tail between my legs...

[pturner67]

My Mom used to be a police officer...and a very good one at that

went to see her this weekend and we went to the shooting range yesterday...pretty cool shooting guns with Mom lol

anyway.....

she was using a Glock 17...and I was using my M&P 40

targets were only about 10 yards...grouping of 1-2" so I was feeling good...6 numbered circles on the target...2 per row...3 rows...not in order...so 1 and 2 were not on the same row

but then....

she says let's play a game...it's easier to plink 15 rounds at the same unmoving target...so she stood behind me and called out one of the 6 numbers and I had to hit that number within 2 seconds...holy crap, I suck...lol...hit some and missed some a little outside the circles...and her turn came up...she was awesome...only missed 1 or 2 the whole time

just reminded me that real life situations don't stand still and you will likely be moving your trajectory...from now on, that's how I am going to train...it was a great lesson in humility

target was similar to the one posted here (except 6 circles and numbered very clearly 1-6)

[jason_iowa]

Practicing target acquisition is very important. A drill I do with some buddies is to set up some targets spread around within about 6 yards. Red bulls eye are BG blue or green for good guys. We run down the hill turn our backs to the gun bench wait for the timer beep, turn pick up the pistol and shoot all the BG targets. Its tough but with some practice you can get good times.

We also do a lot of draw practice but not on this drill because turning and drawing in a live fire exercise is just not safe.

[Crazy88Fingers]

One of my local ranges has a paper target with six different shapes that are numbered, and different colors. So you can do this exercise while calling out "red, triangle, 3, blue, 2, circle, etc."

[briandg]

Meh. What I get out of this post is that you were beaten by a girl.

Turn your testicles and man card in at the door as you go home with your tail between your legs.

[kraigwy]

Last match I shot had 5 targets, about 5 feet apart. Each target was marked.

A - K - Q - J - 10

Five cards were laid face down on a table, the Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and 10.

You had to turn over three cards, and shoot those and only those. It was timed with time added if you hit the wrong target.

It was a lot of fun.

[pax]

Shoot like a girl -- if you can!

Sounds like an excellent drill. I love how many things you can do with basic dot targets.

pax

[bacardisteve]

Awesome practice. I try to get out to an outdooer pistol range when its windy. The one i visit has the targets on a rope pulley system and its a whole new game when the target is bouncing all over.

[4V50 Gary]

Kudos to your mother for training her son as he should have been trained years ago.

Here's a drill. With an empty gun, draw. When you draw, bring the gun to your center mass where it will meet with the support hand. Raise the gun almost vertically so you can acquire a sight picture. Push the gun out toward the target until you reach your level of extension. While doing so, maintain that sight picture.

It will take time and initially you will be slow. With practice, you will increase your speed. The key is smoothness. Achieve that first and then pick up speed gradually without sacrificing that smoothness. This little drill will help you with acquiring faster sight picture and your draw.

[ZeSpectre]

If you have a place where you can shoot it, a couple of these cubes are fun and challenging.

http://www.sportsmansguide.com/net/c....aspx?a=359243

[OkieGentleman]

Hey briandg

Watch those cracks about the ladies and shooting. If you don't I will send the young female cop that was shot multiple times (6 I think) here in Oklahoma City, returned fire, chased off the person that had shot her patrol car up with a 20 round clip, called for backup, survived the attack and is back on duty with the Oklahoma City PD. And to top it all off she is a pretty little thing. Her attacker was sentence to life w/o parole plus ten more for a weapons charge last week. I have met several ladies that could out shoot me and that I would not want to go head to head with them, and all of them were prettier than me.

[pturner67]

"Meh. What I get out of this post is that you were beaten by a girl.*Turn your testicles and man card in at the door as you go home with your tail between your legs."

Not the case at all. More about not being nearly as good as I thought I was.

Male or female, it doesn't matter. The key is training.

[pturner67]

Thanks for the advice. I will practice the drills you guys mentioned.

[briandg]

Not the case at all. More about not being nearly as good as I thought I was.

Common affliction among men. It is often accompanied by seriously underestimating your opponent.

It got me whomped really good at times during my youth. In fact, I'm sitting here at this very moment figuring that if the two of us had a match, I'd whip your little girl beaten butt.

(even though some days I'm somewhat lucky to keep a handgun on a silhouette at 50 feet. got a parkinsons like problem.)

[pax]

briandg,

You may just be having fun with it... I dunno. You could also be being a complete jerk. Hard to tell with online stuff. Benefit of the doubt says you're just playing around, so I'm going to tell you a story.

This happened not too long after I began shooting. Three of us used to go out in the woods and shoot together: two guys and myself. One of the guys, Don, was a pretty good & experienced shooter and he's really the one who got "Chris" and me out to try it. Chris and I were both new shooters.

My husband wasn't much interested in shooting. He came with us a few times, but never really caught the bug except briefly, later. I mention this just to be clear that neither Chris nor Don were romantic interests. Just long-time buddies from way back.

We'd been shooting together pretty often for awhile when Don got a bright idea: we should take a class! Cool. It would be fun. We all signed up, but for financial reasons Don dropped out, leaving Chris and me to take the class.

The class was awesome and great fun. Chris and I shot next to each other all weekend, had a lot of fun, talked on the breaks and learned a bunch.

Last drill of the weekend was a "qualification" shoot, 50 or 60 rounds that were scored and recorded. When the dust cleared, my score was a few points higher than the one Chris earned. We finished up the class, cleaned up, went home.

From that day to this, Chris has never shot with me again.

My point? It sucks to lose shooting buddies just because some fragile male ego thinks there's something wrong with a girl doing it well.

