I shot the Action Pistol Match last night in the May heat and managed to get two of the stages on video. I’m posting not because I’m a great shooter (I’m not, yet) but to show you that women do participate in these matches. On both Stages I have a female Range Safety Officer.

Lessons learned:

• Hold the camera vertically to film horizontally (old Flip camera we pass around).
• Stage 2: Don’t just start running with no clear destination in mind. If you can’t see the targets, pick a point on the floor to head for it. I overran the gap in the barrier and backed up to make my shot.
• Shooting a complicated stage can be easier the second time. I shot all of these stages on Monday of the previous week and Stage 1 took some time to figure out. Last night I shot 2nd, it was our last stage, we were all hot and tired, and we didn’t take as much time to plot strategy. I’d shot it before so I knew there were low, long shots from each corner. I split up the targets in set of 3: 3 from the initial gap, three from the left corner, a single at the right gap, and the last 3 from the right corner. For once I ran the stage as I intended. I’m still slow but all my shots were alpha or charlie (no penalty points for “alpha”, one penalty point for a “charlie”). No misses. I was very pleased with that.