USPSA stage first for me

Yesterday I participated in a USPSA match at the Marysville Rifle Club. One of the stages was a first for me in a couple ways. The first part of the stage was fairly ordinary. You started in a shooting box and upon the start signal you drew your gun and shot three targets partially hidden behind a picket fence. From there you had to go maybe 75 feet forward and around a corner where a second set of targets became visible.

This was the most interesting portion of the stage:

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There were two targets in the open, one on the extreme left of the picture above and the edge of one almost visible on the extreme right of the picture above. There were two targets visible behind the green door (no relation to the movie), and two targets visible from underneath the barricade to the left. Still nothing particularly unusual.

The interesting part of the stage are the targets in the distance on the right. There are three paper targets behind a sheet of black plastic (soft cover). In front of two of the targets are Mini-Poppers*. These targets are about 25 yards away. You can’t see most of the paper targets because of the soft cover, you have to shoot the steel targets down to get good access to the paper targets, and you have to shoot these fairly distant targets from below a barricade. Going prone left you with the problem of shooting the two targets to the left at almost a 90o angle and while prone I was unable to get enough elevation to hit the distant targets and still be stable. I, and many others, squatted or kneeled to shoot below the barricade. Being a tall person this pushed my aging flexibility to the limit and a little beyond. My back felt a little odd for the rest of the day but is almost normal now.

I have never shot a stage where soft cover was the only way to get good hits on a target. I have never shot a stage where my flexibility was a limiting factor. Also unusual was that I was also the only person, out of 70 shooters, to get all 26 A-Zone hits.

My time of 29.98 seconds put me at 6th place out of 20 shooters in my division and 33rd out of 70 shooters overall.

Here is how the stage (and match) winner shot it in Open division in 19.30 seconds:


* See here for a picture of one. Official dimension are as below:

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2 thoughts on “USPSA stage first for me

  1. I’m impressed you got the A zone hits but more impressed you got up at the end.

  2. I had nothing to do with that video. Loke, the shooter, published it on YouTube.

    I have a video somewhere of a friend shooting a stage where going prone was a requirement. It was easy to wonder if he was going to be able to get down or back up again (he was extremely overweight). He has since died and can no longer be embarrassed by it so I would share it if I could find it.

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