It's sunday, and you're alive, so let's hear some details!
Sore…tired…
@VOD Tactical and I ran the corse Friday afternoon with the rest of the ROs and a handful of paid competitors. ~27 2-man teams Friday. Then we RO’d a stage full day Saturday, 50 more teams.
We shot GREAT for us, 17th out of 77 teams on the shoot score. Took 3rd and 6th on a couple stages.
We walked the course, so run time was near bottom. Shoot and run times are both weighted 50/50. Overall rank was 44th.
Run started with carrying a litter with 6’ length of telephone pole a couple hundred yards to a short obstacle course. There was a cargo net over a ~10 foot wall, another ~8ft wall with no net and then a log thing that looks like 2 saw horses about 4’ and 7’ high to get over. While carrying all your gear. Then carry the litter back to the start/finish line.
Stage 1 was maybe 1/4 mile down the road to a convex box structure 3 levels high. Shooter One (Frank) had to run around the structure clearing pistol targets while Shooter 2 (me) climbed the structure (ship’s ladders) to the 3rd deck. There the RSO designated 1 IPSC steel target in a wood line about 250 yards out. I had to get 3 hits from 3 different firing positions. While I was doing that, Frank cleared the pistol targets and then carried a dummy (40#?) up the structure to my position. When he got there I had to hand him my rifle and describe the target WITHOUT pointing. Our communication was good (orange flag in tree line, 3 points left, base of tree). Unfortunately we were one of the last teams out, so the paint was gone and the mottled steel made for good camouflage. Frank was looking right where I was describing but couldn’t see the target. We ended up timing out in the stage.
That stage had about a 50% failure rate, so we weren’t alone.
LESSON: Get your partner in position to fire, then describe the target. Trust your optic to find the target once you have the area ID’d. We spent too much time standing in the window with Frank trying to spot the target with naked eye.
Stage 2 was about a mile down the trail, into the woods along the river bottom. The idea in this stage was covering fire and moving positions.
Shooter 1 (me) was staged about 15 yards left of shooter 2 shooter 1 engaged 4 steel of various sizes between 1-200 yards out. I think it was 3 hits each, from standing. Frank was prone behind a log and couldn’t shoot until I cleared my targets. I was supposed to call out that I was done and ready to move so he could start shooting. I failed to do that, costing us a couple seconds. As Frank shot, I moved to his position. At that point, the RO tapped me and yelled “you just got shot in the left leg”. I had to drop and couldn’t use that leg for the rest of the stage.
Edit: Frank had to apply a CAT tourniquet to my leg at this point.
Frank had to get me on a skid and haul my - bulk - about 15 yards to final position. At some point while getting on the skid, I figured out I wasn’t “dead”, just wounded, so I was able to use my arms and “good” leg to help Frank with the drag.
After the drag, Frank pulled his pistol and cleared a small array (Mozambique?).
180 second par time. We finished in 143, good for 47th place.
LESSON: Communicate! We wasted time while Frank waited for me to tell him to go.
Stage 3 , the climb out of the river bottom up to Stage 3 was a bitch. Steep, maybe 1/2 or 3/4 mile, but steep. Heart rate was definitely up.
Stage 3 was deceptively hard. Rifle only. Easy on paper, but high DNF/failure rate. Shooter 1 engaged Target 1 from standing with 3 hits, followed by shooter 2. Shooter then engaged target 2 from sit/kneel followed by shooter 2. Then target 3 from prone with 3 hits, shooter then shooter 2. 18 total impacts, 90 second par time.
Frank and I placed 6th on this stage.
~75% failure rate overall.
We RO’d this stage, so saw how everyone did it wrong…
LESSON 1: The 3 targets were at unknown distance that EVERYONE guessed wrong. Too much time spent at known distance ranges I suppose. The terrain is hilly, which I think caused issues with visual ranging. Everyone assumed “3 Targets… must be 100, 200, 300”. In fact they were 175, 215 and 343.
LESSON 2: BE READY! RO/Spotter was calling hits, I can’t even count how often the third hit on a target was called out and THEN the next shooter started getting in position or on target. The good scores were all teams that got in position (stand, sit, prone) and were on target before their partners hits were called. Some teams even broke their 1st shot before the RO even got the call shouted out.
LESSON 3: Pick your spot! The shooting area was about 15 yards wide. Shooters approached the stage from the right and mostly stood there sucking air while the stage brief was read. Then they just turned and shot from where they stood - on a slope (sitting/kneeling made awkward!) with a small berm 20’ in front of them that obscured 1/2 the far target. If they’d only moved to the left a couple yards to a nice flat spot at the top of the slope…we could tell the couple teams with significant .mil service (active rangers, Marines) because the first thing they did was move to the good terrain.
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