Continuing in my self analysis of this years Winter Indoor IPSC Tournament put on by the Pine Tree Pistol Club, we look at stages 5 and 6.
The WIIT is shot in three bays, and four distinct relays that are each composed of 3 squads. In order to fit all the action into two days, two relays shoot all eight stages in one day. I was assigned to squad 7. We shot on Sunday, and started with Stage 5. Due to the layout of the facility, and the need for quick turnover of the stages within the bays you may notice that Stage 5 and Stage 1 are very similar. As were Stage 4 and Stage 8.
Getting down to details.
Stage 5 – Zombie Clearing
I am not really sure why they incorporated Zombie into the name of this stage. There were no zombie targets involved. Starting position on this was facing uprange, loaded and holstered, with your back against the wall. You had to turn, draw and move to your right, engage two paper targets through a port. Move left through a doorway, engage the two paper. Continue past the targets to a charge line and engage four steel. Turn and move 10-15 yards to the right and engage a steel dueling tree. Shift left and open a door, engage two targets. Shift down the hall, open a door engage two targets, negotiate a left right chicane and engage four more targets in a small “room”.
As I said, this was my first stage of the day and it was a rough start. Not terrible, but there were a lot of areas to make improvements on. I shot all “alphas” on the paper so, I am pretty proud of that. Let’s cover the problem areas. Turn and draw, smooth and quick right up to getting my weak hand on the gun. I was too close to the port in the barrier and wound up with a small portion of the barrier between my hands as I wrapped my weak hand fingers around the gun.
The steel pepper poppers, nice run there only one extra shot. The dueling tree, I began at the bottom and worked my way up. I get to the top, and that is the first plate that I manage to hit. Run it back down, and I nailed the remaining five. The rest of the stage was smooth, except for that one spot where I did not let the trigger reset all the way. Stupid error but it happened three times during that match, and once in my match this week. That tree though killed me. I need to work on barriers and steel.
Stage 6 – Make It Count
A short little stage. Starting turned 90 degrees from the target with your hands on the wall, turn and draw. Engage targets as visible. Three steel pepper poppers are visible from the start, all other targets are obscured in two distinct arrays. One target is a mover, swinging out and then back in. You have to shoot the paper through the ports.
This was a decent stage for me. My plan was to engage the poppers, then the mover and the two static targets, then move to the last port and engage the remaining paper. The draw was smooth, my steel shots went well with no extra shots for a change, movement to the first port was good but I reversed my plan and engaged the paper then came back to the mover. Stepping on the trap to activate the mover was not natural. I shot it well but I probably wasted 1s+ on visually finding the trap, stomping it, and getting my position. It still felt awkward. Move right to the next port and engage the remaining paper.
The stage went fairly well. I threw a few too many charlies, in one case I threw two charlies on a target where both were on a horizontal line and positioned one to the left and one to the right of the “A” zone by about 1/4 inch. I think I just didn’t quite get that one settled in.
Things to work on:
- Ports.
- Doors.
- Steel plates
- Step Activators
And as always foot speed. I need to get more explosive in my first couple of steps from the position.