South Mississippi Practical Shooting

Summer may not be officially over, but it sure seemed that way today. The weather was downright pleasant and was not a factor at all. We tried something a bit new with the stages and it seemed to work out well. We shot 7 stages that ranged from 12 to 26 rounds. There were no big monster stages with super high round counts and two digit hit factors, but with three squads (32 shooters), things moved along well. None of the squads had to wait for the squad ahead of them, ever. The first squad finished all 7 stages slightly before Noon, and the last squad was done only about 15-20 minutes after that. Heck, the range was cleaned up and completely vacant by 1 PM. And everyone seemed to enjoy the mix of stages.

Since the Mississippi State Limited Championship match is just two weeks away, there were a lot of regular non-Limited shooters shooting in Limited for the practice. And because of this reason, there were more in Limited than all other divisions combined. When the numbers were tabulated, it was a Limited shooter standing at the top of the podium. Congratulations to Read more…

The South Mississippi Practical Shooting Association will host the monthly USPSA Pistol match Sunday (September 10, 2017) at the range in Poplarville. The match will begin at 9 AM.

This is one of the last chances for real stage practice for the MS State Limited Championship, that will be held in Biloxi on September 23-24.

Online registration is available by clicking the giant button below. Please sign up if you plan on attending.

The last 3-Gun match we shot in May set a modern day record with 25 shooters. Today was a bit of a different story. With the holiday weekend, we barely had half that. Whatever the reason, thirteen folks made it out to shoot with us in the slightly less woodsey woods of Poplarville. If you haven’t been out to the range in a while, it looks different. The loggers have been hard at it, opening up the areas outside of the main pit, and have continued their work, even since the last pistol match just a few weeks ago.

Anyway, it has offered some new opportunities for 3-Gun that just didn’t exist before. We did lose some props to the indiscriminate destruction of the woods but we’ll just rebuild that stuff.

The match today featured 4 stages, with 2 of them being shot in areas that just didn’t exist before, so it was fun, for at least most of us. When the dust settled, the overall match winner was Read more…

The 3-Gun season resumes in the (former) woods of Poplarville this weekend. Expect 4 stages of traditional 3-Gun fun. Sign up now!

We came ever so close to breaking our modern day turnout record, but were one person short of that mark. We tied the 50 mark that was set just two months ago, and considering the heat today, that was impressive.

Speaking of the heat, it was oppressive today. It’s hard to remember a day that was so taxing. It seemed to takes it toll on everyone. Almost no one stuck around for the scores, which is pretty unusual. And that was all right because I didn’t even do them until I got home. I, for one, was over-done with the heat.

Mixed into that batch of 50 shooters were a couple of brand new faces to USPSA shooting and a couple of new to us faces. Thank you very much for coming out today and putting up with “less than ideal” conditions. I promise you it gets better. I also want to thank the folks that helped with the match setup and tear-down right up front. If you aren’t directly named, please take no offense. There were just too many to list, but you know who you are. First, to the Dupuy family for helping with setup on Friday. Next, to John N and Jason W (and others) for creating a great little stage at the last minute. Last night when it looked like an overfull match, John agreed to set up another stage to allow us to go to 5 squads. In the end, we didn’t use the 5th squad, because we winnowed down from a high of 64 late yesterday afternoon to that magic 50 number by hammer time today.  And, as if by magic, everything got taken down and brought to the truck before I even got back myself. Thank you VERY much, everyone!

I guess it’s time for some scores, since no one got them at the range. The overall match winner was a “Yankee,” and he almost lapped the field. Congratulations to the Open and Overall winner,  Read more…

The South Mississippi Practical Shooting Association will host the monthly USPSA Pistol match Sunday (August 13, 2017) at the range in Poplarville. The match will begin at 9 AM.

Online registration is available by clicking the giant button below. Please sign up if you plan on attending.

After the record setting turnout last month, it looked like we might beat that today, but the final count was a mere 44 shooters. That’s still a great turnout for us and Wayne and I greatly appreciate your support. Online registration reached at peak of 57 by last night, but we expect around 10% attrition as normal.

As you saw today, the area surrounding the range underwent some big changes. How this will affect us in the long run is yet to be determined, as there may be more logging to come. Thankfully, we had not started our plan to build bays and fix the road. Once the logging has moved on, we can begin some serious dirt work to make the range more “rangey.”

The original forecast on Friday has a real decent chance of rain on Saturday and Sunday, but that never materialized, and when the hammers started falling, the overcast sky make for a not too miserable start to the day. With four high round count, but reasonably quick stages, we zipped through and were done by around 11:30. Had it not been for the minor scoring issue, we could have been on our way by Noon.

As it was, a scoring problem resulted in not only a delay, but also the release of two rounds of incorrect scores at the range. If you downloaded the match from my iPad at the range, those scores are wrong. Here’s what happened. The score computer for squad 4 ran out of juice with 3 shooters left on their last stage (stage 3). I gave them the computer from squad 2 and set it to stage 3 for them. They then shot and scored their last three shooters on that computer. When we went to sync everything, we discovered those three shooters that were shooting stage 3 actually got scored on stage 2. Once we realized that, we moved those scores to stage 3 and resynced. Those would be the last scores released at the range. On the way home, it occurred to me that with those last three scores posted to stage 2 instead of stage 3 for the first sync, the real stage 2 scores MIGHT have been overwritten. That turned out to be the case, and once home, I figured all that out and got all the corrected scores in the right place. Fortunately and unfortunately, this resulted in several people moving in the final, final results.

Speaking of results, let’s get to it. The overall winner did not change and that means  Read more…

The South Mississippi Practical Shooting Association will host the monthly USPSA Pistol match Sunday (July 9, 2017) at the range in Poplarville. The match will begin at 9 AM.

Online registration is available by clicking the giant button below. Please sign up if you plan on attending.

It turned out to be a pretty good day, despite the brief, but heavy rain towards the end of the match. First, we set another attendance record mark with 50 shooters competing (thanks for the support, everyone)! That eclipsed the old mark of 44 set just two months ago. Second, we welcomed back some old friends who hadn’t shot with us in quite a while. And finally, your match director managed to cobble together 6 short but fun/challenging stages that provided plenty of action but at a quicker than normal pace.

We thought we would get by without the rain that had been forecast for several days but that turned out to be wishful thinking. While at least one squad managed to finish before the serious rain cut loose, most had to endure shooting in the rain, or just getting quite damp while trying to shoot. In the end, we had to put up some new targets and we lost some paster rolls to the water, but we got all the stages shot without any significant problems. And, thankfully, no one ended up in the ditch adjacent to the road down the hill.

Many shooters used this match as a tuneup for the upcoming MS State Championship Production match (two weeks from today). This year’s format allows lots of non-Production shooters to compete in the big Production match, even though they aren’t really Production shooters. Heck, how different can minor caliber 10 round guns be from a major Limited or Open gun? That’s what at least 7 or 8 found out today. In total, there were 18 shooters in Production (the largest division), including such non-Production names as Gerwin Henn and Max Michel. After my brief stint in L10 for the state match a few weeks ago, I for one am glad to have a red dot and high cap mags to shoot. But, to each his own.

In each match, there are winners and occasionally losers. Your overall match winner today is no stranger to the top spot and he comes from the Open ranks. Congratulations to  Read more…

The South Mississippi Practical Shooting Association will host the monthly USPSA Pistol match Sunday (June 11, 2017) at the range in Poplarville. The match will begin at 9 AM.

Online registration is available by clicking the giant button below. Please sign up if you plan on attending.