2011 Indiana IDPA State Championship

[BarryinIN]

The match was Saturday. I thought you might want to see some pictures. I'm no photographer. These are not the best, and many were snapped as we were about to move on to the next scenario and I remembered at the last minute, whether the sun was shining straight into the lens or a bunch of people were in the way. There aren't any cool action shots with brass flying through the air. I was just trying to show how the scenarios were set up in case anyone was interested.

1. Our squad started here. The situation was: You were lying on the ground working on your car and took your gun off so you wouldn't be lying on it. Then you get attacked by two guys.

Gun in tray next to you. Lying on back holding a wrench (7/8 and 15/16 Great Neck box end) in both hands above your face.

First shot knocks down the steel, which causes paper target to pop up which gets two shots.

This was harder than it looks because of the position you were in. You had to twist around, and then scrunch down to see under the "car", so you were all bent up.

2. The next one is lost because I dumped the pic by accident. Pretty simple to explain, though.

It was a coyote attack while fishing. Targets were regular IDPA targets, but with the outer scoring zone cut away and mounted horizontally.

Shooter started holding fishing pole, facing 90 degrees away from targets. Gun is unloaded in tackle box with magazines. Turn, retrieve gun, load, shoot coyotes. Six coyotes, two rounds each, for a total of 12 rounds minimum, and 10-rd limit on magazine loading, meant everyone had to reload (from the tackle box).

I both screwed up and did the right thing here. Since the targets were roughly the same distance away, they had to be shot in "Tactical Sequence" which means everybody gets one round before they get a second one. I yanked a terrible shot on the third target as I swept across, and thought I missed it entirely (but clipped it where the spine would be). So I took another shot at it, then went on.

Per the rules, I got a procedural (3 second penalty) because I had already "engaged" the threat once- even though I horsed the shot- and should have went on to get his pals. No complaints, because those are the rules and I know why it's the case (to keep you from just hosing across on the first pass then shooting careful pairs on the way back). But what I did was the right thing to stop the threat, so I'm happy with that.

3.Drug Bust. Basically a bunch of targets, but they were all dressed identical except for two no shoots that were only identifiable by the empty hands barely visible through the open shirt fronts. This kept you from just blazing across. Since everyone looked almost alike, you had to lower the gun to check for hands as you came onto target.

The designer of this one is a friend of mine, and ran it recently where the only identifier was a small badge that they moved before each shooter.

4. Here's the one that almost did me in. This one had four pneumatically operated targets. You started facing the dummy (in white T-shirt). At the start signal, you knocked the dummy down with your strong hand. That alone bit several of us, because the inclination is to strike with the weak hand while drawing. I think the idea was that your weak hand was being held by the attacker until you whacked him.

When the dummy falls, it activates two swing-out targets beyond it. They swing out and back in really, really quick. They are slightly staggered so you get one then the other. And a third target is beyond them.

Starting point:

You run from there to a doorway. When you open that door, it activates two similar pop-out targets. The difference on that side is that there is a slight delay before they come out, so you have to shoot the far stationary target first. And they come out in the opposite order of the first ones, which threw some guys off. If you swing on the wrong one, they are so fast, you won't get swung back in time before both are gone. Even if you were on top of things, they came and went so fast there were a lot of one-hits and no-hits.

Doorway, although it's hard to see much. You pretty much had to be in the door to see anything, as per the plan:

I shot OK here. I just screwed up everything else. I started off by whacking the dummy with the wrong hand (three second procedural). Then I had my little accident in the doorway unloading the gun afterward.

5. I've never seen the TV show "Justified" but I guess this was based on a scene from it. You had to neutralize a hostage holder with a shot to the brain stem, represented by the white stick-on dot. You have one shot. If you miss that little dot, it's a Failure To Neutralize (5 second penalty). Shoot low and you hit the hostage (also 5 seconds, although I have an opinion on both of these penalties- they should be higher).

6. Poker game. You are about to start your weekly poker game, when a gunfight breaks out somehow. Two guys come through the window behind the couch you are sitting across from, and you hear shots in other rooms.

You start in the chair across from the couch, get up, draw and retreat to cover while shooting the two couch attackers without hitting your buddies. You round the corner into the next room where you see one guy behind partial hard cover. Shoot him, then step on a plate that activates a pop-out target and a "poker table" that swings down exposing another target. You can shoot through the table if you want/need.

After that, you check the last room where you find a guy coming in through the bathroom window and shoot him through the shower curtain.

Chair and couch targets.

Shoot while retreating to here:

Most reloaded here. Then peek around the corner to see the far guy behind partial cover (beyond the guy in the red coat), then the two moving targets when they appear:

Then continue to the right and shoot the guy in the shower:

7. Every big match has to have a Deliverance stage. Squeal like a pig.

You canoe into camp and rescue your buddies. For some reason, you left your gun in camp and have to get it first. Maybe you didn't want to risk dropping it in the river.

Start seated in the canoe, and at the start signal, get out, grab your gun and ammo off a barrel, then start shooting.

But it gets tricky. First, you have to stow all your mags/speedloaders in pouches or pockets; you can't just trap them under one arm or hold them in your mouth. And you can't just leave them on the barrel to use as needed. People tended to load one mag and leave the rest.

