South Mississippi Practical Shooting

Today was the day of the new shooter. We had 13 shooters for the match, and four great stages. However, for Poplarville, five of these shooters were new to our match. That’s what we like, with new people finding out our secret in the woods, but unfortunately, our regular  turnout was a bit light. We’ll take 13, but we would prefer more. Anyway, the weather cooperated and we had no issues there. The stages were very challenging today, with multiple penalties on two stages. In fact, on stage 2 and 4, there were only 2 shooters on each who shot them clean. That’s pretty telling.

After the math was done, there, of course, was a winner. For the past 3 months, Joe Jones had ruled the roost, but today, he could only managed a second. Returning to the top was… Read more…

We seem to be on a roll. Once again, the weather not only cooperated, it was downright pleasant. The range and road were in good shape, we broke in some new props today, and we had a good turnout, with 20 shooters in all six recognized divisions of USPSA.

When the scores were finally tallied, normalcy had returned to the Poplarville shooting world. Our match winner was… Read more…

It wasn’t a washout, but we didn’t make it out without getting wet either. Shortly after the match began, we started experiencing intermittent showers. They continued for the entire match and managed to dampen a few shooters, a few bags, a few guns and lots of paper targets. Eventually, the pasters just wouldn’t stick and any close shot would expose numerous extra holes. But the group persevered and we got the entire match in.

We had another four really challenging stages today and more than our share of penalty points all around. It took a clean match to win today, and only one shooter managed to do that. Congratulations go to our overall winner… Read more…

The new year started out with a weekend of great weather. First, Biloxi had (barely) really nice weather on Saturday, although the pre-match rain made it sloppy footing. Today, the Poplarville crew experienced Chamber of Commerce weather. Although it was a crisp 34 degrees at 6:45 AM when the first of the setup crew arrived, by 9 AM, it had warmed considerably to around 55 degrees. The entire day was great with mild temperatures, no wind and low humidity. What more could you want?

Well for some, they wanted more consistency. Out of 22 shooters, an Open shooter finished on top. Read more…

The new year brought a new result for 3-gun. After a sad turnout in December, we had a nice little match today, despite missing two of our stage design teams. We hosted 10 shooters on a really nice weather day to shoot 4 stages of 3-gun fun in the woods of South Mississippi. With the weather threatening to be cold and wet, neither of those environmental factors appeared and we shot in comfort temperatures and overcast skies. Thanks to significant setup on Saturday afternoon, we were done with the stage construction at 8:20 AM today and were able to finish shooting by 11:55 AM. Yes, we actually finished BEFORE Noon!

The stages might have been a tad simpler than usual, but that didn’t stop a few misses here and there. It wasn’t the total disaster factor as we saw in recent matches, but the challenges still caused everyone to push themselves to the limit. There were no really long rifle shots, but you still needed the ability to hit an auto-popper if you wanted to score. One stage proved the old adage that you can unload a shotgun a whole lot faster than you can load it. Squeezing the trigger only 20 time didn’t take very long but shoving those colorful little tubes of lead and powder into a bigger tube sure did. That stage humbled more than a few shooters.

Eventually, you have to have a winner, and today it was… Read more…

Due to the rain overnight, the expected rain today and the terrible condition of the road into the range, we have cancelled the match for Sunday December 8, 2013.

PRESS RELEASE – Sunday, 10 November, 2013

While our fearless leader was  sunning himself on a beach, and sipping drinks with little umbrellas, somewhere in the South Pacific, there were 14 brave shooters, giving it everything they could muster, up on a lonely hill, in Poplarville, Mississippi!!!

Great stages, great weather, great friends….eat your heart out!!!!  🙂   Congratulations go to …Steven Mosher, match and winner of the Limited division. Bryant Willett – Production Division winner, Bob Brandt winning Single Stack, and Cliff Prescott winning  Open division.

As always, thanks go to everyone for helping set up, tear down and score and paste. Another great day at the range.

For the complete match scores, click the score sheet at the right.

October

Once again, those darn Cajuns siphoned away many of our regular shooters with rescheduled matches on our day! Please stop doing that!

Of the eleven shooters who did grace us with their presence, all shot a challenging match and a lucky few achieved the pinnacle of success and earned yet another title of Poplarville Match Winner. There were a lot of tough head shots required today and some stages just begged for a slower pace. In the end, a few did survive. The overall match winner was a new face at the top of the heap. Congratulations go to … Read more…

A late season heat wave gripped the range today and made shooting just slightly less than pleasant. Well, actually, it was pretty damn hot. For whatever reason, we had only 13 shooters today. Maybe it was because the CAS match got rescheduled to today. Or, maybe it was the weird calendar quirk that made this the second Sunday but the second Saturday hasn’t yet occurred. Normally, we shoot Biloxi, THEN Poplarville. Whatever the reason, those that didn’t come missed another great match. We did have one new shooter today, who did great and we hope he comes back to shoot again. (If you do, you might want to bring some more mags…).

In the end, it came down to one careless mistake at the loading bench. Had it not been for a squib on his first stage, Gerwin Henn would probably have won the overall match. However, because it occurred so early in the stage, he zeroed stage 5. Even with giving up the better part of 140 points, he still took 4th overall. But that’s the way it goes. The overall winner was Read more…

Sunday, 7:00 AM: It is hard to believe, but the road in is actually dry. So, with Karen fizzling, we are on. The radar looks good for at least a few hours, so come on out.

Saturday, 7:40 PM: Just got back from the range. Everything is set up except for stapling up the targets. There was no rain as of 6 PM, so the road is in great shape. However, check back no later than 7 AM for the final decision. We will wait to see what Karen does tonight.

Saturday, 1:15 PM: So far, we have missed any significant bad weather. There was a line of rain that moved through the range a short time ago, but it appears clear for the rest of the day. We will be heading up there around 3 PM to set up stages for tomorrow’s match. At this point, the match is still on.  However, we will not make a final decision until tomorrow morning due to the tropical storm.  We suggest checking here before you leave the house. A final decision will be made no later than 7 AM on Sunday.

Friday, 7:30 AM: The approaching tropical storm may cause us to cancel the match this weekend. We have NOT yet cancelled, but please check back throughout Saturday. We suggest checking here before coming to the range on Sunday for final notice about the match. Even if the storm passes on Saturday, any significant rainfall can make the road in impassible. 

The South Mississippi Practical Shooting Association (Poplarville) will resume our 3-gun matches on October. We take the summer off because of the heat, and would normally resume in September, but this year, Labor Day weekend coincides with the first Sunday, so we will not shoot then. We plan to shoot our first 3-gun this fall on October 6. If you haven’t shot 3-gun before, then check out what you need to know by clicking here.