Land Nav Gun Run was back for 2023! It was my favorite Gun Run from last year, since it was longer, had more shooting stages, included land nav, and felt more like a real adventure and less like an "inside the box" competition. It does take a lot more planning work and volunteer RO support to put this on, but it's well worth it for the grateful competitors who get to take part. SB and I made sure that we got a spot for the event.
We met up to carpool over.
We attended the 10:30am brief for our 11:44am run time, which was on the later side. They have to start early to get the runners through this long format race before it gets too late.
The stage brief was similar to last year's. There's an asphalt road that separates all the nav portions from all the shooting portions, to help make sure that nobody accidentally wanders where they shouldn't go. It's a very good concept for how to execute this kind of event. Same as last year, a missed land nav point would incur a 1 hour penalty.
With so many shooting stages, we loaded up. I tried a chest rig for the first time (HPG rig with an LBX pouch attachment), so that I didn't have to carry a full plate carrier, since that got hot last year. With a 65R/45P minimum round count, I went with 6 mags of rifle (3 on belt, 3 on rig) and 9 mags of pistol (7 on belt and 2 in the rig), which is 3x. I actually used 65R/66P. SB is our primary rifle shooter, which is part of the reason my rifle usage rate was low, and I try not to miss on pistol, so 3 mags may be overly conservative based on my skill level now.
Nav A:
Our first land nav point took waaaaay too long for us to find. We had a good idea, which was to go along the main road, then follow a trail to the first point. The mistake was that the dashed line wasn't a trail - it was a stream, which we didn't realize until way later. We ran across another team who realized that we were struggling, and pointed out that the power line was a big landmark that we could've been looking for. I hadn't even thought of that, despite having gone along that last year. We backtracked quite a bit to go back the correct way to get point A and made our way along the powerline, which got muddy towards the second half. Once we found the point, we punched, and read the instructions to go back to the CP, where we got instructions to go to the shooting area across the parking lot to do stage 1. Another team or two were shooting when we got there, but we were the last team to shoot that stage. I was very excited by now to finally do some shooting, since we had spent a lot of time and covered a lot of distance with all that ammo. I wanted to get lighter and actually start the event.
Stage 1:
At stage 1, there's a rifle target at 100yd and 2 pistol targets at 20 and 35yd (12x18" reduced IPSICs). Each person must hit each target 5x, but you can't go for the same target simultaneously, so you have to coordinate or have a plan for that. At any point, a team member can go grab an ammo can and bring it back before the time ends.
I suggested that SB go for rifle first, while I start on pistol, and then we'd rotate clockwise. Rifle can take a little longer to set up if you go prone. Whoever finished shooting first could grab the can.
As I started shooting, I encountered malfunctions, which was not normal. I thought it might be from some of the the Blazer 115gr that I had brought, since I typically prefer 124gr or more. They'd keep coming periodically, and then I noticed that the bad round that came out was orange, and I realized that I had thrown my dummy round mags into my stash to bring to the event! I just dealt with the dummies as they came (they did highlight my flinching), and kept shooting... so I guess I didn't actually shoot 66 rounds, since maybe 6-ish of them were dummies.
I still got through the pistol targets and then moved on to rifle, and since I was finished first, I went to grab the ammo can, and came back in 119s, which made us 27/27 of the passers, where 27/56 teams passed. Phew! I'm proud to have worked through the malfunctions!
As we ran off, I started de-loading the other mags to clear out the dummies.
Nav B:
Next, we went back to the CP for instructions on where to find point B. Point B had us go to the Rally Point, where we were told to go to Stage 2.
Stage 2:
She'd work on hitting 2 diamond targets with rifle, while I ran further down to shoot 7 little pistol knock-over targets. I had 1 miss but knocked over 2 at once another time, so I still only needed 7 rounds to finish this, before I had to search a dummy's body for "intel" and carry a heavy Alice pack with 50# over to SB. It felt too heavy and akward to shoulder, so I dragged it, along with the "rubber ducky" fake AR.
Then, I had to shoot the lower/right rifle target, and SB gave me the perfect hold (bottom), which made it easy.
35/56 teams passed, and among them, we were 32nd, with a time of 117s.
Stage 3:
Stage 3 was next door. We had to go into a little fort and shoot through two different port options per person, at targets across the water, which were located around fake car cut-outs. We each had a particular sequence of targets to hit, listed on a piece of paper. We could work simultaneously on our set of targets, since there were two spotter ROs. If one of us finished early, we could help each other out, if we kept to the proper sequence.
I struggled to get my first target for a guy who was in the window of the car. I couldn't even see him with my eyes, so I shot at the window, and adjusted based on the calls that the ROs helped with.
Other targets were supposedly challenging to hit because a tree was directly in the way, so I chose to use the other port, and shot from seated. The tree was no issue from that position. I did shoot the wrong target once, but everything else was OK.
SB finished first, but based on the angle that she had, she wasn't able to really help me before I ended up finishing. She did have to deal with all of my brass flying her way, though.
We finished 31/44 among the passers in 66s, and 44/56 passed. We got to watch Andrea and her partner shoot this before we did, and they crushed it. She's amazing at shooting and doing physical stuff... top notch.
Stage 4:
A bit further down was Stage 4, which was going to be fun. We'd both start prone, and then one shooter (we were lucky to have picked SB blindly as primary) would shoot rifle at 2x65yd targets, 4 hits each, then remove the mag to leave 1 round left, and shoot 1 shot on either target. If she hit, good. If she missed on that last one, I'd have to apply a TQ later in the stage. Prone wasn't an option based on the vegetation, so seated/kneeling was the way to go. The 4 hits each should've allowed her to get a good sense of the proper hold, but she didn't connect on that last shot.
