TRAINING LEAD-UP
Sunday, Apr 27:
6.5 mile zone 2 run at Latta Nature Preserve in 1:49:24 (16:50 ave/mi) with 120BPM average wearing Saucony Nomads, in 65 degree temps.
While I went on my run, my dad went on a walk. He was surprised by how few miles I ran during that time, but that's how zone 2 works.
I washed my car afterwards.
Monday, Apr 28:
HDT 12.2.3 (arms) with prescribed warmup stretches in 14:30 and the workout in 58 min. I added a 1 mile coupon ruck with a 30#R and 40#SB in 21:33 afterwards for the first time in a long time to re-adapt to it slowly, wearing MACV1s.
Tuesday, Apr 29:
Got some help with re-aligning my muzzle brake using a vise. We wouldn't have a chance to test it before the event, but I felt like anything we'd try to do would be better than the offset angle that I currently had on it.
I learned the definitions of inch-pounds and foot-pounds, which explained why the muzzle brake was on so tight!
Wednesday, Apr 30:
Our team at work volunteered at a local food bank, which was fun.
We went to an indoor pickleball place that also sold drinks, afterwards. Fancy.
Quick trip to the range to try to zero my DWX Compact's red dot. I had started by aligning the dot with the irons, but the mounting plate for the red dot had a different height rear iron, apparently, and made the shot got way high. Fortunately, I figured it out and adjusted from there.
I don't enjoy having to zero dots... you have to make good shots to not waste ammo and make all the right adjustments efficiently.
The last round in the mag always fails to chamber, oddly.
I worked on building dope cards from the Kestrel at night. Long night, since that takes time.
TRAVEL DAY
To make traveling with tools easier and more cost-effective, we decided to drive to TX.
I was lucky that I was the last to join the van, since I lived furthest south. We met at 4:45 to consolidate gear into the tactical minivan and be on the road by 5am and begin the 20 hour drive. We had a lot of gear... I had 2 team backup rifles and a backup pistol, on top of my 2 event guns, for example. We made it all fit, though!
We had different options for routes... there was a southern one and a more northern one. It seemed more interesting to be closer to the water, and that option didn't have any tolls, so that's the way we went.
We stopped at a gas station for the bathroom and for anyone who wanted to grab breakfast.
We stopped at a fast food place later for lunch.
We got Subway for dinner. I was ready for some real-ish food after having eaten only snacks earlier in the day. The lone woman staffing the Subway was hilarious and super enthusiastic about her sandwhichmaking job. Everything was made with love. She was great even when a rush of people came in. It made our day!
It was amazing how quickly we ticked off states. We had 4 drivers, and we'd swap every 3 hours or so. Some went longer, so I only ended up taking one turn at the wheel. The most traffic that we had was in Atlanta.
I got to drive through Louisiana, on a bridge-like road that stretched on forever. It was cool driving on that, with water on both sides. I heard that the road can be backed up really bad when there's an accident on it. We were lucky to have smooth sailing.
We did stop at a pawn+gun shop whose billboard advertising a ridiculous amount of guns in stock had caught the boys' eyes. We made a detour to visit. It's not a bad thing to stretch your legs out for a while and not be in a car. It's also always enjoyable to look at shooting gear.
I slept during the last leg of the trip, having had a late night the night before, but we made our way into the ranch. With the time zone change, it was 2am Eastern / 1am Texas when we got there.
SB had booked us a nice house really close to HQ, which was really convenient. We'd be splitting it with a third team, too, that would arrive the next day. There were three bedrooms, a big living room, and a little kitchen.
I got to sleep under a deer head.
CHECK-IN AND ZERO DAY
Check-in was at the lodge starting from 9am, and we were among the first. The lodge is a very impressive place. I had been excited to see it. My dad would've loved the theming.
We signed waivers, got shirts and swag, zero targets, and got our packet, which we closely inspected for any clues about what we'd encounter this weekend.
Afterwards, we headed out to the zero range. A team was already out there, trying to zero at 100m. Interesting.
