What does it take to become a champion in the world of precision rifle shooting? Join us as we sit down with Matt Greenfield, the Pro 406 State Champion, who reveals his winning strategies and mindset that led him to victory in Lewistown, Montana. You'll get an insider's look at the unique setup of the competition, from the patriotic Pledge of Allegiance to the squad assignments, and hear Matt's initial reactions upon facing the challenging terrain and unpredictable wind conditions.
Listen as we explore the trials and triumphs of shooting in varied environments. Matt delves into the importance of visual cues like mirages and vegetation for making accurate wind calls, and the complexities of interpreting conflicting signals from wind flags. Gain a deeper understanding of how different ranges, from cowboy action setups to Utah cowboy towns, influence shooting techniques. Matt also shares a detailed breakdown of his award-winning gun setup, underscoring the precision and customization required for competitive success.
Get ready for an engaging discussion on the tactical decisions and mental focus needed in precision rifle shooting. Matt recounts his experiences on specific stages, including the demanding tire stage and the snake trap with moving targets. He emphasizes the role of muscle memory, equipment maintenance, and adapting techniques under pressure. Concluding with reflections on the camaraderie among the Montana shooting community and the thrill of competing, this episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about the art and sport of precision rifle shooting.
What does it take to become a champion in the world of precision rifle shooting? Join us as we sit down with Matt Greenfield, the Pro 406 State Champion, who reveals his winning strategies and mindset that led him to victory in Lewistown, Montana. You'll get an insider's look at the unique setup of the competition, from the patriotic Pledge of Allegiance to the squad assignments, and hear Matt's initial reactions upon facing the challenging terrain and unpredictable wind conditions.
Listen as we explore the trials and triumphs of shooting in varied environments. Matt delves into the importance of visual cues like mirages and vegetation for making accurate wind calls, and the complexities of interpreting conflicting signals from wind flags. Gain a deeper understanding of how different ranges, from cowboy action setups to Utah cowboy towns, influence shooting techniques. Matt also shares a detailed breakdown of his award-winning gun setup, underscoring the precision and customization required for competitive success.
Get ready for an engaging discussion on the tactical decisions and mental focus needed in precision rifle shooting. Matt recounts his experiences on specific stages, including the demanding tire stage and the snake trap with moving targets. He emphasizes the role of muscle memory, equipment maintenance, and adapting techniques under pressure. Concluding with reflections on the camaraderie among the Montana shooting community and the thrill of competing, this episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about the art and sport of precision rifle shooting.
Hey guys, welcome back to the PXP podcast. This is your host, zach Wallace, and today we're going to be interviewing a good buddy of mine, matt Greenfield. He is a local competitor shooter here for the Pro 406 Series and recently, within the past couple weeks, he just won the Pro 406 State Championship and we're going to do an interview today with him, going over all the details as far as his thoughts on the match uh, wind, terrain, his gun setup, and then we're going to be going over stage by stage and how it looked and uh, how he took home that first place. So hope you guys enjoyed the episode and uh, listen in and uh enjoy it. Welcome, matt. How are you buddy?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great, Zach. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely um. How's the day, how's the week?
Speaker 2:oh, it's good. Yeah, you know, uh always fun to win. Yeah, um, you know it always feels good coming off. You know, off the match, and of course there's always another match on the horizon that you're getting ready for the next one absolutely man training lots and getting on the range and just enjoying this uh nice spring Montana weather right now.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean, this was such a nice match to shoot and I shot a Lewiston match, like two years ago, and it's just this time of year. Lewiston is gorgeous, it's green. Yeah, I love shooting this time of year.
Speaker 1:Awesome man, I'm excited for you. That is freaking awesome. Taking home a first place at the montana, the pro uh 406 uh championship, that's, that's just yeah. Can't get any better than that, dude. Good work. Um, well, let's get into it. Dude, I'm excited to hear about this match. I uh, I refrained myself from calling and asking questions, um, because I just I want this to be the first time that I hear it, so I haven't shot and it was in lewistown, right yeah, so this was in lewistown and this is, this is my best match performance, this is my best win.
Speaker 2:um, so about 40 shooters overall, uh, across across several clubs from Montana, so Billings, great Falls, lewistown, poplar and Rundyke, I think, is where the other match, the other club, is, and so that was the kind of group of shooters that we were at and, yeah, we, it was a, it was great, weather was good. You know a little bit, a little bit of a twitchy wind. We had a kind of a six o'clock for a lot of it where it's kind of behind you, so you had to had to stay on top of that.
Speaker 1:What was the? What was the very first thing that you thought when you got there, like have you shot?
Speaker 2:there before this. I've shot there one other time. I shot there two years ago when the Precision Room for Outlaws was kind of in its more infancy then and that was the whole series back then and there was about the same number of shooters as now we just have in the state, and so it had a lot of similarities to that match in a lot of ways. That weather wise.
Speaker 1:And, of course, it's the same range and that's awesome. What was your overall first thoughts when you got there? How did you feel as far as the amount of shooters that you saw?
Speaker 2:Um did did, they do a stage brief like normal where they go over all the stages and stuff. Yeah, yeah. So they kind of did their. You know the normal routine. If you've been to a match, kind of know the deal where they talk about some stuff to get you your match books and we'll go through a safety brief. Lewistown always does the Pledge of Allegiance, which is fun. It's cool to see that kind of the patriotism and things like that come out of that. So that was cool. I broke off into our squads. I was in squad five with shane scott and and some of the normal guys that I get to shoot with, but I don't normally get to shoot with all those guys in the same squad normally. You know kind of broke up and so that was fun. It was really fun to to kind of be with the billing shooters that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that poor group of guys I heard billings just tore it up too yeah, I think we were.
Speaker 2:You know we're definitely of the montana clubs. We've got probably the the deepest talent pool. Um, you know, there's a couple of guys in montana that that weren't there normally, like tyson smith, uh, wasn't able to make it there and um, and you weren't there. So there's a couple of guys that were kind of that top end of things. Um, that you know, you know, might it might have have normally been mixing it up there at the top two. You know my goal going into it was to be top A class. That was where I wanted to be Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So I knew that I had to beat Cole Metz to get that done. It was really the guy that I knew I had to beat Cole Metz I had to beat. You know, the normal Billings guys. You know Anthony and Jake and Shane and some of those guys.
Speaker 1:That's great. Man, that's great. It sounds like it was a good pool of good shooters there and just an overall awesome time. How was the terrain?
Speaker 2:Describe the terrain when you get there so our listeners can kind of paint a picture. Yeah, so it sounds kind of interesting that there's there is some. The range almost has kind of three levels to it. There's kind of three portions of the range. There's kind of an upper, middle and a lower, uh, square range is there. So there's a.
