This competition is a blast. Next year, I am going to shoot it. It is an interesting combination of normal precision shooting with both bolt gun and semi-auto, shooting from unsupported positions with both, and some handgun shooting. The focus is still on stuff that requires good precision, but it does require a lot of versatility, thinking outside the box and team communication.
Simply watching people shoot was very illuminating. Field stages are long rifle only. Assault stages is where things get creative.
Each team has two shooters. One carries a bolt gun and a handgun. The other carries a semi-auto carbine and a handgun.
For example, there was one stage where the first shooter has to shoot several plates with a handgun. The plates are far enough where you need to know what you are doing. I tried it with my carry gun (G43x) and struggled a little. Watching other people shoot at these with full size handguns made me feel a little less bad about myself. When a pistol shooter missed a target, his teammate had to shoot a hanging plate 250 yards away with whichever long gun he happens to have. 250 yards is not very far, except you are not allowed to use tripods and can not sit or go prone. You can get on one knee, but nothing else is supposed to touch the ground.
The people who had triple pull Ckye bipod did not have any issues there. Here is a picture with Dorgan settng up to make it look easy:
If you do not have a tall-ass bipod... you improvise. Here is one of the more creative methods I saw. It looks odd, but beats the hell out of doing this unsupported.
After they were all done, we shot a little at that 250 yard plate. My kids shot it prone and made quick work of it. I shot it unsupported and only connected on the third shot. I suspect that doing this on the clock would make things worse.
On long rifle stages, pretty much everyone was shooting off of tripods, some kneeling, some standing. I think many people unutilized the gear they had and completely forgot that it is a team event where they can use their teammates gear as well (they shoot one at a time). The whole team aspect makes it even more interesting.
I spent even more time with the Signature LRF bino. I like it. It is going onto my list of recommendations. https://shrsl.com/4kzs1 10x42 is not my favourite configuration, but it works well enough. User interface is quite familiar. All I need from it is to give me the LOS distance and horizontal distance, which it easily does. Ranging worked pretty well to a bit beyond 2000 yards. It is probably more along th elines 1000-1200 yards on a deer though. That's plenty for my purposes. The binocular is easy to hold. Rubber coating is just right in terms of giving me a secure hold without getting too sticky. Collimation quality is good, since I did not have any real eye fatigue to worry about. Focus wheel is not showing any apparent hysteresis.
I also shot a bit with a handgun that had Burris' new Fastfire C red dot. https://alnk.to/cSHEuuf It is a RMSc pattern sight with a 6MOA dot. You can either run it in a manual mode or in an autoadjust moode (my preference). One the Burris guys had a G43x similar to mine excpet with the Fastfire C. My G43x wears Crimson Trace's Rad Micro (I am wrapping up with a lng term test). Rad Micro has worked well for me, but in terms of sight picture and dot quality, I have to admit the Fastfire C is a better sight. Between these two, the only reason to go with CT would be if you have a preference for green dots https://alnk.to/6TzT8NE
There was a lot more to observe and tomorrow I'll head out to other stages and do some more shooting when the competitors are done.
