South Mississippi Practical Shooting

January seems to be the month when the shooter’s resilience to cold is tested. A year ago, the weather was a crisp 22 degrees when the setup staff arrived. Today it was WAY warmer at a balmy 24. Interestingly, we had exactly the same number of shooters today as one year ago. Both matches had great pre-registration, but both suffered from cold-itis. Once again, the January match had 23 shooters, down from 38 at peak registration. Last night, a wise man predicted a 40% bailout rate. I thought that would be excessive. As it turns out, he was right on the money.

In any event, the match went on with 6 quick, but still challenging stages, where only two stages took more than 10 seconds for the fastest shooter, and those were in the mid-11s. With just 108 rounds spread out over the 6 stages and only 3 squads, things moved along as a blistering pace. The first squad was done in just a bit more than 2 hours, with the second squad about 5 minutes behind. Shooting was done by 11:30 or so and the range deserted by Noon.

The top spot on the Poplarville podium saw a new face today. Congratulations to David Pape who was first overall and first in Limited. Just last November, a picture of David shooting at Poplarville became the main picture on the new USPSA website. I guess the 15 minutes of fame extended to his shooting. Coming in second overall and first in Open was Roger Henn, but he was more than 4.5% behind David. In the hotly contested PCC division, Scott Jacob edged out the rest to win there, while Joe Jones won shooting for the first time in Carry Optics. Peter Keopla took the Production honors and Rob Campbell notched his first division win in Single Stack to round out the winners.

A special round of thanks goes to Doc Toups, who came out yesterday when the weather was less hospitable to help with setup. He didn’t even get to shoot today, but instead enjoyed a visit with his granddaughter. Additional thanks to all the shooters for getting everything picked up and squared away so quickly today. And finally, thank you to everyone who braved the cold to shoot what turned out to be a great little match in really nice weather (for January). If you took the day off, you missed a good one.

Don’t forget about the match in Hattiesburg next Saturday. Try to make it if you can.

For the complete match results, click the score computer at the right.