Speaker 2:But the upper section, uh, we were shooting kind of off the top of the hill down into kind of a draw down in there, but once again it was kind of more of a six o'clock and so the wind wasn't super predictable. And then on the lower two ranges you had kind of a square range that's kind of broke up, that goes up a ravine, and so the topography of that makes that a little bit interesting in the movement. But you're shooting from under the cover, like a lot of guys are used to, on a square range where you're shooting out of the awning so you're not getting wind on your face there at that middle section, the way that you do, up at the top end of the range and then at the bottom end of the range, and then at the bottom end of the range they've got kind of a cowboy action pistol setup down there. So it's real cool. They've got like a little mock jail and stuff that we shot out of there.
Speaker 2:There's a couple of walls in there too, and so that definitely changed some things. Because you're trying to figure out what the wind is going to do as you're shooting out alongside you know, this berm or a wall Well, okay, so we're going to be. We're going to be 30 yards out before the wind really hits this bullet and what's that really going to do to your? Your wind calls.
Speaker 1:It changes the whole game when you can't, you can't really feel the wind direction and you have to rely solely on sight. You know, know, and instead of instead of actually using your senses and looking around you really close, you have to. Pretty much reminds me of utah. We had the match in utah where, um, it was like this little cowboy town and in the middle of the cowboy town there's a bunch of buildings and stuff that look like an old western cowboy town. And you can't, and we're shooting like up, like at a I don't know, like a 20 or 30 degree angle up into the hills from inside of this jail and you can't feel the wind where you're at at all, and the I mean the only, the only thing that you have to rely on is, like I said, just your sight.
Speaker 2:So that makes it a lot more difficult yeah, there's some things about that that are tricky, and at the top end of the range you're shooting downhill from up top and and that's always fun, so you know to just kind of change that shooting angle. So there's some of that where you're really shooting downhill quite a ways, um, and then at the midsection, um and like on the long range stage, there we were shooting, you know, uphill, which definitely with these light 22 bullets makes a difference on some of those things. So that was that's always fun to have, that you know where we're. Generally speaking, you know a lot of your stuff is like a slight uphill, because it makes backdrops really easy, and so they've definitely got some more variance there than you might see at other places Interesting.
Speaker 1:So I haven't shot in Lewistown before, so it's a little bit more challenging than our typical Billings or Sheridan type of match. As far as terrain wise.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's just different. Like you say it's, you're trying to make a wind call based on what you're seeing, um, instead of less on what you're you're feeling. Yeah, so I think it. It forces you to pay attention to mirage and and what vegetation is doing. And they do have some wind flags down there, you know, because it's a pretty active use range. It's not like we're just out in the middle of nowhere. So there are, you know, there are a few wind flags out there on their square range places, so you can look out there and see what those flags are doing Super helpful. But then trying to translate that into, okay, based on what that flag is doing, that might not be exactly where you're shooting, but at least it's downrange. What does that really dictate and how does that translate on target?
Speaker 1:That reminds me of Wyoming when Shane and I went down to Compound 21 for that match up top, and it was in the woods. It was really cool. That range is phenomenal. I I actually absolutely loved, loved how that range was set up. But they would have on one of the one of the stages there was a barbed wire fence going like directly from our left all the way down the course in like every five poles. They had a wind and it was crazy to see that the wind flag down at the 250-yard target was blowing right to left and then the flag halfway down was blowing like left to right and then the flag at my location was blowing right to left and you're like, oh my God, like okay, well, two of the three agree with each other, so let's just roll with that one. Yeah, that's awesome, cool man no, I had.
Speaker 2:I had one point where I'm looking at mirage and it's, it's going left to right and I've got a six o'clock definitely pushing on my back as I'm standing at my tripod and I'm looking at like a um, it was like a bag caught in a barbed wire fence, out like 300, 400 yards in front of us and it's and it's coming right back at me, you know. It's like okay, you know. So what do we? What do we have going on here? And so then you got to really pay attention and see if you can, if you can spot bullet, trace, you know.
Speaker 1:It's your next thing, like okay, you know, because I'm now, now I'm lost, you know oh, nothing like a good you know swag, nothing like a good swag call scientific wild ass gas. Right, that's cool man. We'll tell the shooter, tell the listeners, what's, what's your gun set up, what are you shooting for this match?
Speaker 2:Okay. So, um, what schools are? Uh? The Since room fire outlaws does an annual Sportsman of the Year award and I was awarded it last year. So my setup is pretty chic and I got to thank those guys for putting most of this together on that. So I have a Remex Action with a Proof 26-inch Contour Prefit on it, a TriggerTech Diamond. I have the single stage in that rifle. I use an AccuTac Wide Base 5 Arkham Out bipod and I have a Razor Gen 3, 6-36 Milrad on top of that. Awesome, that's my rifle. It hammers, it shoots great 6-36 mil rad on top of that. Awesome, that's my rifle. It hammers, shoots great. I was shooting Lapua long range on this match and then for support bags. My wife stitches those ones actually, but very similar to, like a game changer, a support bag that I ran on every stage that's great man, awesome setup for sure.
Speaker 1:Um god, no, I uh, when you said lapua long, at long range, I remember, uh remember, when I got my gun and I dove in down into this and saw you at, uh uh, the rotten gun club and you gave me a box sk match and I ran, ran that for a while the shit shoots good, I mean, it was shooting fine for me for the longest time. Then I finally switched over to the Lapua Long Range. But yeah, good stuff, all right, what were the environmentals like? You talked a little bit about a wind. You said you had like what a 6 o'clock wind. What was the temp like? What did the environmentals look like?
Speaker 2:so, um, it was overcast, um, around 50 degrees most of the day. So I shot most of the day in a sweatshirt, um, peel the sweatshirt off once or twice down to a t-shirt, um, towards the end of the day, because it was getting warmed up. Um, the winds were fairly stiff, I would say probably an average of about 12 miles an hour, and where you're at most of the range was in kind of a variable six o'clock um, so anywhere from from really a four o'clock to like an eight o'clock, but most of it was between that five and seven range at your back. So terrible, um.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, like, temperature wise, very pleasant, shooting wind wise, tricky yeah. And then, as you're shooting through these, these creek bottoms and gullies, uh, especially shooting from the uphill into the downhill sections at the top end of the course, um, those wind calls were tricky for sure. It was like, okay, what's going on? And a lot of that. You know you're trying to look and see what you think the other guys might be doing and then see which side of the plate that they're on and trying to read that.
Speaker 1:If they're missing, what side of the plate?
