South Mississippi Practical Shooting

‘Round about Friday, it wasn’t looking good for the match. With two solid days of rain, my phone was buzzing with shooters wanting to know if we were going to be able to shoot. I was skeptical about the road being usable, but it turned out to be as *good* as it has been for the past few months. I guess the severe ruts are acting as channels to drain away the water. It only took a 2WD vehicle to get in although a truck made it a bit easier. Anyway, we got to shoot.

The weather was great, after it finally warmed up. When I got to the range to put up the targets, it was a crisp 32 degrees. Thankfully, by 9 it was warm enough for short sleeves. The rest of the day was perfect with clear skies, mild temps and a slight breeze. Not too bad for early January.

We had a respectable 18 shooters with us today, and it made for decent size squads. There were enough folks to get things reset but not so big as to be slow. There was some discussion in my squad about creating a new division called “Leonhardt.” The only requirement to shoot that division is your last name. If you aren’t a Leonhardt, you have to shoot in the “Participation Trophy” division. It will come as no surprise that your match winner, regardless of division, was Kevin Leonhardt, who won all four stages. His protege (and daughter) Morgan was second. In the Non-Leonhardt division, it was James May’s consistency that won the day and 3rd overall. In Heavy Metal, it was Clayton Patterson eking out the win over Wayne Alcock. Interestingly, only two shooters shot a clean match today, so the level of difficulty was just about right.

Once again, the stages made you do stuff that was just a bit uncomfortable, with copious opportunities to push a bit too hard, occasionally resulting in sub-optimal results. If you haven’t shot slugs off your weak shoulder before, I suggest you do it in practice before we do it AGAIN at Poplarville in a real match.

Thank you to everyone for getting the props picked up and loaded. As always, we appreciate the help.

The match scores can be accessed by clicking the score computer to the right.