Something to Tide You Over

Until I compose the post describing my SMM3Gun experience, let's take a look at the great time my buddy Jon had! He pored over the preliminary results to track the progress of local gunny peers and immediately struck up a rapport with the best Tactical gunners in our squad. Little did we know that Jon would turn out to be the best Tac gunner on the squad! Okay, it was a six-man squad...and I was on it, so how hard could that be? Well, he beat our only Open Class gunner....

Jon wowed everybody on the long range stuff using a Bushmaster "Shorty" mounted with an unmagnified Trijicon Reflex II forward of the carrying handle. Fortunately, his Shorty likes Wolf 62-grainers. He can hold his own against most shotgunners with his Benelli semi-auto, but admittedly could learn to reload faster. Jon's a B-Class IPSC shooter who's fast 'n' sloppy with his Glock 34. Jon's chances to place in the top tier rested with on his rifle skills and eliminating mistakes on the short-range combo stages.

"I'd rather be lucky than good, any day!" is one of Jon's favorite sayings. On the morning of Day One, he wandered around the stages and scored $170 worth of "Mysteries" (cash!) hiding in plain sight (I found a $20 Mystery). At the Match Banquet door prize drawing, he got a cool tactical holster...I got a DPMS coffee mug. At the Tactical Prize table, several shooters ahead of him passed over a gun in favor of something else catching their eye. He came home with a Smith & Wesson Model 22A-1 .22 caliber pistol!

Jon's goal is to finish in the top 20% of Match shooters in his class, but he'll have to wait until next year. Still, at #53 out of 156 Tactical finishers, he did pretty darned good! There were 231 finishers in the match -- and 14 disqualified shooters!! Out of the "Dairy Queens" were a couple of Master/Grand Master shooters I recognized, including a famous one .*

"I'd rather be lucky than good, any day!"

*Name available upon you G00gling the match results and finding it yourself. Heh. I'm a name dropper!