Sunday, April 15, 2012

The Classifier

The IDPA classifier is one of those rites of passage that all IDPA shooters must go through if they plan to participate seriously.

It's really not that big of a deal, but it's not easy.

You can read all the details at the IDPA website, but it's basically a test of your shooting skills. It is 90 shots testing you skills, such as shooting from the holster, shooting while moving (forward and backwards), shooting strong-hand-only, shooting support-hand-only, shooting from behind cover, shooting from one knee, reloading, and shooting several targets side-by-side. Of course, the shot timer is running as you do all these things, so you need to both do them well and do them quickly.

There are several good websites out there that give you tips on how to do well, so I won't bore you with more. My one point is to make sure that you make the shots. Most IDPA matches let you take additional shots if you miss or got a down-3. The classifier does not. You can only take the set number of shots. You need to make shots from as far away as 20 yards. It's not hard to miss, which hurts your score a lot.

I did my first classifier at Lower Providence in March and I enjoyed it. It was a great chance to see how I compared to other shooters. I was classified as a Marksman, with a score of 159.24 (77). Not awful for someone new to the sport, but I have a long way to go!

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