Time for another road trip!
Friday, September 22:
DESIGNATED MARKSMAN
This was my first time taking GORUCK's DM class. It was geared towards using red dots with potential magnifiers, but it also allowed LPVOs. I use LPVOs for longer distance shooting and have wanted to get better at that, so I used my competition gun.
We started by learning about different zero options, and the pros and cons of different ones.
- a 25yd zero is angled so high that you can shoot farther ranges without having to hold quite as much
- a 100yd zero forces you to hold a lot for close-distances shots
- I'm happy with my choice in 36yd
We collected dope, which I've always wanted to do for my AR but never focused on before. It was on steel, so it's not going to be super precise, but it's a start!
We tried to play battleship at 100yd, but even if the rain hadn't destroyed the paper targets, it would've been extremely difficult for me to hit 1-inch targets at that distance with my AR15.
We shot movers and snaps at 100yd and 200yd. I've done it before with my precision rifle, but not my AR15 before.
I wish I had focused more on comparing the wind flag to what I observed in the vegetation during the weekend.
ADVANCED PRECISION RIFLE
In the evening, we had the classroom portion of the APR class.
A different cadre took the lead this time, and went into a lot more detail and different types of detail than usual.
He used math to demonstrate why follow-through is important even in the short time between when the trigger is squeezed, before the bullet has a chance to exit the barrel. NPA plays a big role, too.
It'll be cool if one day I can look at the environment and just think of certain wind holds in my head.
In the evening, we had a weapons cleaning and lubing party, to make sure our ARs didn't rust from all the rain.
Saturday, September 23:
I zeroed, and then remembered and decided to act on Kevin's advice of moving my scope closer to my eyes to help with squaring up. I ended up moving up 2 rail positions. I had to rezero after that, although it ended up not needing any changes.
We practiced positional shooting from a skinny and wobbly VTAC, high wall, and low wall, at 200yd and 400yd.
We practiced longer range pistol shooting. 50yd was ok, but I never hit 75yd. We practiced drawing fast and slow down as you push out and break the shot as you reach full extension. Use a steering wheel grip on your right hand, but crush with your left hand.
We collected dope at 600, 700, and 800yd. There was wind, since a tropical storm was what was causing all the rain. We had about a 6mph wind.
Battleship was tough again, and SB and my team was the unlucky one with a target that fell mid-competition, but we still won handily, both in speed and accuracy.
We did movers at 100 and 200, and snaps at 300 and 400. We did a team eval, and got to practice communicating even to help out our shooter/spotter partner find the target and remember all the steps.
At night, I cleaned my RPR2, to continue its break-in and make sure it would survive the rain from the day.
We had all-you-can-eat sushi for dinner. Fellow participants wanted to learn all about our training and experience at Mammoth, which was cool.
Sunday, September 24:
The wind emphasized the benefits of wearing a hat while I shoot. It keeps my hair out of my face.
SB and I practiced shooting off of barricades, creating little courses of fire.
I used the pint-sized GC for everything, which worked, since there wasn't any terrain with angles here.
Throughout the day, we played a game called "Crazy Frank" where the cadres would randomly yell "Crazy Frank", and you had 30s (fast seconds) from then on to build and break a shot at your target for the day. These would be good for points towards the weekend overall compeititon.
During the day, we also rotated each pair through a different bay, where we got to range and shoot at UKD targets.
We then got to shoot at Marathon Movers, which is always fun. We took turns shooting at it with our partner, and then we had the eval, where we had to shoot it as it moved from 300->200. It had been moving quickly during practice time (5mph?), but it was moving at an angle during the eval, which made its horizontal travel speed less extreme.
SB and I then tried to run a final drill eval, to give everyone a taste of competition stages. It's more challenging than we expected to design and write a clear stage brief, and deal with constraints of the bay once we're on the ground and seeing where there are vs aren't berms behind the targets that were staged. The participants seemed to really enjoy the challenge, though, and wanted to see more like this in the future, which was good to hear.
We did "Pick Your Poison", where I now had to shoot 4 rounds at a 400yd target in 20s. The speed isn't hard, but I held too much wind. The close part of the bay is somewhat shielded by a side berm. Oh well... next time.
I did earn 10 rounds for the APR patch shoot. I got off 8 shots within the time limit, and made 2 hits. If you make at least 1 hit, you get to keep the shot. Even in the short time hack, I was watching and reacting to the direction of the flag, and making adjustments. I intentionally spread out my shots, too, to increase my chances of making at least one hit, in case I had a bad wind hold.
