Tactical Tuesday Training Report – 9/28/10: Happy Birthday Jeff!

This Tuesday’s T3 League at Sim-Trainer was….entertaining to say the least.

With the most recent eight-week league competition officially over last week, this week the league would do a “fun shoot.”  Jeff Pedro, owner of Sim-Trainer also celebrated a birthday on Tuesday – the big five-oh.  So a surprise party was organized.  I was clued in ahead of time, and brought my photo gear and grabbed some pics – click on the below photos to see larger versions:

Here’s a shot of the pre-shooting festivities:

Jeff and his wife enjoying the great food spread – happy birthday Jeff!

After the birthday portion of the evening was completed, we headed into the range for this evening’s “fun shoot.”  While we keep score, the score you receive isn’t tallied into your official league standings – it’s just something the T3 League does between each eight week competition series.

The first course of fire involved rifle shooting with a .22:

After taking 10 shots with the .22, you moved on to taking a few shots from the shot gun – it’s been a loooong time since I’ve shot with a long gun….and it showed.  🙁

The final course of fire was for pistol use:

Above you have 5 bowling pins set up on a 2×4, with a “spinner” target set up roughly in the middle of them.  Behind that, at the far end of the range, you have 4 more bowling pins.  Have you ever tried to shoot a bowling pin with a 9mm pistol?  It’s not exactly easy.  And that spinner target was even smaller and more challenging.

The instructions were that you had to first hit the spinner target, then fire and knock down the bowling pins in front, followed by the bowling pins at the back of the firing range.  You then had to again hit the spinner target to complete the course of fire.

While this was a “fun shoot” it was not an “easy shoot” – I saw several shooters who I consider to be better shooters than myself (about everyone who comes on Tuesday night falls into that category) have a really tough time hitting the bowling pins and the spinner.  Below is a video of my performance – before you hit “play” I want to call your attention to a couple of things:

1.  I actually was doing pretty well – right up to the point were I take my final shot at the spinner.  I missed exactly two shots (once on the far left bowling pin, and once on the far right).  I believe I had the best run on the pistol course of anyone who shot that evening.

2.  Pay really close attention to my final shot at the spinner….and prepare yourself.  You’re in for one HECKUVA a good laugh:

Inconceivably, my final shot apparently struck the metal bar which supports the spinner target, ricocheting straight up into the light fixture above the target.  I was both shocked and dumbfounded when the light bulbs came crashing down – I thought I’d missed so badly that I had shot up into the lights.  However, if you look at the range photo above, you’ll see that it would be impossible to do so – there’s a supporting beam (with a yellow “40” ft. marker on it in the photo) between the shooter and the light.  The only possible explanation is that my shot struck the metal bar which supports the spinner, and that the bullet launched straight up into the light.  Apparently this mishap is not unique on “fun shoots” – when everyone stopped laughing enough to speak, they told me it had happened a couple of other times.

So as far as I’m concerned, I hit the spinner on my final shot.  That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.  🙂

I can’t wait for the next eight week T3 League competition to start back up in a few weeks….after the appropriate repairs are made to the range I assume….

-John