I was surprised to find that the DA was a whopping 3588, even though it was a very reasonable 73 degrees. That's because it turns out Texas isn't flat, and we were actually at elevation, even though though the ground seems to look pretty flat.
It took me 22 rounds to zero, and I ended up zeroing and undoing my change, because I found out after I had shot a bunch that the wind we were feeling was a big enough factor to be influencing our zero. I should've expected to be about 0.15-0.2 high and 0.1 left, apparently.
I also zeroed the primary backup gun, but I only spent 6 rounds on it, since the grouping was terrible. I was glad that I wasn't using that as the competition gun.
The others also zeored their pistols. The boys are amazingly accurate even at far targets. SB only fired one round but was right at bullseye. I know that I can make good hits if I follow the fundamentals, and I didn't want any outcomes during zeroing to shake my confidence. My pistol does a good job of keeping zero, so I don't need to check it.
SB met a significant other of a competitor who was also into bugs.
I felt like we had just eaten breakfast, but we went back to the "chuckwagon" for lunch. It was plated burgers and fries, plus a milkshake that I declined.
This would be a nice place to relax, if I didn't have a pretty packed schedule already.
Back at the house, the rest of our housemates arrived, plus some roaming animals. The zebra apparently thinks it's a donkey and hangs out with a pack of donkeys.
We had dinner (buffet-style), then we visited some more animals at a pond by the lodge. A capybara and couple of swans live there. The male swan bullies the capybara and anyone who wants to visit the capybara. He doesn't seem to like the fact that the capybara gets so much attention and affection. We kept the swan at bay while feeding the capybara carrots that the chuckwagon kitchen had given us. Fortunately, his large teeth didn't chomp us while he was chomping the carrots.
This event is different from others, because you don't know what to expect. The stages could be anything. Targets might present themselves at any time for you to engage, once you're on the clock. There were no shoots to avoid and drop-dead times to track.
We finalized our gear prep and went to bed. I decided that the name of the deer above my bed was "Tom".
DAY 1
We had 6am breakfast, followed by a 7am step-off, where we'd walk as a group to the first stage.
Our first stage tested 100yd cold bore build and break from standing but facing away with a 10s time cap. I made my shot, which had to be in the T-box of the paper target downrange.
Next, it was 2 rounds at 200yd in 10s, from the same starting position. I only got off one shot in time.
Next, we had to run back to the 100yd line and break 3 shots within 35s. I only got off 1 shot, same as SB. I was glad to not have to run with an extra carbine on my back.
Next, we had to do 4 rounds in 14s. I only got off 3 shots.
In total, I had 4 in, 1 out, same as SB. Some teams were really good, when we checked the target afterwards. Others didn't do that well. We were somewhere mid-pack, it seemed.
There's always tension in the air, not knowing what's next.
Up next, it turned out, would be a timed ruck. If you did the mile at 15 min pace, you'd get a bonus. Easy day.
We set off on the slightly uphill course, and about halfway through, we saw a paddy wagon stopped on the road, with the competitors ahead of us getting in. The paddy wagon was close to full, though. It filled up before we got there. It pays to be a winner.
It turned out that times weren't even tracked, and you didn't get anything for making 15 min/mile. The faster ones got to save themselves from 1/2 mile of rucking, though.
Our turn for the humvee ride came around. Other teams were still waiting for their turn, so we hung out some more.
Those were a rough couple of stages, but now, it was time for lunch and another brief. We all got humvee rides back to HQ.
For Stage 5, primary would look up what kind of target indicator to search for (1, 2, or 3 striped cone). Both of us had to find and hit the target, before secondary could look for the next target indicator, and have both shooters hit the next target. 4 teams could go at a time, because they had different colored targets for each lane.
Talk-ons were challenging in this terrain, since a lot of it looked the same, and it was a blind stage, where we weren't familiar with what was out there. There was so much land out there that searching with binos worked out better than searching through the scope. It took me 7 rounds to hit. I saw my misses and figured out that I needed 7mph worth of wind.
