I have been interested in competitive shooting for quite some time now, and finally found time in my schedule to give it a try. It was a falling plate match, 22 caliber only, and I figured it was probably a good place to jump into the world of competitive shooting rather than just signing up for IDPA.The match setup was fairly straight forward, there were to be 5 practice rounds to judge ability, and then each shooter was placed into one of three classes, A, B, and C for the actual competition portion of the match. The competition portion was man on man, triple elimination, to give everyone a fair chance at victory.

I went into the match at a slight disadvantage: I had never shot falling plates before, a very different experience than shooting paper targets, and I had opted to mount up and shoot with a red dot sight, something I was also not accustomed to. My gun of choice for the match was my SW22 Victory to which I fitted an older Tasco red dot sight that I borrowed off of a rifle I seldom shoot. After mounting the sight, I used a laser boresighter to get it as close as possible, and had plans to take it to the range to give it a proper zeroing, but did not get a chance to before the match.

During the practice rounds I shot very poorly only managing to beat my opponent once. Every other practice round I managed to only hit between 3 and 5 out of six plates. I had a hard time sighting the gun owing mostly to a lack of experience with the red dot. If the range had a designated safe work area, I probably would have swapped the red dot for iron sights after the first practice round. However not given this opportunity, I continued with the red dot as is. In the spirit of good sportsmanship, I was given I a lot of great advice from the more seasoned shooters, which served to help me improve my sighting and technique. The most important advice I was given was to keep both eyes open when shooting with the red dot, and I saw a dramatic improvement once I forced myself to do so.

Something else that I found to be hindering my performance was that the rail on my Victory managed to work itself loose, due to under tightening the screw when I put it on the first time. At the break between practice rounds and the match, I was allowed to work on my gun and tighten everything up at one of the shooting benches. The RO was even nice enough to allow me to take a practice shot to make sure that the red dot was still on target, and it was.

Unsurprisingly, I ended up classified in C class for the match, and vowed to do my best, though expected to be eliminated fairly quickly. However, on my first time up to shoot I made another change to my technique, and it proved to be very successful: Instead of bringing the gun up from the rest position to meet my eye, I would focus on the dot in my sight in the rest position and follow the dot to the first plate, and try not to lose my focus on the dot as I moved down the line of plates.

My match experience proved to be 180 degrees the opposite from my practice rounds, ending in victory in every round, and taking the win for C class. My ammo expenditure averaged 7 to 8 rounds per match round, with only one round requiring a magazine change to finish the last plate. My shooting improved greatly with every round shot, and I anticipate making it into B class for the next match.

All in all I had a great time, met some wonderful people, and found a fun new facet to shooting that definitely beats shooting static paper targets all the time. The match organizers have invited me back next weekend to observe at the IDPA classifier, something that I hope to get signed up for come this January.

Hi Mainegrw:

I introduced my son (he's now 19 yrs. old) to handguns and competition through steel plate shoots when he was 13 yrs. old. We had a blast shooting my box stock Ruger Mk-II Target pistol. We entered our first match cold - no experience except shooting paper targets at a fixed distance range. Just before he was going on-deck to shoot, a lady with a high-speed competition rig, and tricked out handgun walked by him, looked at our Ruger and said: "Oh, what a cute little shiny gun." I told my son to ignore distractions and to concentrate on the basics - sight alignment, trigger press, breathing, and follow-through. Both of us ended up in the top 5, and Miss Fancy Rig was far down the pack.

Falling plates are a lot of fun, but if you can find a steel plate match, I think you'll have a lot more fun, and your skills will probably improve faster.

Good luck, be safe, and have fun.

Regards,

Dave

I used to shoot falling plates and have a plate machine. Some of the better shooters that used red dot sights put me on to a trick they used, they turned the filter to black and shot with both eyes open, the red dot will show on the plates and it did seem faster to me. Jeff

Glad to hear you had a good time. Steel matches are fun.

As you found, shooting with both eyes open is a good thing. As to following the dot up to the first plate, that, at first seems like a good idea but you'll find it just makes you slow. You want to start looking at the first plate (or whatever your first target is) and bring the gun up into your line of sight. It's not easy at first but is faster after you've had a chance to do it a while.

Following the dot up is just something you'll have to un-learn...

Time from the beep to your first shot is critical (and an easy place to gain or lose time on your competition) and it really shows up shooting man on man.

Nothing like some competition to work the bugs out and refine techniques. All these years later, and I still try to learn a little something at each match.