best of the worst, part the second

Ok, so the longer write-up to go on top of my previous comments is that I had the pleasure of partaking of an indoor, IDPA-ish shooting competition today at Gunny’s Indoor Range. Caleb was there, along with 21 other shooters, and even Uncle stopped by to say hi. This was my first competitive shoot of any variety (not counting air-rifle competitions in college, which is hardly “shooting” – first, they are air rifles, and second, you shoot about once a minute), and I was making faux pas and asking questions left and right.
First problem: I only have one magazine holder, and three magazines. One, of course, goes in the pistol, and I figured I could just port the third around in a pocket or something. Under IDPA rules, not so much. However, the organizer of this shindig graciously permitted me to borrow a double-magazine holder of his, so that hurdle was jumped.
Second problem: Counting one in the tube, and three full magazines, I have 22 rounds available to me with my Walther PPS – the same as a single-stack .45 1911. Thankfully, the longest round only required 19 rounds to complete… assuming you do not miss. I appreciate that they were designed that way, given my lacking hardware, but it was still a little concerning.
Third problem: I had never really shot in a competition before, so the stress, the moving, the shooting from awkward angles, shooting certain targets in certain places, all posed new and interesting problems. Educational ones, at that, but still problematic.
All that said, and other miscellaneous little problems aside (like I need more-comfortable safety glasses if I am going to be wearing them for four hours in the future), I still managed to have a lot of fun, and it was quite the learning experience.
Below are some pictures and explanations of what happened at the match – I apologize for the quality (the light was lacking at the indoor range, as you might expect/already know) as well as for only having pictures of the first three stages (there were six total, but the last three were darker, and I did not bring a high-power flash or tripod). By way of an explanation of what you see, the blue X’s are where you start each round (with the exception of the first one, and I will explain that). The targets with two blue hands on them are innocents/no-shoots/hostages, and are not to be shot (unless you are Caleb). You do not lose the match if you manage to plug one, but you do get a point penalty (look it up in the IDPA handbook if you want the specifics). The targets with the blue diagonal section are ones behind hard cover, which basically means that hits in the blue section do not count as hits, while hits on the cardboard-colored sections do. In all stages except the first, we started with hands by our sides, magazines and firearms holstered, and once the buzzer sounded, we drew and started moving and shooting. Reloading was on your recognizance (no tactical reloads required, though you could if you wanted), and magazines did not have to be retained. Cover was not required, though you were sometimes behind cover by default, depending on the stage.
Ok, details taken care of.
First stage:
This is the overview of what you are presented with:

You are sitting at a table with two no-shoots across it from you. Your handgun and all of your magazines are on the table in front of you, with your handgun loaded. Once the buzzer sounds, you pick up the handgun, and off you go.
A closer view:

And what you saw from the chair:

This stage was actually not so bad for me – just start at one end, and work your way across, making sure not to hit any blue. The guys across the table from me were pretty damn near deaf by the end of it, though.
Stage 2:
An overview:

You start on the blue X, and then have to move into one of the boxes outlined by the white PVC pipes. All shots must be made from within the boxes, and the stage was intentionally arranged that you could not hit all the targets from one box. Reloading on the move is the idea on this particular stage, but I had not quite figured that out yet.
A closer view of what you had:

And a view from the left box:

And the right:

Stage 3:
This one was a little more complicated, and its overview does not tell you much:

What you see is the starting X, two front bays, and the indication of three back bays… pictures to follow.
Left bay:

Right bay:

Pretty straightforward so far.
Back left:

Back center:

And now the fun part, back right:

Yup, that was a bowling pin. And, yes, you had to knock it off the sawhorse, which was actually less difficult than I would have thought – I nailed it on the first shot, every time, and it only took one shot to knock over (which was probably made easier by the dimensions of the 2×4 it was resting on).
One annoying thing in this stage was the placement of the holes, about four feet off the ground:

Of course, in the later string of three stages, the one hole we had to work with was actually about five feet of the ground, so I guess I should not complain too much.
The later stages were variations on a theme, with more shooting down alleys, more moving to engage targets that were hidden by no-shoots or barrels, and then the last clincher – a shooting bay that was dark enough that I could not even see my sights when I was engaging the last targets, much less after I shot and the flash partially blinded me. That was certainly a new experience, and it only proved to me that I need to practice more in low-light situations. Likewise, I need to practice more shooting from positions other than just standing up, facing the target – one stage had us kneeling on the ground, shooting around a barrel and under a pipe that was about three feet off the ground.
All said, I finished 16th out of a field of 23, which is not too bad for my first shoot. The top five competitors were pros, in that they are, quite literally, paid to shoot for a living – must be nice to have a sponsor. Thanks to the Lewis scoring system (take the players, and split them up into three groups according to their scores – top third, middle third, and bottom third), I came out first of the bottom tier, and thus got third pick of the prize table, which included a Springfield XDm 9mm, a Kel-Tec 32 (both of those went to the firsts in the top and middle tiers), the Mossberg 500 I walked out with, a GunVault handgun safe, a fairly nice crossbow (I guess – I know nothing about them) some tree-mounted motion-activated hunting camera, a massive universal gun-cleaning kit, a couple cans of mace, binoculars, ear muffs, a nice CamelBack, a load-bearing vest, and a lot of other miscellaneous hunting/shooting supplies. Everyone who shot walked out with something.
In short, a lot of fun, pretty educational, good practice, and something I could see myself getting more into in the future. And it was good to meet Caleb and Uncle. In closing, a big “thank you” to Gunny’s Indoor Range for hosting this shindig, as well as to the gentleman who organized it (whose name I cannot quite recall at the moment).
(If you see no pictures, refresh your browser or your RSS feed – I pushed the “publish” button before I uploaded the images.)