We didn't have time to re-find the next cone before we were stopped, since we were the only team of the 4 in this heat still shooting, and they just needed to rank everyone, so absolute time didn't matter.
Stage 6 was more heats, based on who did the best in each of the previous heats. Best go against the best. We'd be in the second to last heat. A little demoralizing.
For this stage, we needed one hit per team on the two targets from before, which we actually got pretty quickly. We were the first to leave the area. We had to run a bit further to a different shooting position and look for the third cone and get another hit.
SB found the cone first and talked me on. I couldn't find it immediately but had her start engaging while I finished finding it, since as soon as she (or either of us got a hit), we'd be done. I found it, but unfortunately, it took 20 rounds for me to finally hit. I needed 4.7, rather than 4.4 for elevation, and I needed 1L in the end, after trying everything from 0.8 to 1.5L. I only saw my misses 1/4 of the time, which made things especially challenging.
We did have to keep shooting until we got a hit, since this one was for time. We were the last ones in our heat to finish.
In the afternoon, we left based on rankings again, but this time, it was one team at a time, and we'd be spread further apart to avoid backups. We wouldn't be timed for the rucks, at least. Rankings were LDFM OGPQ EIKB SCJH AN, so we wouldn't be last to go, but kinda close to it. That would give us plenty of time to refit.
I looked at the animals again. We hung out in the lodge when it got closer to our tee time, which was delayed by a bit.
We got a humvee ride to the first stage on our continuous afternoon event. Once we arrived, we'd have 12 minutes to engage up to 5 targets from our first position. We'd need to move a quarter mile up the road to a second position by tee pees on a platform built with rocks, surrounded by low rock walls, where there would be 5 more targets.
We had limited round counts of 12R and 12P per person, which added to the strategy element. You had to decide whether to go to war with a target, or save your rounds for other targets. Who knows how many you'd even find.
SB found a target and ranged it at 600yd. It took me a number of rounds to hit, and I had considered giving up on it, but we hadn't seen other targets yet, so I kept going, struggling with wind, but I eventually did hit.
We found a second target, which I was happy to get in one hit.
We decided to head to the next position after that, to not miss out on potentially easier targets there.
Unfortunately, we had a hard time finding targets there. There were many trees, and nothing in the open field in front of us. I looked around all three sides of the platform, looking from different rock peaks, but got nothing. We had to declare that we were done before the 12 min time limit. SB found one at the very end, but we didn't have enough time to engage, so we cut our losses to make sure that we at least banked points from the first two targets.
As we left the area, we noticed in retrospect that there were pistol targets that we had missed seeing on our way to the area.
We were now on a ruck to our next stage, following flags. We were now keeping an eye out for other pistol targets that we might need to engage.
For the next stage, we shot 3rds from prone, seated, kneeling, and standing, at increasingly close distances from 150yd and in, at moving cardboard. Fortunately, anywhere on the cardboard counted, and not just A-zone. SB took her time more, and she got 10/12, while I got 8/12, with my misses tending left, maybe pulling the trigger too early at these close distances.
Once we were done with rifle, we switched to Pistol to engage a double TX star with your colored targets... your shots might impact the other person's planning on their targets, but it was fine. I finished up and had to just wait there, not being able to help my partner. We timed out before she could finish, because of red dot glare issues.
We rucked along to Stage 9. We had 1 minute to scan and range.
Once time was up, the RO started naming combos of letters, numbers, and colors. We didn't have a brief on what to do with all of that, so we had to figure it out on the fly. They didn't stop naming things. I was trying to write stuff down while shooting at the same time, but I also didn't want to miss my chance to write down this one-time info, either. In the end, we were glad to at least have nonzero points on the stage.
We had the pistol portion separately, a dueling tree, but SB shot one of my targets, so that was out of play, but we got nearly full points on that.
We got a ride back to HQ, but then we rucked the rest of the way to the last stage of the day. We kept looking for pistol targets, which helped us keep our minds off of the suffering from the ruck.