That is all.

Kathy

[briandg]

Maybe making light of it and mocking the mentality that being one upped by a woman is shameful will help to prevent that from happening.

It's kind of disappointing, from my experience, to lose shooting buddies because they can't beat me.

Fragile egos don't do well with anything. I'm figuring turner has pretty good confidence in himself, or he wouldn't have posted this in the first place. Sounds to me as if he went out, learned something that he needed to correct, and will go back to the range knowing how to work it out.

[armoredman]

My boss at the indoor range/gun shop I worked at many moons ago was about 4'11", very female, and very, VERY good with the 44 Special snub she carried.
I've been outshot by women before, never thought anything about it other than I will never know it all.
Remember the CEO of CZ-USA is named Alice, and she is a GREAT shot.

[briandg]

I told my dad once that I would never buy hornady bullets cause I won't buy ammunition made by a chick named joyce.

It seemed to make him angry. It didn't take much to make him angry.

[BlackFeather]

I've always had problems with friends who were interested in my shooting and martial arts because they were afraid to make fools of themselves. I never understand this mentality, learn all you can and practice. That's why I'm as good as I am, I've done the work. You just can't have an ego as a student, or you'll never master anything. This is why it's nice to take younger people shooting, they have no ego to hold them back.

[Ricky]

There are many things that the girls can do every bit as well as a guy, shooting doesn't take brute strength, it takes fine motor skills and women are generally better at that than men. My daughter has gone to the range with boyfriends before (with the 4" Model 19 I gave her when she moved out) As far as I know out of the 3 or 4 guys she has gone to the range with she's embarrassed all of them.
My other passion is whitewater kayaking. The upper end of the sport is mostly dominated by young men with no fear but there are a lot of girls that are very good, much better than me. Except for carrying your boat and gear around dangerous or unrunnable rapids Whitewater kayaking is a finesse sport, not brute strength. It doesn't embarrassed to shoot or paddle with women who are better than me.

[Scribe]

A few years back when you could still own a handgun in this country I took my future wife to my club. This was her second shooting outing and she had previously aquitted herself well with a 9mm and a .357. A good friend showed her his 629 and offered her a go. She accepted and he gave her six rounds which were loaded quite hot. She jumped slightly at the first round. then, keeping the muzzle down range, she turned her head and glared at my friend, turned back and put the next 5 rounds into a very acceptable group at 10 yards.

My standing in the club improved considerably and my friend cautioned me not to annoy her and later said 'You are crackers if you let this one go mate.' I'm not, so I didn't.

PS. Good to hear about the cop in Oklahoma City.

[Old Grump]

Some of my best students have been female, don't dismiss them so easily. If your manhood is threatened by being outshot by a woman than you are pretty unsure of your manhood. In 1972 I stood alongside of Kim Dyer woman national champion at the time and in 3 days I out shot her only once, '22 rapid fire' string where I out Xed her for a perfect score. Didn't bother me a bit, in fact anytime you can stand next to a pretty girl and shoot is a good day. Besides most of the other men there that year also got outshot by her, I was just one of a few hundred of the best shooters in the Army and Army Reserve.

Nothing makes me happier than to see women and girls on the range shooting, we need a lot more of them. By the way my girl shot high enough with my 1911A1 45 ACP when she was 12 years old to qualify for the Army Expert medal back in 1991. I suppose that would make a few of you nervous too.

[briandg]

I took a girl shooting with my 30-06 with super low power loads, and I've never seen anyone take to shooting like she did. She loved the power, the recoil, the noise, and she was accurate.

Very gratifying to see. She was also drop dead beautiful, and very much loved.

I think that the percentage of women who take the sport very seriously outweighs the number of men who do. I've never seen a woman who didn't approach it with real enthusiasm for getting it right.

[BRE346]

I had to teach her how to hold the gun, how to cock it and how to pull the trigger. I put her about ten feet from the 9-inch foam plate and coached her throught the first five shots. She did the reload and mixed SA and DA shots by herself. A paper cup covered the group.

When her hubby saw that plate he said, "Wow! Honey, you can have anything you want."

[stu925]

At our annual range training everyone puts up a buck and high shooter takes the pot which usually adds up to enough to buy lunch. This year it came down to a shoot of between me and another guy. Range instructor decided a 1 round shoot off was in order and it goes like this. An AR-15 on the bench, action closed on an empty chamber, inserted magazine with one round, several B-27 targets set up down range at 100yds numbered left to right. Shooter sits in a chair about 10 feet from the bench, range instructor yells out a target #, shooter jumps up, runs to the bench, charges the chamber and fires the one round from whatever position he is comfortable with. Only head shots count in the shoot off and fastest time wins. You'd be amazed at the # of people that forget to charge the chamber or flick the safety off. I ended up winning this year because the other guy forgot the safety and then got rattled when the rifle didn't go off. I really like this drill for 2 reasons: Target acquisition drills are excellent practice and anytime you can shoot under pressure will help prepare you for an emergency.

By the way, my wife can out shoot me pretty much any day of the week. She's much more methodical than I am and I have a tendency to shoot too fast. She had no bad habits when I taught her to shoot and I really tried not to teach her mine, worked out pretty well too.

Stu

[pturner67]

"Fragile egos don't do well with anything. I'm figuring turner has pretty good confidence in himself, or he wouldn't have posted this in the first place. Sounds to me as if he went out, learned something that he needed to correct, and will go back to the range knowing how to work it out."

exactly...this has nothing to do with my ego...tail between my legs was about not being anywhere near as good as I thought I was...my Mom had 20 years of gun training as a police officer...I'd actually be a little worried if she didn't do better than me