No-Shoot Practice

Just for grins, this week's range session was devoted to "no-shoots." We often joke that the no-shoot targets are bullet magnets. And I seem to hit my fair share of them, so I decided to practice not hitting them. Stated more accurately, I decided to practice hitting the smaller scoring area, as opposed to missing the white no-shoots. As my friend Alex says, "What no-shoots? All I see are alphas ..."

The "before" picture.

Covering two targets as commonly seen in USPSA, I was able to work on a wide variety of scenarios to simulate situations I might encounter in matches. Even with this simple setup, there was practically an unlimited ways to shoot the targets, and I tried to change it up after each magazine. Draw and put 2 hits on each, alternating which target was shot first. Sometimes I would put just one shot on a target, and transition repeatedly back and forth. Changing whether I stood lined up on the left of right target, or stood in the middle added even more variety. And, of course, the drills were done from different distances as well. This gave me a good feel for sight alignment and speed of the shots required for the different scenarios. I learned my preferences, and my weaknesses.

All in all it was a good practice session. Hopefully it was 200 rounds well-spent. This weekend's match will be a classifier match, so I expect I'll see similar situations to what I just practiced. What would be great is for these lessons to stick with me until then! :-)