Category Archives: Gun Fun

USPSA match results

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It’s been a several months since I shot in a USPSA match. I practiced a bunch in the previous two weeks but I completely forgot to practice one handed shooting. I remembered this as I was driving to Idaho to work on the weather station but then it was too late to do much about it. I had an extremely busy weekend and I was suffering from a lack of sleep and decided sleep had a higher priority than even a few minutes of dry firing.

Two of the stages had some one-handed shooting and I did okay on them (in fact, I won one of the stages). Overall I felt I did okay but not great (especially the classifier). When I looked at the overall results (Limited Division) I was surprised:

Lewiston Pistol Club USPSA-May 2017 – 2017-05-14


Match Results – LTD
Place Name No. Class Div PF Category Match Pts Match %
1 Huffman, Joe TY29386 B LTD Maj Senior 339.3213 100.0000 %
2 Meyer, Wade A95272 C LTD Maj 330.5290 97.4089 %
3 Piper, Steve A88114 U LTD Maj Senior 294.2301 86.7114 %
4 Imel, Kevin L2544 B LTD Maj 273.4669 80.5923 %
5 HARRIS, MARK A102929 U LTD Min Senior 262.6431 77.4025 %
6 Smith, Mark U LTD Min Military 205.7575 60.6380 %

Wow!

What happened?

It turns out that, as in most of the other matches I have done well in, I get the best results when I don’t try to do my absolute best. Not making really bad mistakes yields better results than having a mixture of awesome and catastrophic stages. This was a mixture of mediocre and good. My fellow competitors had a mix of catastrophic and good:

Six Chickens (03-02)
Stage Results – LTD
Place Name No. Class Div Points Pen Time Hit Factor Stage Pts Stage %
1 Meyer, Wade C LTD 57 0 14.66 3.8881 60.0000 100.00 %
2 Smith, Mark U LTD 50 0 17.00 2.9412 45.3877 75.65 %
3 Imel, Kevin B LTD 50 10 15.25 2.6230 40.4774 67.46 %
4 Huffman, Joe B LTD 49 20 11.72 2.4744 38.1842 63.64 %
5 HARRIS, MARK U LTD 53 20 17.76 1.8581 28.6736 47.79 %
6 Piper, Steve U LTD 42 50 10.15 0.0000 0.0000 0.00 %
May Flower Mayhem
Stage Results – LTD
Place Name No. Class Div Points Pen Time Hit Factor Stage Pts Stage %
1 Piper, Steve U LTD 136 40 18.11 5.3009 160.0000 100.00 %
2 Meyer, Wade C LTD 155 10 30.46 4.7603 143.6828 89.80 %
3 HARRIS, MARK U LTD 160 0 37.94 4.2172 127.2901 79.56 %
4 Huffman, Joe B LTD 146 20 30.60 4.1176 124.2838 77.68 %
5 Imel, Kevin B LTD 152 10 34.60 4.1040 123.8733 77.42 %
6 Smith, Mark U LTD 156 10 40.02 3.6482 110.1156 68.82 %
Paper Plates 2
Stage Results – LTD
Place Name No. Class Div Points Pen Time Hit Factor Stage Pts Stage %
1 Piper, Steve U LTD 106 0 15.93 6.6541 115.0000 100.00 %
2 Huffman, Joe B LTD 109 0 19.45 5.6041 96.8533 84.22 %
3 Meyer, Wade C LTD 105 0 20.03 5.2421 90.5970 78.78 %
4 Imel, Kevin B LTD 110 0 21.34 5.1546 89.0848 77.47 %
5 HARRIS, MARK U LTD 113 10 31.93 3.2258 55.7501 48.48 %
6 Smith, Mark U LTD 100 20 32.57 2.4562 42.4495 36.91 %
Brave You Are?
Stage Results – LTD
Place Name No. Class Div Points Pen Time Hit Factor Stage Pts Stage %
1 Huffman, Joe B LTD 69 0 19.36 3.5640 80.0000 100.00 %
2 HARRIS, MARK U LTD 54 0 23.80 2.2689 50.9293 63.66 %
3 Meyer, Wade C LTD 70 30 24.77 1.6149 36.2492 45.31 %
4 Imel, Kevin B LTD 57 40 19.05 0.8924 20.0314 25.04 %
5 Piper, Steve U LTD 55 40 17.51 0.8567 19.2301 24.04 %
6 Smith, Mark U LTD 48 40 23.01 0.3477 7.8047 9.76 %