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, exactly Like, okay. So if I see two shooters in a row miss this target on the right side of the plate, um you know then, then maybe there's something that that none of us are picking up on out there at that, at that distance, yep exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got to really really pay attention and it's uh, yeah, it's tough being the first shooter of a stage and typically everybody is the first shooter of a stage, and typically everybody is the first shooter of at least one stage because we go through in order from, you know, one to eight or however many people are in it. And it's always tough when you get up to the stage that you're first on and you're like, oh man, okay, well, I'm the guinea pig here. I guess we'll see, especially if it's a six o'clock wind or, uh, you know, like a 6, 30 or a 7 and changing shooting angles, it can get tough. Yeah, um, so let me see you started. Uh, so you were squad. Uh, five, I'm assuming you started on stage five squad five, so we scored.
Speaker 2:Started on stage five the barricade, okay, the barricade.
Speaker 1:Yeah, run us through, man, run us through. Uh, your first stage of the day yeah.
Speaker 2:So this was kind of like the prs skills barricade as far as the shape of the barricade, real typical um, you know, big welded steel structure we're shooting, uh, out from underneath the awning at the square range, at the middle section of the course, and, um, you had five positions and a target at 100 yards and a target at 150. You had to alternate between those. Shane was going to tripod rear. It set his bag down, went to pull the tripod in and immediately ditched the tripod. You know the barricade was plenty stable. He didn't need very support for it and so when I got up to it I didn't bother using a tripod, though a lot of times times I would have done the same thing. I would have brought that tripod with me see if I needed it or not. Target size was decent sized, so you really didn't need it and the prop was just super stable.
Speaker 2:I dropped one shot on it and there was a wind flag that I could see out there and it and it did switch and and I went and I held the opposite side of the plate and I did drop one um on that stage and of course that was the time stage and things like that. It was your, your tiebreaker, so I shot a nine out of ten on it. Um, there's quite a few cleans on that one. That was my. That was my first stage and it was like well that wasn't.
Speaker 1:That wasn't horrible. Yeah, it's still good. Dropping one shot on, just one shot on any, any stages, phenomenal, super good. Uh, what'd you run for your bag?
Speaker 2:yeah, so I just ran a single support bag up front. That was my game changer. Uh, clone bay, that that I'm running. Um, I didn't run a pump pillow or anything like that.
Speaker 1:Okay, and it's like a typical PRS barricade looking thing Yep, yeah, okay, yeah. Skill stage yep, awesome. How many targets was there again?
Speaker 2:Two targets Two targets One at 100 and one at 150. Okay, and so you had five positions, so you'd shoot the close one and the far one. Move positions close and then far.
Speaker 1:Did you dial or did you hold? I did dial, so there was plenty of time to dial.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it was a two-minute stage. You had lots of time, you know, and I wasn't really worried about time on this one. I was trying to get all my hips and then you know, of course, and I'm dropping one anyways, but you could you could have held over on it. I know a couple guys did and but I I chose to dial all of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty easy to get lost in your reticle a little bit when you're when you're doing holdovers. I like doing holdovers when the targets are a little bit closer than that, you know. Then you're only holding maybe half a mil or a mil instead of, you know, three and four mils or whatever. Good, good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's something that I'm trying to work on. You know, in general is getting, yeah, more food with the holdovers and yeah, you just got to make sure that you're paying attention so, yeah, it's pretty easy to to do.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know, if it's uh 3.4 and you accidentally do 2.4 on your holdover and you're like, oh, that's why I miss low, yeah, easy. But if you dial, you know 100, you don't even need to think about it. You just dial yeah, awesome, what's uh? What did stage two look like for you?
Speaker 2:um, so yeah, so then. So for us the next stage was stage six yeah, that's right, um which there was a couple of logs and a wooden fence rail that you had to shoot on. This was probably my worst stage of the day. I jumped up there and just screwed it up from the very get-go. I didn't have my magazine in, so that kind of started me off on the wrong foot. It was a fairly difficult stage to start with. It was a 16-round stage, but most guys didn't get all the way through it. The high score on the day was like 10.
Speaker 2:Um. The first position was pretty low, you know. It was off a log, and so it was just a real low position, shooting out from underneath the awning again. So the wind calls, um, you know, were were visual reference only, basically, and there's only two targets out there at 73 and 117 yards, so not super far. But of course I jumped up there, you know. They asked me if I'm ready, and I say I'm ready and I throw the gun down, and as I, as I, you know, of course I'm reaching for it I realized that, you know, there's no magazine in, so that that kind of got me off on the wrong foot.
Speaker 1:On that one I shot a seven um, yeah, man, I uh, I've been there I think right off the gate um because after that I I did a much more thorough, you know, pre-stage check.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, after that that was my only real major mental mistake on the day was was that one?
Speaker 1:I don't. I don't think that I go to a match and don't make at least one mental mistake. I think I think there's. I go to every match and I I do something that either costs me a point or gets in my head a little bit. You know, um either forgetting to put a Meg in I'm sure you've, I guarantee you've seen me do that probably multiple times with how many matches we shoot together, um forgetting to dial, or shooting off the wrong barricade, or out of order, or something like that. There's always some sort of trickery in 22 matches, it seems like to, where I mess up something somehow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd mess up something somehow. Yeah, I think this one was like now and the order of targets was not super difficult or anything, but there's still a course of fire. And then, after you make that mental mistake, you stay focused, regroup, put the magazine in, get the chamber flag out, do whatever you got to do the magazine and get the chamber flag out, do whatever you got to do that way to get the rifle configuration back in line and then get back on your course of fire and and run the stage from there on out.
Speaker 2:You know, without having a mental mistake, get worse right, you know, it's like you can't the whole bit, you can't miss fast enough to win, um, you know, know, and to not have that get worse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's the big thing about 100% about making mental mistakes. Is you? You want to recover from them as quickly as possible, because it seems like it's really easy to let a mental mistake get to you, especially if you have a bad stage and then, and then you're in your own head, um and uh. That can just cause a lot more problems. Uh, so it sounds like you overcame that pretty quickly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did. Okay, you know there was um, you know seven out of 16, you know that that hurts, but um, you still, you know, you know you gotta, you gotta get what you can't and I I timed out on it. Um, a lot of guys did um, but I would. I would like to think that if I would have had a magazine in, you know, that was worth another one or two, um, you know shots in there because, uh, there's a mag change at the end of that with the 16-round stage too.
Speaker 1:Awesome man, awesome, awesome. So okay, that's stage six Run us through seven.
Speaker 2:So we actually because it was on the middle section and I kind of liked this actually, since the stages were kind of in groups with a couple hundred yards in between them we actually jumped back over to stage four because that was at the same location and this was one I thought was an interesting one and it was off of an incline with five targets that started out really close. The first one is at like 21 yards out to just shy of 150. But you couldn't do anything with the scope, except for parallax, oh so, um, so you had to use holdovers, which gets interesting because you got to think about that when it's really close like that right um, you know, 20 yards we now we have.
