Let's Get Tactical

The Pima Tactical 3-Gun kicked off on a chilly Arizona Sunday morning. Forty-four shooters split into five squads to engage the five stages of fire set out for us. The match director closed down the only pistol stage early due to safety concerns. The matches are under new management, who decided to make every stage single-gun for simplicity's sake, so we had two riotgun and two carbine stages remaining.

Jon and I were the only ones entered in Heavy Metal class, so I had my work cut out for me. He shoots the fullsize M1A with his neat-o muzzle brake faster than I can shoot the SOCOM (which has a nice brake too) and he left me behind score-wise from the very beginning. Riotgun was much closer, since we had nearly identically configured Remington 870 pump guns.
















We were squadded with some of the same folks I shot with for the October Pima Tactical. The "Old Guy" was with another squad though, and was competing with a Ruger Mini-14. "Tommy Tactical" would have been at home with the guys from Cavalry Arms, who basically wore and shot their entire inventory. The Pink Lady won the Women's Division again. New Shooter Jeff (who I took under my wing in October) showed up with a friend new to the game. (Whoohoo!) Unfortunately, their day was marred with some rookie mistakes, Jeff's earning him a DQ for "breaking the 180" and Russell's giving us all a chuckle when he decided the two shotgun slugs would print nicer on the clean white targets than on the ratty, taped brown targets. I'd panicked a bit because he was using my shotgun (I hadn't shot yet) and I thought the rifle sights were on, but he reassured me that the shots went right where he wanted them, but he shouldn't have wanted them on the "no-shoot" targets if he was thinking right. I don't think Jeff was too discouraged by the pre-mature ending of his shooting day; he had a lesson in gun safety deeply ingrained by the event. I think Russell will be back too!

Overall, it was a great day to be afield in the Arizona sunshine. Notice my garb was designed to maximize heat absorption. It was gloriously warm in the sun and chilly in the shade. I spent a lot of time alternating between the two to stay comfortable.