I forgot to turn on my camera for the first stage we shot (May Flower Mayhem) but here are the other stages:

Boomershoot High Intensity from down range

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Via email from Kris Erickson.

This was putting the camera in serious jeopardy.

It survived.

Boomershoot 2018 registration

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Registration for Boomershoot 2018 will be opening up for everyone on Sunday May 14 2017 at 9:00 AM PDT. Sign up here.

Boomershoot 2017 participants and staff will already have registered so jump on it to get the best remaining positions.

This is what Boomershoot 2017 participants created and saw after the opening horn to indicate commence fire:

Be a part of Boomershoot 2018.

Rounds in the last month

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I only reloaded 200 rounds of .40 S&W this month. Boomershoot prep and execution continued to interfere with my reloading.

This brings my lifetime reloaded ammunition totals to:

223.log: 2,424 rounds.
3006.log: 543 rounds.
300WIN.log: 1692 rounds.
40SW.log: 64,145 rounds.
9MM.log: 21,641 rounds.
Total: 90,445 rounds.

Quote of the day—MILF Hunter

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If there was to be zombie apocalypse I know where to go now.

MILF Hunter
March 2017
Comment to the above video.
[I would want a place with lots of fuel, medical supplies, food, and water as well. Earth moving equipment so you could make defensive trenches and bury the zombies would be nice too. But, I agree, this guy would be a good person to have as a friend in such circumstances.-Joe]

Overheard at Boomershoot 2017

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Boomershoot was very well received this year even if the fireball was a failure (it didn’t ignite).

Some were via email and text message, but still…

At the Saturday dinner:

That was the best speech I have heard at Boomershoot in the last ten years.

At High Intensity:

This was the most fun I have ever had with my AR.

At the Long Range event:

I usually get about four or five boomers. This year I lost count.

Via email:

Joe as usual, We totally enjoyed Boomer Shoot 17.

Thank you and your crew AND family for hosting and putting on such an unusual and fun event.

The location is absolutely wonderful.

I totally enjoy the challenges of the venue.

It s great to meet new shooters and running into old friends.

I’m glad you feel appreciation for being Mr Boomershoot, because, as you mentioned, this event impacts more than just the attendees.  Best Western and High Mountain Resort are both outstanding.  The small town atmosphere is a treat when you are coming from Seattle.

Again thank you so very much for the wonderful amazing shooting opportunity.

…

PS… Oh yeah.  I’ll be there next year. clip_image001

Via email:

Thank you for yet another FANTASTIC event.

Whatever you did with the formula, this year, *KEEP DOING IT!!!*.  I have NEVER, in my 13 (nonconsecutive) years seen fewer targets for the cleanup crew.

Your stated goal for Boomershoot seems to be bearing fruit: the level of marksmanship this year was outstanding, which directly relates to the lack of cleanup targets mentioned above.

Via text message:

I think I figured out the draw for men of big explosives: closest thing to a female orgasm they’ll ever feel! Smile

Mere practice does NOT make perfect

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I learned that concept early on in the music business, from similar observation.

Although there is a small percentage of people who pick things up intuitively, most anyone will benefit from quality instruction. It applies to pretty much everything.

Then again; how did the instructor learn what he knows? Who taught his teacher and where did that person get the knowledge and insight? At some point someone had to figure things out on his own, we benefit from generations of those people’s combined knowledge, and ideally we can add to it. Competition or other direct comparison is the way to prove you know what you know, or to disprove that which you think you know but don’t.

