My ICORE Buddies

These are the guys I shoot with on the third Sunday each month.  Last year, this was us.  This year, our numbers have grown from 11 to 19. But the guys you see above are still the same guys I shoot with.  Elden Dalley (far right) is the Match Director.  Rex Hansen, kneeling at left is the fastest shooter each month.  The rest of us just "do our best" and call it good.

This morning was only the second revolver match I have been able to shoot this summer.  ICORE matches are only conducted on the morning of the third Sunday each month.

I sent out this email below describing the today's match to my Arizona shooting buddies this afternoon.

"Howdy, Dear Friends, The revolver people only shoot once a month here--it's called ICORE.  (  http://icore.org/ )

I missed the May and June shoots.  I shot in July and then missed the August shoot.  So this was only the second match of the season for that S&W 625 .45 ACP pistol.  I went out yesterday and my intuition told me to practice shooting "long" but I ignored it and only practiced at short distances.  Big mistake!

The very first stage had six targets at 20+ yards.  Oops.  I did horrible and was assessed a total of 32 seconds worth of penalties just on the first stage alone.  Man, I sure felt like slinking off into the sage brush.  So, after that, I figured, heck, I've got nothing to lose and I started shooting really well.  In one of the stages I was the only shooter out of 19 participants today to get zero points down.  So, after all was said and done, I finished 9th out of 19 shooters.  If I hadn't done so badly on those 20-yard targets, I probably would have finished in the Top Five.

It just goes to show in a pistol match, it ain't over 'til it's over and you can still be competitive even if you totally blow one of the stages.  As Tom Bonomo has said many a time, "90% of it is mental and the rest of it is in your head."

I have to admit, though, it was pretty tough to step up to the firing line on the second stage knowing I had blown the first stage so badly.  All I could do was wonder if it was a fluke and if I could somehow get it out of my head.  Luckily, I went from the outhouse to the penthouse from one stage to the next and didn't miss the bullseye once in that 24 round second stage.  Go figure.

The shooting schedule here diminishes pretty rapidly now.  There's a couple more informal IDPA Wednesday matches until the end of September.  Then there's an IDPA Classifier in October, followed by the final ICORE match of the season.  After somehow surviving today to finish in the top half of the shooters, I feel danged fortunate."