Psychological warfare while shooting

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Ivan the Butcher

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Psychological warfare while shooting for fun and profit.

At our club, Wednesday is Skeet day. I enjoy busting some birds with the guys. I usually shoot 28 or 410 and a 22 is a good score for me. One of the new guys was feeling his oats and just beating the snot out of everybody. That is OK with most of us, but when you start getting cocky and poking fun at other's expense:

I noticed he had but wasn't using a Browning Superpose Dinia grade skeet model. I mentioned on station 3 that a couple of Columbus cops did security for us, and they mentioned there had been a break-in with a bunch of guns stolen about a month before. By golly, he dropped a bird. At station 5, I mentioned I had a Superpose Lightning that I loved for Sporting Clays, and if it got stolen like that poor sucker's had I would be so upset! Dropped another bird! At station 6 I mentioned that the cops had recovered most of the stolen collection, but the thieves had intended to keep the Superpose for themselves. They had sawed off the barrels to around 14" and chopped the buttstock into a crude pistol grip! Everybody dropped at least one bird on that station!

One of the more avid skeet shooters came up to me later and said he knew what I did, and begged for NO MORE STOYRIES during shooting!

Different time, different sport (kind of):

It was early Spring and a beautiful day for Sporting Clays. My wife makes my shooting shirts and had made 3 for my birthday all long sleaved. She had wanted to know what colors I wanted? I said I really wanted a Hawaiian Shooting Shirt. Well she made a Blue Jean shirt, a Tan Shirt, and a very special shirt. When I first saw it my thoughts were, "I can never be seen in this thing!" Then Psy Opps entered my mind! So on this glorious day I wore it under my Filson shooting coat. During the morning it was kind of chilly and no one thought anything about my staying bundled up. On the last squad of the day, I was with my brother and 4 of my closer friends from the club. Going into the 6th station three of us were tied for the lead! I knew, if I run these 6 birds I can shoot clean for the rest of the course! But nobody want to strive for "Tied for First"! So I was the second shooter and as the first up had 4/6 I knew ONE DOWN! As I stepped up to the box I unbuttoned the Filson and took it off. My brand new custom made shooting shirt in all its glory! Covered in bouquets of tiny pink and baby-blue flowers on a mild yellow background. The cuffs, collar, and shooting pad were in a matching baby blue! First there was a collective gasp closely followed by an outburst of deep belly laughs. I stepped in the box call my first True Pair, fired and doubled them, as quick as I could reload I called the second True Pair and doubled them also. Fast reload and call, BLAM and number 5 & 6 nothing but a black smudge in the air! Everybody was distracted and laughing, None were thinking straight and all dropped birds. I won! Frilly shirt and all! The shirt doesn't get worn a lot. But If I go shooting Sporting Clays on my birthday I always where it!

Different time way different sport:

A group of the guys are a Rayner's Rainge in southern Ohio to shoot long distance steel plates. 234 yards out to 1035. This is the second shoot of the season: A hot clear bright sunny day! After a few stations the squad ahead of us has a large crowd gathered around. One of the guys brought a new shooter. A nicely built young lady shooting her boyfriend's back-up rifle in 6 or 6.5 Creedmoor. But due to the sun and heat she had removed the long and bulky sweatshirt. She had on Daisy Dukes and look good in them. When It was her turn to take the firing line she assumed the prone position. This caused the Daisy Dukes to ride up another one and a half inches! At the crease where butt cheek meets the leg was a tat-too on each side of a pretty blue bow! She was gift wrapped for us! All the guys under 50 had their jaws hanging to the ground. A few of us more seasoned gentleman understood that this was a very intentional Show & Tell! and by and large ignored it! I managed to shoot that station clean (810 and 930 yards 3 shots each on 8" circles) but nobody without grey hair shot clean, except her boyfriend, OF COURSE! Wish I had thought of that one.

Please share your tale of Psychological Warfare for fun and profit!

Ivan
 
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I have to wonder if the young lady in post 1/3 actually had the tattoo or had a temporary one for special occasions. OTOH, everyone's seen at least one tattoo where you wondered what the wearer had been thinking at the time.