Here is where I restate the side benefits of hunting (the primary benefit being the harvest of wonderful protein from wonderful nature by your own hand). You can do all the range shooting in the world, and even excel at it, and be under-prepared for “shooting for real”. Even though game animals generally don’t shoot back, if you hunt for several seasons you will realize this in ways you cannot otherwise imagine. Here’s another man who sees it that way;

Long range rifle for sale

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Via email from Dave Bakken who says he will bring the rifle to Boomershoot this year if there is someone interested in purchasing it.

Details on the equipment here. Synopsis:

Q: What happens when a professor in a technical area decides to get into long-range shooting?

A: He ends up with the gear described in this document, after a huge amount of research and trial and error.

==========================

Q: What happens when he is getting divorced later (after not having time to shoot the rifle for 2+ years)?

A: He sells it. This saves those who hope to get into long-range shooting a HUGE amount of time. Especially if you do not presently have time to learn and master handloading…

Summary

OK, so nowadays Dave is selling his rifle and setup. In doing so, anyone who wants to get into long-distance shooting can buy this and save a HUGE amount of time in researching options.

Here is what he is selling:

Item

List ($)

Rifle Setup

3290

Ammo

106

Supporting Gear

398

Gear in the Toolbox

320

TOTAL$$

4114

 

Asking Price: $3500.

I’m in a practical shooting match as I type this

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Tam has a good funny.

I’ve said before that it would be cool to design an IPSC stage in which there are no “shoot” targets (only “no shoots”). Maybe even, everyone goes home without firing a shot that day, because that’s more “real life” than anything else you could set up.

The most unrealistic thing about a Practical Shooting match, then, is that you go to one knowing for a fact that shots will be fired, and you are thus prepared for it. In real life on the other hand, you never have that advance notice, there are no rules, no scratch lines on the ground, no range Nazis to correct your “mistakes”, no timers, no “walk throughs” prior to shooting your stage, and probably not even any safe places to shoot at all.

In that most realistic sense then, I’m in an IPSC match right now, as I type– I’m carrying a gun and assessing the environment, seeing no immediate threats. I’ve been in this particular “IPSC Match” for over 20 years already and have yet to draw my pistol, much less take a shot. This isn’t merely similar to real life; it IS real life. I only draw and fire my gun when I’ve decided to pause the “IPSC Match” for a while, and find a safe place to shoot.

The range mentality has gotten so insane that I’ve seen multiple gun demonstration videos in which the shooter loads five of six, in a percussion revolver (which is stupid right there if you understand how a percussion revolver differs from a cartridge gun), fiddle farts around trying to lower the hammer on the empty but inadvertently lowers it on a live chamber instead and has to fiddle fart with the gun some more to be sure it’s “safe”, walks five feet to the firing line, confident that he’s “being safe”, and then looks down and shuffles around a bit to make sure his feet are right on the scratch line. Stuff like that.

Don’t even try to talk to me about it. I’m just…not…listening…anymore. I’ve hear it all before anyway. Hell I wrote some of those the rules, literally– I was once the president of a Practical Shooting club.

Go ahead and call me crazy though. I’m accustomed to it, as you may well imagine.

Can you shoot like a 6-year old?

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This looks like a fun challenge:

I’m going to see if I can find a place on my property where I can shoot at a water filled milk jug from 1000 yards away. The challenge website is here.

I have my doubts about being able to shoot as well as the 6-year old boy. I’ll be happy if I can shoot like a 15-year old girl:

Rounds in the last month

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March was a busy month for me. I had hard drives fail on two different computers. The laptop was particularly painful when the Windows Home Server recovery utility didn’t support that hardware. I ultimately recovered everything but it took over a week of my spare time. The other hard drive only took a few hours of my time and lead to a simpler backup method which was nice.

Boomershoot tasks picked up too. There is still some space left if you want to sign up here.

