Flying Steel and the Down One Group

Tonight's match was fun, but I can't say that I felt like I did all that well. It will be a few days before I have results, so I'm reporting on what I remember and how it felt.

I want to stick with SSP for the year, but sometimes it's fun to shoot something else. I shot the match twice: Once in SSP with my Glock 17 and once in ESP with my XDM 5.25 9mm. I did it with the Glock "for real" and the XDM "for fun." I also tried to slow down and be more accurate with the XDM (which I still didn't have the patience to do right).

To be honest, I barely remember the first round with the Glock. I remember that I hit the first two steels on the first shots and took two to get the third. I remember going to two knees behind cover. That makes it tricky to slice the pie. Oops. On the tactical reload, I tried to press down the slide release. At least I didn't eject a live round again.

The second round was a bit more memorable. The third steel again was tricky. I missed the first shot. The second was a glancing shot, enough to spin the steel but not enough to knock it off the post. That put me at slidelock. After the reload, I slowed down, aimed at the small visible edge of the steel, and sent it flying. The last target was about 20 yards away in low light. I had to put 6 rounds on it. I shot 7 until I went to slidelock. At the end, I found that all 7 were within 2"... all in the Down 1 zone.

String 2 was two shots from each side of two cover positions, making for a lot of moving and transitioning. Of course, I forgot the last two shots for a second... then the SO reminded me. Oops.

The third string was five targets, each with the head and the sides of the targets painted black for hard cover, leaving a small zone to hit. It was one hit on each target and then kneel and hit each one two more times. I hit one of the hard covers (down 5), but not bad otherwise.

The last one was a basic two to the body and one to the head while walking backwards and then the same thing while walking forwards on another target. Down 1, I think.

All told, I was around Down 33 with the Glock and Down 21 with the XDM. I'll have the official results in a few days, but it's not bad. Not quite what I was hoping for, but it's a step in the right direction.