South Mississippi Practical Shooting

The weather tried its best to kill another match, but the shooters won this time. As has happened so many times this year, the weather on match day was fine, but a big storm the prior afternoon turned the road into the range into a slip and slide. However, this time, 4 wheel drive won out. It was slippery, rutty, and nasty, but the small crowd of shooters switched it in redneck mode on the pick-em-up trucks and made it up with little drama.

We had only 9 shooters but we still had a good match. With four quality stages with a mixture of speed and endurance, the challenges abounded. And, as is almost always the case in 3-gun, making the fewest mistakes rewarded someone with a victory.

On top of the podium was Wayne Alcock, who was shooting heavy metal tactical, which means only one C-zone hit per pistol or rifle target is needed to neutralize a paper target, but magazine capacity is limited to 10 rounds for pistol, 20 rounds for rifle and a hand operated pump on the shotgun. That’s quite an accomplishment when you consider the recoil of the heavy metal guns (.45 and .308). But that wasn’t really the story of the day. Fairly often, the winner runs away with the match. Today was different. Although Wayne won the overall match, the shooter in second place, Will Mullendore, was so close that he literally lost by just the resolution of the timer. Had he shot any stage just 0.01 seconds quicker or Wayne shot any stage 0.01 second slower, Will would have taken home the trophy instead of Wayne. Will shot 99.997% of  Wayne’s score which was only 0.012 match points behind. And, if that weren’t enough excitement, third place went to Joe Jones who shot a mere 99.932% of Wayne’s score. But, both Will and Joe had one stage where they incurred a handful of penalty seconds, while Wayne shot a clean match. That was the difference. Shoot clean and win…

We would really like to have a better turnout for next month, so if you know anyone who wants to shoot, tell them about our match and bring them out.

Click on the score sheet at the right for the match results.