Anyway, I reloaded 525 rounds of .40 S&W and ran many of them over the chronograph. This brings my lifetime reloaded ammunition totals to:

223.log: 2,424 rounds.
3006.log: 543 rounds.
300WIN.log: 1692 rounds.
40SW.log: 63,945 rounds.
9MM.log: 21,641 rounds.
Total: 90,245 rounds.

America’s Rifle Challenge Event

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I have been exchanging email with Chris Seidler who asked me to promote a rifle clinic in Nampa Idaho which Revere’s Riders is putting on. He is going to be promoting Boomershoot as the two events complement each other.

Here are the details of the AR event:

NRA America’s Rifle Challenge Clinic

June 24-25, Nampa ID Rifle Club Outdoor Range

 

clip_image002[7]Attendees will learn modern defensive shooting skills on the AR platform at an NRA America’s Rifle Challenge clinic.  Woven throughout the event we will address elements of a personal security strategy as well as historical vignettes illustrating the use of the short range marksmanship in American history.  Attendees will experience shooting in multiple firing positions at varying distances.

Firing in this course will be within 100 yards with a focus on the close quarters environment from 7 to 50 yards.  An AR-15 type modern sporting rifle is ideal, but any semiautomatic magazine fed rifle is suitable.

Required equipment: Appropriate carbine, 400 rounds of ammunition, at least 2 and preferably 6 magazines, two point rifle sling.

PRE-REGISTER ONLINE:  https://www.reveresriders.org/event/2017-jun-24-25-nampa-id/

Course Highlights

Sharpshooter Fundamentals

·         Shooting Fundamentals

·         Standing, Kneeling, and Prone Positions

·         Natural Point of Aim

·         Sight Adjustments & Zeroing Procedures

·         Vintage M1 Carbine WW2 Qualifier

 

Defensive Carbine Considerations

·         Carbine Role in a Self-Defense Plan

·         Mental Preparedness

·         Carbine Ballistics Considerations

Short Range Marksmanship Skills

·         Situational Awareness and Scanning

·         Rapid Magazine Changes (Tactical Reloads)

·         Short Range Marksmanship Techniques

·         Clearing Malfunctions/Stoppages

·         Emergency/Speed Reloads

·         Special Subjects:   Zeroing Carbines & Rifles, Carbine Trajectory and Zero Issues, Barricades, Movement, Firing from retention, Field Stripping & Cleaning the AR-15

·         Carbine Skills Test

 

The clinic will be led by Revere’s Riders master instructor Christopher Seidler, a certified NRA rifle and personal protection instructor and chief range safety officer. He has coached at the CMP’s Small Arms Firing School at Camp Perry. Chris has deployed multiple times to Afghanistan including combat experience and led antiterrorism/force protection efforts; he currently instructs at the Air Force Weapons School.

All is not as it appears

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Very funny short vid.

Cheers!

When does recoil start?

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Cool posting on “when does recoil start?”

When Does the Pistol Slide Start to Move?

It has some pretty good gif/animation and explanations.

Short version: once the bullet starts moving, Newton’s laws kick in. I think one of the most fascinating part of the animations is the smoke spurts; the 1911 has some at the breech, too, but they all have smoke exiting the barrel before the bullet. Cool stuff.

Group size

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On Sunday Barb and went to the range and used the “Training Bay”. Barb practiced drawing from the holster. I set up my chronograph and tested 17 different .40 S&W loads with four different powders and two different bullet types (both 180 grain). I ended up firing 170 rounds of .40 S&W and 20 rounds of .22 into the same target. All the .40 S&W was from about 28 yards. It made for, what I thought was, an interesting target:

WP_20170321_08_14_30_Pro

I wasn’t doing my best with each shot but I was reasonably careful. My primary goal was to not shoot the chronograph screens and having a constant point of aim helped.

But after pulling the target I wondered, “What would be the equivalent five shot group size made from the same sample of ammo?”

“Group size” has always bugged me. A better measure would be standard deviation. But that’s not what the shooting world uses. I understand why. Standard deviation is much more difficult to compute in our situation. Group size is extremely easy and as long as you are honest with yourself (don’t find excuses to throw away a bad group and always use the same number of shots when comparing) it can give you a fairly decent indication of the accuracy of your system (gun, ammo, and shooter).

