You guys (and gals) never cease to amaze me! We’ve had 65 - 72 shooters during the “questionable weather” months of Jan, Feb, and March…then a really nice weekend in April comes along and only 52 of you show up?? Well, you missed a really nice, low key and fun event with only ten or twelve shooter per squad it went pretty quickly… except for Poo Bah’s squad, I guess they spend more time talking than shooting? So the next Match is May 6th and the weather should be good, I guess I’ll have to wait and see how many of you come out for a nice “not too hot and not too cold” day in May….

The one thing you did miss was the “Grand Poo-Bah School of Volunteering” lesson…you see Wayne got the new storage trailer all set up and in place all by himself over the past couple of weeks without any help. But we had lots of stuff in the old trailer that needed to be moved to the new trailer and he was smart enough not to do that all by himself as well. Sooo, at the end of the shooters meeting before we actually started the match he simply asked “for a few volunteers” to help move the stuff…(and the match would not start until it was done!) The “volunteer spirit” was higher than I have ever seen it, everybody there happily pitched in, grabbed something and we had the whole trailer filled in about 10 minutes…. Thanks everybody for your help!

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

California Cup – The California State IDPA Championship is in Richmond CA July 6-8. The website is http://www.californiacup-idpa.com/. Jim Griffiths is the Match Director and you can reach him at (510) 329-1139 for more information about shooting. All the staff positions are now filled but I think the “discounted entry” deadline is still open.

Practice Targets – I know, who actually practices…you just come and shoot once a month, RIGHT? Well, if you do actually practice, Wayne Bandy had some new designs for some steel targets and target holders than are easy to fold up and put in your car to take to your local practice spot. I’m sure he will have them set up at the next match as well, so stop by and have a look. The more you practice, the sooner you can get that next classification, you did sign up for the classifier, didn’t you?

April 1 2007 SDPS Match Summary

No, it wasn’t “April Fools”…we really did have a match and Mark Hickson was the MD and Dan Brand the assistant MD.

The stages didn’t have all the mechanical bells and whistles of the past couple of months, just good straight forward simple stages that were fun to shoot. Stage 1 was an ATM scenario, Stage 2 a Bank Teller scenario, Stage 3 was “Dogs in the Park”, Stage 4 was a Long Range Drill with a barrier and various hard cover targets, and Stage 5 was “1-Handed Poker”.

Again this month we had 3 class Champions that repeated; Chad Case won SSP with a 61.65 (18), Wayne Johnson won CDP with a 74.64 (14), and Ken Kuch won SSP again with a 167.21 (17) [hey, I didn’t think we were going to let unclassified win?]. New class winners this month were Gayle Morse in ESP with a 70.16 (15) and the ESR winner was Brian Goodnight with a 155.65 (59).

Best stage scores were:

The “Fantasy Shooter’s” score for the match would have been 56.02 down 9. Chad was closest with 61.65 (18). But the thing that sort of “jumped out” at me while crunching the fantasy score numbers was that Gayle Morse was not the fastest on any stage, but he won ESP with a very nice 70.61 and beat everyone but Chad. John Prall was fastest on two stages, but ended up second in ESP Expert with a 76.14… just points out again that consistency is key to good scores, and that takes practice to achieve.

Stage of the Month

This month I am giving the stage of the month award to Stage 3 – Dogs in the Park. It was not really “mechanically complex” like some of the previous winners, but the use of two small poppers hiding behind two large poppers was very creative. And when you shot it, you had to make the decision about whether it was better to hit the front popper and wait for the rear to appear, or whether it was faster to shoot left, move right, then left, then right to engage all four targets. How did you shoot it? How would you do it next time?

Hopefully the weather will be beautiful for the May 6th match and we can get some more of our lady shooters back out to the range???

Till we shoot again…..
Bob