I only resorted to that sort of thing once and it was when I still played golf. Neither of us distinguished themselves on the first hole. While addressing the ball on the tee for #2 I paused, looked at the other guy and asked if breathed in or out on the backswing. He didn't know. But he thought about it for the rest of the round:)
 
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One breezy day on the PPC course, I stood upwind and on the buzzer, shoot 12 rounds in the required 25 seconds. But instead of Bullseye, I had loaded those with black powder. By shot 3 or 4 it was difficult for most of the line to see the targets. By my 12 shot, everyone was laughing.

And the good thing, the top shooters still shot in the top. I swear some of them had radar vision.

Kevin
 
WR Moore said:
I have to wonder if the young lady in post 1/3 actually had the tattoo or had a temporary one for special occasions. OTOH, everyone's seen at least one tattoo where you wondered what the wearer had been thinking at the time. :)
Click to expand...

That was a subject of great discussion for a number of weeks! We think they were rub-ons! or at least some of us thought so.

Ivan
 
During a Territorial muzzle loading match if you talk on the line too much or too loud you will be asked to hold it down once, after that asked to leave. No trash talking is allowed, some of those guys travel thousands of miles and take it very serious.
Our local club has a monthly organized competition, we are fairly loose and trash talking your buddies is the norm. One of the newer guys was on the pistol line and non shooters were jabbering away, he complained and got the proper result, we leave them alone and let them shoot in peace. Its only right...If my buddies didn't give me a ration of **** while I'm shooting I figure I must have stepped on someone's toe. One of the things we frown on is standing behind a shooter looking through his spotting scope and saying stuff like "Oh your not going to like that one." I don't want anyone near my scope, if so keep your mouth shut. We flip each other the bird on the line, blow a kiss, everything but slip an ice cube down a buddies butt crack.
Muzzle loading is fun, but some guys do take it seriously and you have to know how far to push them to be fair. The guy on the pistol line is one of the finest pistol shooters I've ever seen, usually winning the match hands down...serious young guy, leave him alone.
 
StrawHat said:
One breezy day on the PPC course, I stood upwind and on the buzzer, shoot 12 rounds in the required 25 seconds. But instead of Bullseye, I had loaded those with black powder. By shot 3 or 4 it was difficult for most of the line to see the targets. By my 12 shot, everyone was laughing.
Click to expand...

I would shoot Black powder all brass shells at our "Vintage" Sporting Clays Shoots. The problem was the scoring person was busy watching the smoke clouds instead of the birds breaking!

I remember a guy at Trap Championship shoot off switching to his 1899 Parker Damascus 12 Gauge with paper BP shells. The clouds and noise level had all the other finalists unnerved. It was over in one set he had 25 and nobody else had over 22, even though they broke hundreds straight to get in the shoot-off!

In Cowboy Action, my best friend had mispacked his ammo for the day's shoot and had smokeless and BP 45 Colt rounds mixed. The Timer is often the RANGE SAFETY OFFICER, and my friend had to restart several times and the RSO was a nervous wreck from the changes in noise level (two questions jump out at you, 1] did a gun blow up? then 2] was that a squib load?)

If you don't mind the clean-up Black Powder in a 1911 really freaks people out too!

Ivan
 
My brother is my favorite shooting partner, and generally is a bird or 2 ahead on score. So, to me, he is the only person I NEED to beat. We were shooting Sporting Clays at Richland County Fish and Game. They only have a few shoots a year, and we treat them as The Treasurers they really are. They always have some of the most amazing presentations you have ever seen. One outing they had a trapper in a valley and the shooting box is on the ridge. 3 True Pairs R to L. The birds climb out of the valley an sail past you at eye level, if you hesitate, they dive for the valley floor like demons! I was first shooter and had cleared all 3 pairs in 4 shots, There was a shooter between my brother and I, so I returned to the bench and sat next to him. As he walked to the box I dropped 4 shells into the top of his shell bag. These were a blue Rottwile hull sized and W209 primed. A 28 gauge charge of powder with a card over it. And a glob of feathers from an old pillow a little bigger than a softball stuffed in carefully, another card and 5/8 ounce of shot, crimp normal and all is well! How he missed having the first shot as one of the special loads, but he hit the first pair with one shot (doubled). The second pair were the "Feather Heavy" loads! They made a cloud of feathers as big as a small building! Everybody started screaming he hit a live bird and made shoot that pair over, He doubled the reshoot with a regular shell and loaded for his third pair. Both shells were the Feather Heavy loads! He actually hit both birds with one shot each, and then my goose was cooked! But how I love it when a plan comes together!