The last stage was all about KYL... one shooter was KYL based on distances, and the other was KYL based on target size. It made sense for me to hit the distance ones and for SB to do the KYL rack. The twist was that both shooters had to end on a hit, for points to be banked. Each of us would have to make at least one hit, but we can't get greedy and miss.
I stopped after 1 hit on my first target. I was actually allowed 2 hits, but I wanted to bank what I had. I was actually surprised to have hit, since the target looked small, and I was surprised that I managed to hit it at all from our barricade position whose wobble only allowed one of us to realistically shoot at a time. Plus, I forgot about the 2-hit option.
SB did really well on the first few of her rack. The big self-induced monkey wrench was that we didn't set any timers, so we had no clue how much time we had left. That should've caused us to be ultra-conservative and not greedy, but we got greedy and timed out without ending on hits.
At least we got some points during the day. It's hard to know how the other teams did, so we just had to be happy with the points that we got.
DAY 2
There was another brief in the morning. We learned how to operate a belt-fed M240, a skill that we'd need later in the day. Teams would step off based on tee times based on scores again. We were now next to last, with FMDL EOGP IBKQ SCNA JH.
We stepped off on foot this time. When we got to the first stage, though, we did have about 2 hours of wait time.
On this stage, we also had a time cap that we had to stop by. We had to make challenging shots without shooting the barricade with small ports, which we couldn't stick guns, through, either, the way the shooting area was defined. Shoot a prop and get negative points. We didn't get any hits... we tried some shots, but at least we didn't go negative.
We rucked on to another place where we could wait for a humvee ride.
At the next stage, SB engaged targets with the belt-fed, while I assessed a casualty. We dragged the casualty to the next shooting position, where we had to find and engage an unknown number of targets with 1 hit each. We ended up finding 5 of what would be 6 really quickly, but spent the rest of the time unsuccessfully searching for the last one.
We continued rucking to the next stage, where there were a bunch of spotting scopes... more scopes than ROs. It turned out that each scope was on a different target. One person looked at the target and talked the other on, and that person had to shoot it.
We aligned with the scope, and I did a quick initial ranging before getting a more stable spot for a better range of 830yd. She ended up making the hit, even with her 5.56 at that range! She looked up my target, but there were multiple of the same shape, but with different sizes, so I was thinking that it was one target, but she was trying to get me to look at a different one, saying I wouldn't be able to see the actual one from where I was. I guess I forgot to align with the scope, too, as a starting point. She got my scope close to the target after I eventually moved, and I found it, but didn't have time to shoot it. Womp womp.
We aligned with the scope, and I did a quick initial ranging before getting a more stable spot for a better range of 830yd. She ended up making the hit, even with her 5.56 at that range! She looked up my target, but there were multiple of the same shape, but with different sizes, so I was thinking that it was one target, but she was trying to get me to look at a different one, saying I wouldn't be able to see the actual one from where I was. I guess I forgot to align with the scope, too, as a starting point. She got my scope close to the target after I eventually moved, and I found it, but didn't have time to shoot it. Womp womp.
It was good that we hadn't spent forever in indecision, though, because there was more to shoot... I ran forward and shot at 200 and 150yd targets from a mound, followed by 2 targets at a similar range on a different hill. I ran out of time before getting to the pistol bay. SB had shot rifle targets on her own lane, too, after we did the face description. It was a fun one, and a good way to end the match.
Post-Match
We ended up third to last overall. In this field with experienced shooters, that was ok with us.
We had dinner and caught some sleep, before it was time for the long ride home. It actually went by quicker this time. It's amazing how trips are like that.
Lessons Learned
- Remember the exact wind used each time
- Burn a round if you need help figuring out your misses
- Believe the spotter
- Double up on timers
- Move the shooter, if talk-ons aren't working
- Start big, with an agreed-upon spot, for talk-ons
- The sling + bino harness shelf worked well for carrying the rifle for long distances while keeping it accessible
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