Dear Internet,

Thank you for putting up with my shenanigans at the event. I like events where I get to see human suffering, failure, and lessons being learned. I personally finished towards the bottom of the pack, and had a bunch of lessons as well. I’ll be applying them as I go, to better myself for future events, and I hope you will too.

I saw a lot of great footwork, weapons manipulation, and shooting this weekend. I saw a lot of shitty things as well. The good news is no one got shot, and we can all get better at this.

I loved seeing the costumes and gear, cosplay and unique shit. I don’t play gun pokemon, so most of it was over my head, but it’s always interesting.

Event staff was fantastic, and I’m looking forward to working with Forgotten Weapons and SinistralRifleman, as well as the Southern Utah Practical Shooting Range (SUPSR) staff again at future events. Meeting a mess of gunnitors and arfcommers that I knew from the internet and now know IRL is awesome, as always.

As MOA Targets, I sponsored Stage 2 and had targets on the vendor range for the weekend. Stage 2 had three MINIMO targets provided by me, as well as a polish plate rack, texas star, and standard plate rack owned by SUPSR. This stage crushed most people. About 85% of people parred out on it, and many never got to the rifle portion, which was the last plate rack.

I derive my life force from human suffering, and am well on my way to being immortal. I served as Range Officer at this stage Friday for the staff runs, and then watched and often filmed the competitors during the event. For those who watched the live stream, you got to see me yell generally helpful but obnoxious advice like “quit missing” “you’re low” “slow the fuck down”. For those who didn’t, you can find it on the MOA FB page. For those who don’t care, carry on.

I’ll be working on cutting video in the next few weeks. It was very cool how many people came up to me after their runs cracking up and thanking me for my advice. I always enjoy seeing people figure out what they are doing wrong mid flow and picking up and doing well. There was one guy who asked the collective peanut gallery to “SHUT THE FUCK UP” during his run, we did, he still sucked. For the record, the briefing by Karl at the start of the event made it clear that coaching, encouragement, ribbing, and peanut gallery is encouraged at this event, with the note of “shut the fuck up” if the runner asks for it.

On a technical basis, the MINIMOs worked correctly for the event, and the SUPSR guys were impressed enough to ask to buy the demo units after the match. Lucky for them, the three units on the range were my donation as Sponsor, and I cut them a pretty sweet deal on one more so they have four. Look for those targets in future matches.

I learned a lot about my gear, having run the match with a PCC as my rifle. The Colt mags I borrowed caused me some problems from overloading them (they don’t hold as many as the converted Uzi mags I usually use) which hosed my time on Stage 1, with 11 penalties. I also was carrying too much ammo (I competed in Armor +P, where you carry everything all the time) which was fucking heavy, ditto with water. My firearms worked great other than the mag related issues on my first stage. I need to practice shooting in armor and with a helmet more, the positioning is significantly different. I’m also fat and slow, so I’m working on that. Superstition Mystery Mountain 3gun is coming up in six weeks, and Cola Warrior West in seven. Time to put the pedal to the metal.