Speaker 2:Now we have to hold over again, and so my holdover at 20 yards is, like, you know, another two tenths or something, and then and then to run it all the way out. And with the last one, at 150 yards, it wasn't a particularly large target, it was a round target, but it was like four or five feet off the ground and so with no, no backdrop whatsoever and no real backdrop on any of these whatsoever. So if your wind call was wrong, you know it was going to be a tough one to figure out because you didn't have a berm out there, and so you're going to have to look for where that bullet's going and see if you can pick it up, if it's on either side of that of those targets which, when they're close, like that, they're pretty small, and when you do hit them on a target, that's that small and that close it. And and when you do hit them on a target that's that small and that close, it really moves the target. Yeah, and so some ways, you know, like that target you know gets slapped so hard, um, that it's actually almost getting harder again to to read the call on it.
Speaker 2:Um, one thing I. So I I did, and he had to run this thing near to far three times and and I did, I ran it, you know, kind of with the uh, the parallax kind of set in the middle, you know like 75 yards the first time. Because normally that's what I'll do. I'll just kind of set the parallax for the stage once and I don't normally adjust parallax much between targets, and I ran it out the first time and I got all my hits. But it was like every time I switched between targets I had a like this, this muscle memory of wanting to reach up and touch the turret, and so it's like, well, shoot, I'll just, I'll just touch the parallax every time and adjust the parallax and then it'll, it'll kind of get that, that shooting flow, that muscle memory you know, out of my system and that worked well. And so I adjusted the parallax on that, you know, between targets, especially down at 20 yards, you know, out to 150.
Speaker 2:And I do think that helped. I shot that 12 out of 15. I think Anthony had the highest score with 13 out of 15. That was not. Nobody cleaned that stage all day, so that was a? Um, nobody cleaned that stage all day. So that was that was a little bit difficult, um, and I did borrow a pump pillow for rear support on that one and I used my my game changer style bag as front support off the edge. This was kind of like shooting off a rooftop a little bit, you know, shooting off this office incline uh, just one position yep, just one position, nice.
Speaker 2:But there was a mag change in there too and it was kind of off of. It was kind of suspended with a strap, so there was a little bit of movement to it, but not very much. It was pretty stout, um, but it was suspended off the front corners from the ceiling of the awning, interesting, interesting.
Speaker 1:So what did you dial to?
Speaker 2:Well, so that was what we couldn't dial, and it was specific that it had to be a zero.
Speaker 1:Oh, it had to be a zero.
Speaker 2:Which, yeah, because otherwise I'd be tempted to be like okay, well, you know, can I pick a point here and base my holdovers off of that? But it's like no, so like I had to hold, like the last one it was like 3.7, right, you know. So that's not a real round number to hold. But I have to admit, and I know you, me, I think, are in agreement on our reticle preference. I think are in agreement on our reticle preference. The vortex Was that the EBR seven Delta, that's in the in the gen three razors, works really good for really precise, you know, holdovers that way to be able to hold 3.7. You know you're not like 3.5 or out to four. You know like you've got two tenths hash marks on the vertical, um, so yeah, so you've got two tenths hash marks on the vertical. So yeah, so that worked that worked well.
Speaker 1:I very much agree the EBR 70 reticle. It just makes sense. You just really don't need to think a whole lot. There are some reticles out there where you're like they'll have it in like 0.25 tenths and it just like, yeah, it's easy math, but it just, it just seems easier when everything's just in twos and you got your one fifth tenth mark and everything else is in twos seems, uh, yeah, a lot easier. Well, that's awesome, and that's that's uh, that's good work for uh, for a holdover stage, that's that's awesome yeah, and that was fun.
Speaker 2:I like that. Actually, you know it's um, I I like to see and um this match in general. You know you can tell there's there was thought process of what they were trying to stress. The shooter on with every stage more or less, you know, and this was obviously the holdover stage. It's like no, we're just gonna make you hold over all of it and uh, and I like that I like, uh, I like how they put in there to where you couldn't dial anything.
Speaker 1:You had to leave it at zero. So there's no, everybody's starting from the same, because usually holdover stages it doesn't matter, they don't tell you that you gotta, you gotta leave your um, your um elevation turret at a specific value, um, but just leaving it, leaving it, uh, at 50, that that makes sense for sure. That's awesome. Yep, so which, uh, which stage did you go from there?
Speaker 2:all All right, so yeah. So then after that we went down to the lower section of the course and that was over to stage seven, which was off the actually I'm trying to think. So seven, eight, nine, ten, we're all down in the same location 7, 8, 9, 10, we're all down in the same location. I guess we started at stage nine with that group which was they called it the jail, and so, like they've got this little mock-up building there for the action pistol guys and it's got these windows in it with bars through it, and so you had to shoot through the windows. You had to shoot through the right window and the left window and then go through the doorway and shoot off the back of this thing, and so, but with the windows with the bars in them, they're real narrow right, and so a lot of our rifles are getting pretty wide and our bags are are even wider. So with as wide as my bag is, I couldn't really put it through the bars of the window. Um, the rifle would fit through no problem.
Speaker 2:Um, and there were some guys that wanted to shoot, uh, off of a bipod at the at the third position. Uh, to me, I didn didn't want to try to work the bipod through the windows or any of that stuff, and so I shot it without a bipod, I just ran the thing off a forward bag all the way through. There was one target at 100 and another target at 150. And you know, shoot with two rounds and one, and so there's, the round count changed a little bit, um, from position to position, but otherwise you're shooting near to far through that one and 13 rounds. So there's a mag change in there for me.
Speaker 2:I run two 10 round magazines, the remix factor mags feet be great in their normal configuration and and so I I haven't, I haven't put an extension on any of mine, um, so I think I shot a eight out of 13, and so this was our first stage moving down to a kind of different portion of the course, and so I was trying to get the wind figured out.
Speaker 2:You know, down in this, in this new location, and I didn't shoot it particularly well, but it was fairly difficult target size with the wind condition, and so Shane was the only guy that cleaned that stage all day, and of course he came up, you know, you know a little bit after I did and and just tore it up, but for me, I had to basically set the, the bag, kind of at the edge of the window, so I couldn't set up long ways, um, the way, the way that I shot that, and so if I was gonna go back and shoot that again, um, that might be what I would change. I might, might try to think about a better way to get the bag into the window so that I could, I could shoot off the bag lengthwise and try, you know, instead of shooting off of it with wise and kind of having a narrow, a narrow position there, that's awesome man.