Then the target layout could stick you. Since you had to go from nearest to farthest target you ended at a "beartrap" (no-shoot swings down exposing a threat target then swings right back up) and you were one round short for that. Obviously you reloaded before whacking that steel, but it's hard to make yourself stop to do that after sweeping across the others.

Then you ran around to the tents and swept them out.

Start here, in the canoe, and shoot what you see:

Then move around to the tents and save your buddies:

I took forever to shoot this one. First, I took the time to put my mags in my pouches instead of just sticking them in my pocket, thinking it would help me later (it didn't). Then I changed mags once when I didn't have to, just because I wanted to round a blind corner with a full gun.

8. This was the first of a two parter.

You are in a restroom when a drug deal goes bad a couple of stalls away and the shooting starts. You start sitting on the toilet, stand, draw, and make your way down the stalls identifying and shooting the threats (one non-threat in there). At the end, I guess one got away, because you have to hit the exit and pop a guy about 15 yards off.

It's a crappy picture, but notice the yellow "Do Not Cross" tape. This was the hard part. You had to keep your head below this tape line, because it signified the top of the stalls that hid you. It was in just the right place to make it rough. You had to duck walk or bend way over. A few got penalized here.

I don't move very well anyway on good days (back) so I was glacial here.

9. The story behind the second part was that after the restroom shootout, you are waiting outside for police to arrive when another hidden bad guy appears and heads for the trees while shooting at you. The catch is that you supposedly didn't reload after the fight, so you only have five rounds.

They had six targets going near to far, representing this one guy at different points along his retreat. You had to put one round each into five of these (avoiding two no-shoots mixed in), reload, and then the last one got three to finally anchor him.

Starting with only five rounds in the gun, if you didn't get a good hit on each of the first five targets, you had to shoot carefully on the first five targets because a bad shot got you a Failure To Neutralize, and you could get one at each target. If you came back to make it up, it took time plus it was easy to forget which one you had to hit again.

Unlike the first part of this "event", we stayed in one place and didn't have to move here, so I did OK.

10. This reenacted the shootout at the Tyler, TX courthouse a few years ago, where the guy went after his ex-wife with an AK and an armed citizen saw it from across the street and tried to stop it. He was unaware of the bad guy's body armor, and was killed.

The target's armored areas were represented by the black paint. You started about two yards away, and retreated while firing four rounds to the center chest, then one each into the upper and lower un-armored areas.

11. This one is hard to explain. It was another that gave you some crummy choices. You shot a steel target, which was behind two fixed steel targets so you had to split the gap to get it. When you dropped it, it started a no-shoot swinging in front of two partially blocked off (hard-covered) bad guy targets, giving you some small areas to shoot. These were behind a wall so you had to move to get them after shooting the steel, but there were two locations you could shoot them from. One was about seven yards from the targets. The other was fifteen. Hold that thought.

You started with an empty gun (for reasons I still don't know other than simply for the challenge). You had one mag loaded with five rounds in your pouch. If you missed anything, you had to reload or eat it.

You got to place one spare mag on a barrel which was at the farthest shooting point.

So you had a choice of shooting the hard-covered targets behind a swinging no-shoot from seven yards with no way to reload...or do it from over twice as far and have the chance to reload if needed.

Start position and steel on left side of picture and a glimpse of the two options of second positions and partial target view on right:

12. This one wouldn't post the pictures. I probably used up my allotment of pics per post. I'll put those two with the description in the next one.

[BarryinIN]

12. And our last one.

Start with two targets in your face, draw and shoot from retention (and they were calling people for not keeping the gun tucked in) move left to cover engaging a bad guy on the move along the way. From cover, pie out and shoot two steel/paper/things*, then move on and do the same with two paper targets behind a no-shoot.

Start here:

Move across to the right side of the "alley" here, shooting the one barely visible in the right of this picture along the way. From there take the black shirted steel things. Then move to the left side of the alley you just cleared and take the two remaining bad guys with the no-shoot in front/between.

*These targets wearing black shirts here are kinda cool. They are steel knock-downs that hold a cardboard target about four inches in front of the steel vital zone. When you take them from an angle like pieing a corner, if you aim dead center of the front, you will miss the steel behind it because it's set back. It's like a human, where the vitals are within the vessel. Having the t-shirts on them took away the reference points bare cardboard would give.

[BarryinIN]

Great. Had I waited a few hours, I could have just posted this video from Caleb Giddings' hatcam:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtHM1S8PWJ8&feature=player_embedded

Caleb was on the first season of Top Shot and used to shoot here before moving to WA.

[RLH70]

Were there any firearm failures Barry?

[BarryinIN]

I can only say what I saw within my squad of 12 shooters, but I only remember one for certain. It was a Glock but I don't know what model. It looked like either a 17 or 22. I didn't know the guy, so can't say what he usually uses to make a better guess.

I don't know what exactly the malfunction was either, but he cleared it with a Tap-Rack-Bang.

An LEO was using his issue Beretta 92 (from his duty rig- bless him) and I saw him fighting with it at least once, but I don't know if he had malfunctions or quirky things like missing the slide stop or getting a magazine wedged in the magwell crooked. He was having a bad day. Seemed like a skilled shooter, but started off having a problem or two and then it was one of those days for him.