One of the problems with group size is that you can’t easily compare a three shot group to a five shot, seven, or ten shot group. I spent a lot of time manipulating equations and running simulations and built a solution into Modern Ballistics. If you edit a cartridge and have it calculate the “5-shot Group Size” via “Calculate via group” you can input a set of one or more groups at various ranges and various shots per group and it will compute the equivalent 5-shot group size in minutes of angle.

Sooo… I put in the group size 13” from the target above for a 170 shot group and it immediately complained. I had programmed in error checking which said, basically, that if you are shooting a group with more than 100 shots you don’t know what you are doing. Heavy sigh.

So I went with a 100 shot group with 13 inches and came up with a 20.84 MOA five shot group. Okay. Not too bad considering the variations in the ammo (the mean velocity on any given loading varied from 907 fps to 1033 fps), iron sights, with a pistol, and not originally intending to shoot for a good group. And it would have been better had my program allowed for 170 shot groups. Converting back to inches and rounding down a bit to compensate for the 170 versus 100 shot group it comes out to 5.75 inches.

I’m okay with that.

Quote of the day—Bad Idea T-Shirts

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PS_1304_FUTURE_BAD

Bad Idea T-Shirts
[Boomershoot 2017 is coming up and no one from the future has stopped me yet. I’ll bet no one stops you either. Sign up here.—Joe]

Boomershoot in the news

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I suspect the Clearwater Tribune needed some filler so they wrote a short article based upon an ad I was running in their paper.

Barb and I were amused by this line:

There are over 1,000 of these targets, rigged with 1,500 pounds of explosives.

The targets are not “rigged with explosives”. The packaged explosives are the targets.

Joe’s [Done] Answering Qs on Reddit AMA

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[Update: Joe’s done at Reddit. Thanks to all who participated in the interview.]

Joe’s over yonder on Reddit, still answering questions. Join in the conversation here.

For those new to Reddit (hint, hint Lyle), you’ll want to create a Reddit account, then go to this link and ask away.

Quote of the day—John Hoschen

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After 20 years of active duty military experience and nearly 30 years involved with professional civilian handgun training I have observed that:

1) Handguns are at best of tertiary interest to the Army.

2) The criteria used to select a handgun for the military includes several factors of very limited value to the civilian self-defense practitioner and fails to address several other factors which are critical to that user.

3) Only a VERY small minority of all military members EVER fire a handgun.

4) The training provided to the majority of military members who do fire a handgun is extremely rudimentary. (InSights General Defensive Handgun course is far more in depth and the material in our Intermediate Defensive Handgun course is not found in the military training system other than a few special operations schools.)

Based on the above observations it is my opinion that:

What handgun the Army has chosen for standard issue should have exactly zero impact on what handgun a civilian should consider for self defense use.

John Hoschen
March 3, 2017
Via the InSights Training Center email list regarding the Sig P320
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Reminder: Joe/Boomershoot & Maj/Black Guns Matter on Reddit AMA

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Join the live conversation tomorrow, Tues. March 7, 11am EST: Joe Huffman of Boomershoot & Maj Toure of Black Guns Matter on Reddit AMA.

Joe Huffman, Founder of Boomershoot:
I’m white + from Idaho. I make reactive targets for people to shoot at, and detonate, thus causing fiery, fun explosions.

Maj Toure, Founder of Black Guns Matter:
I’m black + from Philly. I teach urban communities gun rights and responsibilities, to prevent inner cities from self-imploding.

We’re two peas in a pod, here to talk guns, gun safety, exploding targets, keeping cool, and peace.

We’re not here to nitpick about gun facts — that’s already been done.

We’re here to have fun. We’re individually atypical, so let’s dig deep into what makes us tick: why we do what we do, and how we do it! Ready. Aim. Fire. Kaboom!

#BlackGunsMatter
#Boomershoot