Triangle Tactical Podcast and Blog on Guns, Gear, and Competition Shooting
For some reason, in the last two stages of this seven stage match, I forgot how to stuff a fully-loaded magazine in to my 1911.
Stage 2, the classifier, was the worst of my match. Due to USPSA’s scoring system, a small hiccup on a short stage hurts a lot more than on a long one. So doubling my stage time from sixish seconds to twelvish by not seating the magazine on the reload really cost me in the match.
Half the problem was my half-hearted rack of the slide with the rear serrations. Everywhere else in the match, when I had to rack the slide, I had a good grip on it with the front serrations, but because I derped and used the rears this time, I had to press check the gun to make sure I’d actually racked something in. Fail.
I reshot this one for classification and sucked dramatically less, but for the match purposes, this score stood.
This last stage was one of the more complex ones of the match, requiring you to go down one leg of a giant V and then move back up it. Unfortunately, I chose the wrong progression and moved in a way that required me to have the gun trail me when I moved uprange instead of keeping it close to my body, a mistake I won’t make again.
I also failed to seat the mag on my first reload, a problem I’ve never really had, but decided to have on two stages in a row on this match.
I fooled myself in to thinking I had an aggressive stage plan with those first shots on the move, when I just ended up with a (terrible) standing reload anyway. And fumbling that reload at the end didn’t help anything either.
This last stage was a big learning experience, both in terms of stage planning and execution. The match isn’t over until you’re driving away, scores in hand, so getting lazy before then just hurts you. Act accordingly.