On days when every thing that can goes wrong, is a good time to prank people you know!

My brother had been working very hard to loose 15 or 20 pounds and his pant were pretty much falling off. When he stepped into the box, another "Friend" snuck up behind him and when he called "Pull", the pants went to half-mast. I was a good 30 feet away so I didn't catch any blame for that one!

Oh, what fond memories!

Ivan
 
s&wchad said:
I've shot with a top level skeet champion. He ran a State DNR range and was a Kreighoff dealer, but lost both.

When others were shooting, he'd rattle the shells in his pocket to distract them. So much for sportsmanship... :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I don't golf, but is that like "sneezing" when a guy is putting for a birdie?
I don't think I would mess with someone when they're shooting. Not that they would turn the gun on me, but later in the clubhouse when the alcohol flows...
 
During several LE instructor's schools at a certain point in the course, those not shooting were encouraged to harass those shooting. This included throwing light weight things. Empty shell casings were suggested. I dimly recall getting noticeably thumped only twice. One was an empty case that hit the back of my head just as the trigger broke, the other turned out to have been a loaded 12 gauge that got me in the back.

However, the epitome of verbal abuse was at a school on the Calvin E. Lloyd range at Quantico. The Force Recon types really piled it on. I was deep in the bubble and really didn't hear them.
 
When I was still an active LEO we typically shot twice a year. One shoot was the state mandated qualification course and it was an all business affair, no horseplay tolerated. The second shoot of the year was more relaxed, showing new shooting techniques, shooting from different awkward positions, scenarios etc. It became standard for the range officers to pick on certain better shooters to be targeted for "distractions". Empty brass thrown at your head, verbal abuse and when lying prone, having your feet kicked just as you took the shot were the most common.
 
I'm a handgun guy and at the time had nearly no distance rifle experience, I'm talking with bullet drop and sight adjustments, etc. My buddy had been learning from a guy who was somewhat active on our local state-based grassroots pro-gun discussion forum and he was an old salt with lots of knowledge and experience and a gruff exterior and he and I had knocked heads a couple of times in discussions on the forum. So when I walked up to them on the range and introduced myself and also mentioned my forum name, his reply was something on the order of "yeah I know who you are" and it wasn't much friendly but I also kind of felt that I was familiar with how forum posts/interactions and real life are two different things so I was sure not to write him off as a curmudgeon (on the forum, he was the definition of curmudgeon.)

I sat down with the rig I had brought -- T/C Contender, Super 14 in .223 Rem with Bushnell 2-6x and my own 55gr handloads. I was shooting at my buddy's steel down range at 100 yards and making hits.

Jim was the old salt and he approached me and it seemed he was gonna call me out and test me, he wanted me to hit some distance targets already. I admitted straight away that I was a handgun guy (10-25 yards I mean!) and that I was absolutely in the dark with distance stuff and sight adjustments and Jim said he would get my sights where they needed to be but only if I could do my part and the way he laid this out, he was not "asking" for my participation, he was telling me what we were gonna do.

I have no problem whatsoever giving respect to my elders and especially so when my elders know what they're doing and I'm green at it! ;)

Jim had me shoot at 100 and asked me the bullet weight and then told me to shoot his 200 yard plate while he watched through his own spotting scope. Then he saw where my shots landed and told me how many clicks to make some changes and then he threw down the gauntlet.

"Now you shoot my 300 yard plate and you're buying lunch if you miss it" and as funny as I found these very serious commands, I simply signed on to the task as if this gentleman actually WERE in command. And I took my time and I remembered my smallbore coach in high school and the things he taught me about marksmanship and all eyes were on me for that one fateful shot in this challenge that I never asked for and not sure I deserved to have thrown at me.



I made the shot and I requested the picture because I was quite happy about WHERE on Jim's plate I managed to land the fateful shot. It was smiles all around and perhaps the most enjoyable part was that indeed we did discuss it that same evening in forum posts and everyone enjoyed that episode including Jim.

"Shooterwolf", I hope you are well, that was a great day and I won't ever forget your help and instruction to get there and make that shot. :D
 
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