Next, we both ran forward, me with a little foxtail ball to mimic a grenade that I had to throw at the fort. It turns out that you'd get a raffle entry if you got the foxtail into the fort, which I didn't know. I didn't make it, but I got close, with the roll.
I went into the fort first, going through a series of little trench tunnels before getting to the end, applying a TQ to an arm, and shooting one-handed with the other hand (fortunately, I'm decent at that, at least strong hand). I had 2 circle targets to hit, and once I finished, I could yell at SB on the other side of the fort to re-engage the rifle targets with pistol this time.
53/56 passed, and we were 31/53 among the passers, finishing in 119s.
Nav C/D:
Back at the RP, we got coordinates for 2 points, which we could do in either sequence. We decided to go for the farther one first, in case we wanted to grab the closer one on the way back, vs making 2 distinct trips out to get the points.
Point C was interesting because the map showed a clearing that we wanted to look for, but I noticed that the pine trees looked young and intentionally planted in rows. That was actually part of the clearing, so we overshot it by a bit and covered a little extra distance because of it. Once we were back on track, the point was farther than we expected with pace counts, but we did find it. That place had a cache of shotgun shells for us to grab for a future stage, which is something to look forward to.
SB wanted us to try hitting D directly from C, but the vegetation was thick, and landmarks are not so easy to find, and bearings are hard to keep to in that situation, especially when the landmark is a stream, which means more vegetation, and streams are typically not mapped 100% well because of offshoots and the potential to change over time. We ended up cutting our losses after 45 min and went back to the main path to re-attack from the main road.
Even that main road attack wasn't easy... we bushwhacked in (on a deer trail that had maybe formed from others with the same pace count-based idea) and followed the bearing we want. We looked around and couldn't find it, looked around some more, ended up back at the RP somehow, and re-attacked from there. We eventually found it, when SB decided to go search a little bit further than where we were originally looking. We had actually been pretty close at one point when we had attacked from C, but it's so hard in that kind of vegetation. The route from the RP was a lot more clear than the bushwhacked one from the road that I had originally tried, but it wasn't obvious from the map that such a route existed.
We had eaten up lots of time, but at least we hadn't missed a point yet. Plus, in more exciting news, we still had a 100% completion rate on the shooting stages so far.
Stage 5:
At the RP, we were told to go to Stage 5. In the past, SB has been the shotgun person, but this time, we swapped so that I got a chance at it. After I breached, SB went in with rifle to make 4 hits on each of 4 cardboard targets. Making sure you get all 4 and don't miss and DNF for a silly reason is most important.
Once she was done clearing the room of immediate enemies, I went in with pistol and shot at 4 targets with 4 hits each.
We got it done in 36s, finishing 33/46 passers, with 46/56 passing.
Stage 6:
Further down was Stage 6, where our RnG friend Dana was ROing. One shooter would hit targets on the dueling tree with pistol. Once I finished, I went up to grab intel, and SB and I would climb up the ladder into the tree house, where she'd use her rifle to shoot the target sequence and hit counts that I read out. She used the ladder to brace, and we knocked it out in 103s, finishing 32/54 among passers, with 54/56 passing.
Nav E:
Back at the RP, we were given an image of where to find point E. We didn't use phones, but the sat image was enough of a match with what we could see with our eyes and figure out through our maps, to find the side of the building that we wanted.
At that side of the building, we punched and saw another map with instructions on where to go shoot. Some teams actually missed the punch, probably too distracted by the piece of paper, haha, and had to go out with Ellis to verify that it was really there because they just couldn't believe it.
Stage 7:
We couldn't believe that we still had a 100% completion rate at this point. The location of this next stage was where we had struggled on our land nav last team match, though, as we shot across the water in an area with high vegetation. At least there wasn't fog this time, further obstructing our view.
For this stage, there were 3 gongs of 8" targets and 1 silhouette at 180yd. One person would make a plate rack hit, and then the other person would shoot 3 on the torso. Since the gongs were smaller, SB did that, and I listened for the ping so that I could fire off my 3 quickly.
We destroyed that stage in 39s, finishing 9 out of the 47 passers, with 47/56 passing. The RO was really impressed.
We were 8 for 8 so far! But the last stage would prove to be very difficult.
Stage 8:
SB carried a 68# duffle bag from stage 7 to 8. I was moving much slower than she was by then, so I was grateful. We then did bounding towards targets. There were 2 targets to hit from each position, with 3 hits required on each target each time.
SB started since the first person to go would ahve 3 total positions. It was tough making the hits on the small targets, and getting the right holds. It was inconsistent for me. These were 12x20" (2/3 IPSICs) at 200yd, which is the most challenging distance for me. Most of the 65 rounds that I used were at this stage. I ate up a lot of time, so we ran out of time before SB got to finish at the last position. It would've been hard anyways with the visibility of the target from that spot. We had failed bounding the last 2 times, too, and have only ever passed it once, during our first team match at Ellerbe in 2021. It's fun, but sometimes, it can be hard.
Learnings:
We did well playing to strengths on shooting (her with rifle, me with pistol), which led to us having our highest pass rate yet.
I should've studied the map legend before making route choices.
Don't bring mags with dummy rounds!
I still need to work on rifle stability and holds.
The rig worked fine, but I definitely need to use thread locker on all my plastic pistol mag holders, because the screws came out again. Fortunately, the screw was still jiggling around in the plastic, so I could re-attach it when I got home.
Rankings:
25/58 overall, 39/56 run (could've done much better), 28/56 shooting. Yay, we've made it to being average! And with a better run, our overall result could've been even better. We love seeing the progress we've made, though.
We definitely got our money's worth of mileage!
Bosco made nice patches as finisher awards for the event. We love patches!
Krate Tactical also made a special edition of their knife that had a topo design on it, with the RnG guy... sooooo cool.
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