Speaker 1:yeah, that sounds like an interesting stage. It reminds me of the one I was just talking about in utah. It was the jail and, uh, it's kind of a mixture in between the one that you, uh, the stage nine that you're just talking about, and then your holdover stage where, um, we had a target at 20 yards and then we had a target at god I can't remember, it was 150, something somewhere in there and you couldn't, you couldn't dial or do anything, um, the only thing you could touch was your parallax, um, but then, uh, same thing, you, the bars in between the jail I guess door, I guess you'd call it were really thin, but your gun had to go in between each one of them as you moved positions, so you had to move real quick. I think I timed out by God like one impact, or I made it, I can't remember, but it was really really close. Yeah, nice work. So that was stage nine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so stage nine, and after that we moved on to stage 10, which was this, the snake trap, and I haven't shot a snake since I think the last time I was in Lewistown I think it's been two years and and so what? The way that works is you've got a target around. It's like shooting like a steel pop can, that's on the end of a stick, that's on a buoy inside of a bucket filled full of water, and so every time you hit the thing, of course it spins around and moves in a kind of a random fashion, um, depending on how you hit that target. Um, and they're not particularly big, they're not tiny, um, this one wasn't. We shot it at 66 yards and we shot it off a tank trap, and it was five rounds off of each tip of the tank trap and then off the yoke, and so it was 20 rounds total and two minutes, um, four positions, but it's all one distance and and it's basically shooting a random mover that's kind of just past your, your zero range, and then we were shooting along this, uh, this wall actually that's set up down there between these, these pistol ranges. So it was kind of an unusual wind call because I was like, all right, I know that I'm going to get, like you know, 40 yards down this wall before it's going to be really exposed to the wind, but at that point the wind was was blowing pretty good and it was a little more, uh, dramatic left to right at that point. So I've dialed uh one-tenth on the gun, um, like I was going to shoot a mover and you know.
Speaker 2:And then I was like, well, I don't think I've got time, especially as you're kind of tracking this thing left to right, though it doesn't move a ton left to right, it's only moving, you know, three feet left to right. Um, I didn't think I could use rear support for it. I thought that'd be too slow and so I just went with a single bag off the tips and off the yoke, with no rear support, and I shot that uh 11 out of 20 um. But that was based on the other guys in our, in our squad. I knew that was okay. Um, I think the high score on that stage for the day was like 13 um.
Speaker 2:So that was a tough, that was a tough gig just shooting that, that style of target, and we don't shoot those a lot anymore, right, that was it kind of reminded me the old days. It's again because I've had shot one a couple years of, when we used to shoot kind of these, these moving targets and and more, uh, kind of more unusual stuff. But we shot them closer right because it's only only in 66 yards, which on that target size normally would be a gimme. Um, but now it's, it's moving just just enough that you got to lead it just a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's floating around and moving that was.
Speaker 2:It was fun. Yeah, right, and it's fun. And because it's random, right, it's not like it's gonna move left to right, you know every time and you know, and then if you clip it off the edge, then it really kind of spins it around and stuff. Or if you hit it really hard, you know, if you have a real dead center hit well, then it'll really, you know, start moving on. Yeah, so I know some of the guys, uh, love those things because they're they're kind of fun.
Speaker 2:Some of them kind of don't like them because there might be a little bit of luck involved, but it seems, in the end it seemed like it evened out pretty good and, um, and most of the guys in our squad shot it around a 10 good shooters did and uh, and I think you know, like I said, the high score on the day was like a 13, but after shooting an 11 on that one, I was like, oh, that was.
Speaker 2:You know, if somebody, if somebody was really good at shooting these, you know, you know somebody could have put, you know, 17, 18 points on. You know, on that stage that might have been been a rough one, but uh, as it turned out, you know everybody, I think, and I think everybody struggled the same thing of wondering what the wind is going to do, because you're, you're shooting at this thing, that's, you know, three or four feet off the ground, with no backdrop behind it, uh, to speak of because it's moving. Even if you could, um, you know, maybe rain man, you could spot what's going on out there, but the grass is, you know, two feet deep back behind it. So, um, yeah, so that was, that was tricky.
Speaker 1:That's interesting, man, yeah, I uh. No, I've never heard of that before. That's crazy. I've never, uh never even had the opportunity to shoot. Uh, it's called the snake trap.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they call them a snake trap and or a snake charmer. I think is what they call those. Uh, yeah, it was. They called the stage is a snake trap and or a snake charmer. I think is what they call those. Yeah, it was. They called the stages called snake trap because it was shooting off a tank trap, but they call them a snake charmer target and it's something we, I think we kind of shot early on, when we first started shooting 22s and before everybody really kind of had the ballistics figured out and we were shooting this. You know, you know, you know nrl 22 style, everything inside of 100 yards, um, you know, but it's, it's something that that overall, I think most guys have gotten away from um a little bit because of the, the potential luck factor, I guess, trickery, um yeah, the trickery, I like shooting off of a.
Speaker 1:That was fun I like shooting off of a uh, completely moving barricade that's hanging on chains. I just feel like that, that's, yeah, that's like, oh man, like you just don't have control, you know that's. There's no skill really involved in it, it's, you know, I mean, I don't know, I don't know, but but that's awesome. Well, that's good, man. No, 11 out of 20. That's good stuff. And the uh, the high score was 13. So, no, you, you smoked that one too. That's, that's legit. Uh, where did you guys go?
Speaker 2:I didn't think that at the time, at the time, I was like, well, that's, that's the end of that.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, absolutely, especially when you think it's out of 20. You're like, oh crap, I uh, I just bombed that. I'm going home, yeah, oh, that's great. Uh, where'd you guys head to next?
Speaker 2:So after that was stage seven, uh, the tire stage, and this was a kyl that you had to shoot. Um, it was a, a five target kyl and you just shot it, uh, five times, you know, from three positions, so 15 rounds total, and they had a series of tires. You shot it from the left to the middle and the right, but it wasn't your typical uh kyl, it was a shoot through kyl. So you've got a big plate with the holes drilled in it and there's a flapper behind the hole, and so you've got to shoot through the hole of this thing and hit the flapper behind it, which is like, okay, that sounds easy enough. I mean, you're shooting through a hole instead of at a round target Like there's. You know how much different can that be? The kicker with it is back to the wind call that because you're shooting through the hole at a flapper. The flapper swings up because it's pretty small, like normally on a big, on a normal kyl, you get your wind call fairly early on on your big targets, right, you know, because they don't swing as far, they don't move as much. Um, usually there's some paint left on them somewhere. You can. You can kind of gain it by shooting at a clean spot on the, on the big target, and try to get an initial wind call with these, because the flapper swings out at view.
Speaker 2:To me it was. It was harder to read on the target where you were hitting this thing, but but I but I shot it fairly well, you know. So at that point you're like, okay, I really got to focus and watch this round go through and it was at 46 yards, you know. So at that point you're like, okay, I really got to focus and watch this round go through and it was at 46 yards, you know. So, right at right, at zero point, and I did clean this one.
