Lower Providence USPSA Shooting – Stage 2

As the day went on, the sky became a little less gloomy and spirits seemed to brighten. The standing water on a variety of the stages was getting tracked out and drying. For a minute or two, the sun shone through the clouds and it looked like we might catch a break at the end of the day.

The Plan:

I was feeling loose and ready to shoot Stage 2 when a misunderstanding of the rules made me a little timid. I wasn’t aware that any target that disappears, and can no longer be shot, is classified as a disappearing target and any misses on that target incur no penalty.

Not knowing this, I approached the stage with an overly safe plan of attack. I would engage the IPSC Metric targets around the humongous faux cactus then transition to the steel popper. When the steel fell it would activate a disappearing target. I wanted to shoot that target last to give me plenty of time to put two rounds on the paper target before it was gone.

The Execution:

When the buzzer sounded, I drew my gun and executed my stage plan. After hitting the steel popper, it felt like I was waiting forever for the disappearing paper to become visible. I put two quick rounds on it to close out the stage.

Had I taken the time to ask about the disappearing target and known that any misses wouldn’t hurt me, I would have shot the stage differently. I probably would have shot the steel popper first, then transitioned to the paper around the cactus. If I hustled, I could put rounds on target and get at least one shot off on the disappearing target.

As they say, hindsight is 20/20.

The Results

In a time of 5.61 seconds, I shot 5 A’s and 1 C. I scored 28 of a possible 35 points and had a Hit Factor of 4.9911. Even though I felt like my time was slow, mainly due to waiting for the popper to activate the disappearing target, I came away with 8th place in Production Division.