Mozambique (two in body, one in head). Next shooting position, engage two targets in tactical priority, both Mozambiques. Advance to a third position and engage the final target, again Mozambique.

I had one target without a miss. ONE. Missed both single heads, 5 down plus Fail To Neutralize for both of those. Two 1 downs and missed head on first full target. I don’t remember the exact misses on the middle two, but points-wise, it looks like two 1 downs and a missed head as well, though I could possibly have had a 1 down head shot. The last target was a simple two down. Raw time, 27.75 seconds, penalties 29 seconds. Ouch.

The only environmental factor is that end of the range is a little dark, so maybe I couldn’t tell I needed makeup shots, but it’s not all that dark. The real issue is probably that I was trying to move faster than I could really go.

The way I was shooting *until* this stage, I should probably have had about 7-8 points down and no FTN on that stage, which would have put me around 110 instead of nearly 129. That’s even assuming I had the same raw time, though if I had been performing better in general, I might have shaved a bit off that as well. All together, that would still probably have me in about the same position overall, but only because it was so far between my score and the rest of the pack. I’ll have to wait for the scores to post online to see where I really ranked in CDP and Marksman.

Ammo-wise, the BBIs treated me well. I had fail to go into battery, at least only one that I remember.

When loading these rounds, I found that quite a few of the rounds failed to fit the case gauge first time. I found that, like many lead bullets, there is a step between the ogive and the bore diameter. What’s different here is that I think the lead is at the proper finished diameter, but the poly coating makes it a tiny smidgen larger. I think some of the coating might be shaved during bullet insertion, leaving a ring of displaced material. This ring may interfere slightly with the crimp. While it’s not really ideal and makes the overall length a tiny bit short (1.235″ typically; ideal is 1.255 +/- .005), I have found that I can seat the bullet slightly deeper and the case mouth stays clean and the finished round gauges perfectly.

In any case, I was happy with the performance of the ammo.