Speaker 2:This one went well for me. Um, the middle position off the tires they were. They were flat like a car tire, so there was some bounce to them, so the vertical line was a little hard to control. Um, when you got down to the smaller targets, and for me, something I'm trying to do these days is like, look, if I can't get my wobble zone under control. I'm just going to make a really good trigger pull and I'm not going to try to time it like as much. Obviously there's still some timing involved there, but I try to really focus on still having a really good trigger pull in there, so that seemed to work for me.
Speaker 2:I, you know, I shot that clean, um, you know, and that was that was good and that. So that felt good. Coming off of you know the stage prior where you know I shot, like you know, 11 out of 20 to turn around and go 15 for 15 was was a good stage that's great, that's super good.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like you had a good initial wind call. You trusted that wobble, gave some good trigger squeezes and, uh, it all worked out. And, um, oh, that was off of tires right. Yeah, was it? Uh, standing kneeling, kneeling kneeling off tires.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were all fairly short awesome, that's good stuff.
Speaker 1:15 out of 15, yeah, especially. Yeah, like you just said, coming off of stage 10, we're, you know, 11 out of 20, even though it's good, you probably didn't know that at the time You're like oh crap. You came through, smoked. That cleaned her. All right. What's the next stage?
Speaker 2:Stage eight, the longer bench. So this was shooting off of a concrete bench. Uh, 100, 200, 300, four shots on each Um, and so it should have been. Should have been a breeze of a stage. Um, the 300 yard target was like a mil wide.
Speaker 2:You know tons of tons of wind call um, you know forgiveness there, and, uh, this was kind of my second mental mistake of the day. Um, it was a uh right to left and I held my first target, uh left to right, and so I think I put two in the dirt at 100 yards before I realized what was what was going on, um, and I was like, oh, my gosh, I missed the, the wind call backwards in my head, um, and and when I did that, I I like I stopped to like think about what the heck just happened as I'm trying to figure out you know what's going on, um, and it was a 90 second stage where everything else on the day was two minutes and so, um, that kind of threw me off for a little bit and so after I realized what I did, you know, got back on the gun. You know, correct that that mistake. Hold on the hold on the other side of the target this time and and sort of working my way out, but I did time out on that stage, um, and so I think that was a 6 out of 12. So that was my. That was my other stage of the day where I was like, ooh, that was, uh, that was not great.
Speaker 2:Um, you know you work through it.
Speaker 1:You, uh, you work through it. Yeah, that's. The thing is that I've noticed, on when I, when I start making a mental mistake on a stage, I feel like I could recover quicker if I just stop what I'm doing and just slow down my thought process and not try to rush, um, figure out what the issue is and then and then push through. So right, that's, uh, that's what I've found seems the best. But if I just if I'm, if I'm going too fast and I'm trying to quickly resolve my issue as absolute fast as I can, I feel like I just make more mental mistakes. Yeah Well, that's all right. Man, I've been there God knows how many times shooting on the wrong side of the target, especially shooting here in Billings. When we're going train, it's always a left to right, always a left to right, and you go somewhere else and you're like, oh shit, this is a right to left.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's's. You know it's like, and when I came off the stage, everybody else you know in our squad knew exactly what happened. Yeah, because we, you know all the billings guys that used to shoot left to rights, like you, you held that right to. You know, left to right for the right to left, like that's.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what I did, yeah because we don't have, uh, the luxury of getting all these, you know, different sort of winds all the time here. It's straight up left right, like a, anywhere between like a seven and a ten o'clock wind yeah, yeah pretty much oh, that's great, that's cool, all right, man, what's, uh, what's the next one?
Speaker 2:so after that we went up, uh, to the upper section of the of the course, and so there was stage one was the high house, and so there's a set of stairs that goes up on the side of this little building I think it's a, it's like a trap house and so you go up a set of stairs and there was three positions there and four targets. You had to shoot from each position and you shot them like near to far. And then the second position was kind of random order you had to remember or get down on your, on your dope cart, and then the last position was far to near, um. I just shot this off, a, off a single bag, and we were shooting a, a series of um. I think I'm trying to remember if these were ipsychs or if they were like a gopher mover. I think these were, uh, I think they were an ipsych shape. Either way they were, they were, they were taller than they were wide and so um.
Speaker 2:So I actually ran holdovers for this one, because for me it was uh, you know, of course, the close one was was, uh, like zero, um. And then the second one was like, oh, you know, one mil, one and a half mil and two and a half mil. It lined up for me Good Um, and there was a couple of guys that were timing out, you know, on that, and so I decided to use holdovers on that and I shot that one clean, so that was worth $12. Oh nice, cleaned it again, yeah.
Speaker 1:Good freaking work and that was kind of like in their version of the five stand that we have here. Yeah, um, not quite it was more of a platform okay um, yeah, so, yeah.
Speaker 2:So this kind of this, this shed that has it's kind of a two-story shed that you're shooting off of, um, and so you had to go up instead of stairs on the clock and then make a position off the rail and and shoot that and I I got to spot that a couple of times up top. I was on glass up top so I think that might have helped my wind call going into that one too a little bit. I was able to watch a few shots go down and so I had a pretty confident going in on the wind call on that one and uh, used holdovers and and did that I forgot to ask you at the beginning here before uh, I mean for your gun setup, what are you using for your dope card?
Speaker 2:I use an arm card. Actually I used to run a more typical dope card up on the scope when we shot the Badlands Brawl last fall. There was some of those stages that were kind of they're kind of difficult. They were and they didn't have target markers and so I started drawing myself a map on my arm cart for where I could go find all those targets in case I got lost. And after that I kind of I kind of liked the arm cart again. So I've pretty much been running that since then. I can get more information on it. Maybe it slows me down a little bit. I might try to train it and practice it a little bit more to see if I'm losing time there. But I do like the big real estate I can write big for some of the unusual target orders and things like that. I've got lots of space to put on there. If I was running the smaller dip card up on the scope I felt like sometimes I I didn't have enough room to get the information that I wanted on there.
Speaker 1:You know and I've noticed that too God, I can't remember what match it was that we were at, but we had, oh it was. It was like five. Oh God, I can't remember it was either. It was between five and 10 targets. I want to say it was closer to 10 because my E-Dope card didn't have any spots left in it. It was completely filled up and I got lost in the noise man, like going from target one to target 10 or whatever it was, and then trying to come back down and remembering what number target I was on. Um, and then trying to come back down and remembering what number target I was on. And, yeah, but if you're able to write bigger, I feel like that it's just, it's easier to pick up, easier to see there's something, something said, to have it on your arm there and being able to write a little bit bigger yeah, so, um, what we're talking about it?
Speaker 2:I I run masking tape and then I write down you know that stage dope on the on the masking tape and then I write down you know that stage dope on the on the masking tape and then I peel it off and I'm done most of the time.
