I shot the Steel Match at Marion County Fish and Game this weekend with my ParaUSA Gun Blog 9mm. I had been practicing reloads for a good chunk of the week, since I hadn’t been shooting in a while, and also because hitting the magazine well on a single stack 1911 isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do at speed. The short version of the story is that I felt like my reloads were pretty snappy, especially on the stage where you had three big steel gongs at about 11 yards, and you had to shoot each gong six times with a mandatory reload inbetween – a minimum of 18 rounds and two reloads. I had to shoot 19 rounds because I missed on on the last gong, but I got them all out and the reloads in about 12 seconds…so like I said, I felt good about my reloads.
Yesterday, I was doing reloads with the Para 16-40 Limited for practice, and let me tell you – after a week of reloading that single stack 9mm and shooting it in competition, trying to hit that big ol’ doublestack magazine well on the .40 is like trying to hit the Grand Canyon with a rock. Which is to say – pretty easy.
And that brings me around to Cool Thing I found today on Wilson Combat: a magazine funnel that attaches using the grip screws and requires no modification to the pistol. I suppose “found” is the wrong word, since I read about it in Bill Wilson’s book, and was interested to see if it was an item they still catalouged. I’m happy to see that they do.
I’ve got one of the WC funnels on my carry Springfield. Love it!
If you don’t already have it, their #31T extended mag release is also a winner. Not too long (and not a button) so it doesn’t accidentally release the mag when you put it in the holster, but long enough I don’t have to adjust my grip to hit it. Drop in part.
In our area, our local shooter’s Meetup.com group held an “Intro to IDPA” course in Greenville, Texas last Saturday, about 2 hours from where I live in Denton, Texas. Our instructor was an experienced IDPA competition shooter himself. After going over the rules and safety procedures, we first observed more experienced shooters run through various scenarios, then tried some scenarios ourselves, starting simple and working our way to more complex ones, finishing up with shooting steel plates. It was WAY more fun than regular target shooting, and my first ever exposure to IDPA. I’ve been told there will be an IDPA match range opening just north of Denton in Spring 2009, so I definitely want to check that out.
For the intro class I used my CZ-75B in .40 S&W and also my Glock 23. Since Rick (our instructor) told is IDPA doesn’t allow laser sights, in the spirit of good sportsmanship (even though it was just a training class), I mostly stuck to using my CZ. Only at the end, with the steel plates, did I switch over to my Glock 23, for which i have three 13 round mags. I knocked all the plates down, but sad to say I took all 39 shots to do it (plus a little coaching from the peanut gallery) I was having a hard time knocking down the last plate; sight picture looked ok to me, but I kept missing–’til someone yelled out “LEFT!”, i.e. your shots are landing to the left of the target. I shifted right slightly and fired–PING! the plate went down, and my slide locked back as that was my last shot. I definitely need more practice.
I will still do regular target shooting, but I look forward to more local IDPA events now, too.