Speaker 1:That's a good way to do it, and I will use a different piece of tape for different positions.
Speaker 2:Oh, so if I have position one, it's on its own piece of tape. So we've got position two, it's on its own piece of tape, and, and so that that allows me to kind of keep that stuff separate. Um, because I think I, I think I remember what we're talking about. I think we shot one that had four targets at four different positions, that were different yardages and so there was only four targets down range, but you ended up with like 12 different dopes for the thing you know and that was. It was really tough to get, yeah, to keep squared away anyway. So that's why, that's why I'm running the arm cart anyways, but, um, yeah, so that was, that was stage one. That went good.
Speaker 2:Um, stage two after that they called that the low house because it was over by the, by the other trap house that's shorter, and we shot that off of a, uh, off a gate. Okay, um and um, three positions, three targets, in different orders, um, uh, fairly, fairly straightforward. I ran a single bag off of that um, that was um 15 rounds total and, um, I shot that one, I, I dropped the last shot on that one, I choked on the last shot. Still good, but yeah, but that was good. You know, once again that was shooting downhill, off of this gate, and so one target was in the very bottom and the next was on the face of this hill, you know. And another target kind of off to the side, and so, you know, and another target kind of off to the off to the side, and so, um, you know, I like that, I like, I like shooting down and then having to transition and shoot, you know, further up.
Speaker 1:That's always to me, that's always always kind of fun and that was uh, you, just, you just ran the one bag yeah, just ran the one bag uh across the rail up front.
Speaker 2:No rear support, no pump pillow, no tripod that's what I've been trying to do.
Speaker 1:I've been trying to work myself into a, into a space, um, and I guess into a skill set where I could pretty much shoot every stage just with one bag. I'm really, really trying. I've definitely noticed that, like off of rooftops or, uh, when I'm really low to the ground and it's not quite prone and it's not quite kneeling, that like a rear pump pillow is definitely nice. I'd love to get to the point where I just need the one bag. You know it's just just takes time, practice and training and yeah, you know I try to take every opportunity to do that, but that's awesome, just one bag.
Speaker 2:Well, and once again these targets were a little taller than they were wide. Normally shooting off a gate or something like that, normally it's the vertical that I'm trying to control with the rim fires. With this one I got a target that's, you know, half a mil tall or something like I can. I can execute that shot no problem, without running a pump pillow or a tripod.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the big thing, those like leaned over positions. You get that vertical wobble. That's like holy shit, it's hard to control. Awesome, what's. What's the next one?
Speaker 2:And then last one was last stage of the day for for us, uh, stage three, sarah bell, that's the name of the truck, so it's a big military truck, like a five-ton truck, and so we're shooting off of the rails and the bench in the back of the truck, and it was three positions with two targets and slightly different round counting. Shot like twice and then three times and then two and then three, um, and this one was a tricky one, wind wise. This was probably one of the ones where, um, you know, I I looked at it for a really long time under glass, um, watching other guys shoot it, um, fairly deep in our squad, looking at mirage and trying to figure out what was happening, and and never really did get, uh, a good idea what was what was going on down right, I could see the effect of it, but I couldn't read it right. It's like, okay, like the wind call here is like half a mil left to right, but like I'm feeling like a pretty notable right to left, you know, at the, at the shooter, um, so, um, yeah, but hopped up there, uh, basically ran it the same way.
Speaker 2:It was kind of like running a gate stage a little bit. You know that the rail, you know, is a lot like a gate, um big heavy trucks. You're not really moving it around much as you're moving um, and so it was. It was real stable and I shot that about the same way that I shot the the stage before, and I choked on the last shot and, uh, man, you, you missed the, the last shot, two stages in a row. Um, especially when you're shooting. Well, those guys are gonna, they're gonna remind you of it.
Speaker 2:So you know of course they are off the truck and you know jake's got his, his hands around his neck. You know, you know, yeah, choking and everything.
Speaker 1:So yeah, oh, that's awesome, man, good work. So you had multiple good stages in a row. That's, that's awesome and obviously took first. But that's great, man. It sounds like you had a a super good day, super good match. Um, you earned it, dude. Good work, that's, that's phenomenal. Did you have any? Uh uh remex ejection issues by chance no, no, I didn't.
Speaker 2:Um, and when I first got my Remex I stuffed a couple of a couple of rounds when I first got it and after I kind of understood the rhythm of the action, I haven't had a problem with it since. Okay, because? But I only run, I only run lapua. I've never tried to run eevee through it or anything else. I ran sk and lapua through it, um, and, and I did clean it. I don't clean very often but I did clean it.
Speaker 2:Uh, going into this one, because when I was shooting it earlier in the week, it took like 15 or 20 rounds to get the barrel like warmed back up and to where it was shooting. Good, but the first couple of groups of the day were were pretty wide and I shot, you know, like 20 or 30 rounds. Then it settled back down. I'm like, okay, I need to clean this thing, I need to get some lubricant, um, you know, get some gunk out of it. Yep, at least that's my. What's my theory. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's my, that's my current theory on that exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly no, I've kind of had similar, I guess, results with my Remex. I hadn't had any issues at all. And then I went to Utah to that 22X match and I started getting failure to extracts and failure to ejects right in the middle of stages and it cost me quite a few points for sure, but, um, yeah, one of the easiest stages of the day, it was just one kyl and you were required to use a rear tripod support but you were kind of shooting at a pretty steep incline and god, like the three dudes that went ahead of me cleaned it and I'm like, okay, this is uh, this is gonna be pretty easy. It's only at 50 yards, you know, no dialing, no, nothing, no wind, and uh, clean the first position, uh, all five. Clean the second position all five. And then my very first shot on the third position, um, I got a failure to extract or failure to yeah to completely uh, or failure to eject, and so you've got a.
Speaker 1:You got a spent case that's stuck inside the action yep, and I couldn't get it out and I'm like, oh, so there, there went five points right there and then it did it again, the exact same thing on the stage following that and then, uh, the stage after that one, it didn't do it, um, but uh, yeah, so I started kind of having these issues and I'm like what's going on? So I just I threw a new, uh, I threw a new extractor on there, so, but I haven't shot it since. So I guess we'll, uh, we'll see what happens, but hopefully, hopefully, it doesn't continue to do that. I know that Remex says that these are like, uh, what are they Consumable parts where, um, you're pretty much required just to continue to change, uh, or change these out. I'm actually holding the old one in my hand right now, but yeah, I guess we'll see. So, uh, what did the what did the prize table look like? Was there some good stuff there?
Speaker 2:like, uh, walk us through that yeah, so it was a pretty good price table and the trophies were real cool. Um, they did a random draw for the price table on this one, um, but the top three overall positions, um, and I think top youth maybe, and top lady, I think um, had a small cash payout, so that was pretty cool. So the cash payout was $200 for the top spot. So I got that and the trophy and then I walked the prize table, random order, ended up about in the middle, you know, maybe a third of the way down, and so I picked. But it was a pretty good prize table.
Speaker 2:You know there was a tripod on it that was uh, like a two-beds tripod and, um, that went early. Of course. Um, you know there's some pretty good certs on there for like half off a mdt chassis and a few things like that. That's great. Um, I was hoping to. I was hoping to snag that one because, uh, I want to put another ACC under my centerfire gun, but I ended up picking up a half off a proof carbon barrel Nice, when I pulled off the price table.
Speaker 1:You going to put that on a centerfire, or what are you going to do?
Speaker 2:with it? I don't know. So I've got a Liljer on my centerfire gun. That's only got like 75 rounds through it and it's hammering. That's only got like 75 rounds through it and it's hammering. Tc out of Lewistown chambered that one for my American Rifle, coupe de Gras action on that one and it hammers. It's great. So I don't 100% know. I'm tempted to do like a 6.5 PRC barrel for that action. I like it and we kind of have a secondary, you know kind of hunter setup off. Yeah, that action, because I do like that action a lot. But I also have a another like older hunting rifle that I might, I might rebarrel or something like that. I haven't decided yet.
Speaker 1:So that's good work, man, freaking awesome. It's always nice to go to these matches and you know you pull something off the table if you do well enough to where you're. Like you know what it was worth coming like it was worth coming. I got a. I got a good like uh in utah. I got a. I got a new trigger, which was pretty cool. Um, and uh, yeah, yeah, like 350 400 trigger, and I'm like, oh yeah, this is pretty cool. This, this is worth it coming down here shooting good and um, getting some good quality, decent parts that uh can help continue our bad habit of shooting and spending a shit ton of money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Well, I think it's a really neat part of our sport. You know, I reached a little bit of kind of it was a more split between your sponsored writers who had, you know, full access to gear and then everybody else who was out of pocket on everything, and so to see something in between in the shooting community is pretty cool. Yeah, and last time I was in lewis town I picked up a cert it was my first like match where it really had a price table, uh, for an accu-tac bipod and I didn't even know what they. You know, I was so new to the sport then I didn't know who accu-tac was. I had no idea, um, I just saw the thing, accu-tac like bipod. I'm like, okay, that looks, you know, like I.
Speaker 2:My bipod at the time was, um, it was real lightweight, it had like a magpul or something and and so I was like, well, I like the heavy bipod. So so I picked it up and I'm still running that exact same bipod today, three seasons later. You know, I I'm a big fan of um, you know a big fan of that.
Speaker 1:So it's cool to be able to see that yeah, actually like win something at a match that you can continue to use and it's, you know, yeah, 100, that's, that's phenomenal, yeah, yeah. So okay, last but not least, um, I want to know what your thoughts are in here. Well, what did you take away from the match and what's been your training routine? Like, so, yeah, first things first. What did you take away from it? What was the point in the match where you're like, hey, when I go and train, this is what I'm going to do, or anything, the first thing that comes to your mind?
Speaker 2:that comes to your mind? Um, uh, when I'm writing down my win calls on my dope card, I'm going to put an arrow left to right or right to left um, that's the first thing that pops up.
Speaker 2:Man, I'm like all right I've got to put an arrow on here because I'm, you know, especially if it's right to left, you know, um, so I'm going to do that and um, and I need to continue to work on shooting holdovers, you know, because that's, there are stages where that is an advantage, especially if it's a high round count, fast stage where you got to, you got to move. Normally the target sizes on those stages are slightly more generous. So if you can get through them like those are the stages to use holdovers on. If you've got a little more generous target and you've got to move a lot, if you can get that flow, you know, and just use holdovers on those, then I think there's some points to be picked up doing that. So that's, those are my two takeaways. And then, for goodness sakes, put the magazine in the right place.
Speaker 1:Oh man, a hundred's. Uh, that's a big one. I've done that I don't know how many times especially. It's always like the first, the first stage of the day for me, or my first, my first training stage of the day for me. I'm always forgetting something like pre-fire check, sack, pre-fire checks you idiot. Oh, that's awesome, man. Well, uh, maybe we should go out to the range this, uh, this weekend and, uh, practice some Fire check, sack, pre-fire checks you idiot, that's awesome, man. Well, maybe we should go out to the range this weekend and practice some holdovers. That sounds like a good time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah absolutely Well, thanks. You got anything else that you want to add in here for the listeners?
Speaker 2:I don't think so. No, I mean, I think you know, if there's's that's listening to this stuff that hasn't done competitive shooting, um, just go out and and do it. Man like you will learn more doing this um so much faster than you will trying to to do it. You know kind of kind of by yourself, god. Yes, I said that on my first. You know kind of kind of by yourself, god, yes.
Speaker 1:I said that on my first one, you know.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean, you know two things get hooked up with a guy, like like you, that's doing some training, that will explain some things in 20 minutes. You know or less. That will take you weeks to try to figure out. And then hang out with some competitive shooters and just kind of see what they're, what they're doing and how they're doing it. You know that there's, you know, and, and even if you aren't into the, into the full race guns and all that stuff, you know, like you know, my dad thinks that some of my rifles are ridiculous, and he's not, he's not wrong. But, like, even if you come up with a, a basic rifle, and shoot this stuff, you know you're going to learn so much more about the platform that you have.
Speaker 1:Um, just get out and get out, even if it's just one match a year. Like you know, it's it's the cheapest training that you can. If you look at it as training, it's the cheapest thing that you could do to learn how to become efficient with your rifle and accurate. You know, I mean, what is it? 50 to 75 bucks for a typical, typical match and you're going to get squatted up with four or five dudes that are going to be itching to help you out because we want more shooters in the sport you're going to be. You know you're're gonna be handed 10 different bags to use and we're gonna be helping. You call wind and yeah. So get out there. Get out there, guys, and uh train up. Um, you know, blow the dust off the rifle and come out and have some fun. So we have uh, monthly matches, uh in billings here and I'm sure they do them um, all over. We have them in oh, shoot what shoot? What is it now? Matt? It's Montana, wyoming. What is it? South Dakota, idaho? How many clubs do we have?
Speaker 2:It's a bunch. I know we got one or two in Minnesota now too.
Speaker 1:There's one out east too. That's new, I think. Yeah, it's more, all the more all the time. I think we got like 30 clubs in like seven or eight different states, so pretty big series, but any good anyways, guys, um, appreciate you listening like and subscribe to to the podcast. Would very much appreciate it, matt. Uh, go ahead and stay on the line, buddy. We'll chat after this and you guys have a good one. We are out.