080826 South Florida Defensive Carbine Match at Markham Park Target Range in west Broward County

We held another South Florida Defensive Carbine match on 26 August 2008 from ~19:00 to 21:00 at the Markham Park Target Range in western Broward County Florida.  The match consisted of three stages and we had 18 shooters in attendance.  Each stage included a transition from rifle to pistol and the rifles used were all AK or AR variants.

Stage One

Course Description

This stage consisted of five (5) cardboard targets aligned along the left side of the range, with each target partially obscured by a non-threat target.  Sitting perpendicular to this line was a plate rack with five (5) 8" diameter steel plates that fall when struck.  The course of fire was to advance towards the plate rack, with the cardboard targets to the left, engaging the cardboard targets on the move and finishing off by dropping the 5 plates at the end.  The shooters began the stage with only 11 rounds in their carbines, but all shots on the steel must come from the pistol as the steel is not rifle-rated.

Intent

The intent of this stage was twofold.  The first was to force shooters to remember their holdovers at close range even when on the move.  Many of the non-threat targets were partially obscuring the -0 center section of the body of the target such that if the shooter did not remember to hold over they would hit the non-threat.  This proved to be a valuable lesson as many shooters had hits on non-threats on this stage, and in reviewing the targets the shots could all be seen in the upper section indicating a failure to properly hold over.

The second was to force a transition on the move, and not only a transition to handgun, but a transition to a different type of target; going from cardboard silhouettes to steel plates.  Unfortunately, many of the shooters reached the end of the line at or about when they should be performing the transition, negating the need to transition on the move.  Many shooters, however, missed their first several shots on the plates until they found their rhythm and then dropped a plate with one shot each.  As an example, I fired 5 shots at the first plate before hitting it and then knocked them all down with one shot each.

Gaming

To properly "game" this stage, the shooter would advance slowly and ensure that they got two shots to the head of each paper target, leaving them with one spare rifle round at the end that must be dumped into the final head before the transition.  If done correctly the shooter would arrive at the stop stick at the same time as they empty the carbine, allowing them to perform the transition and engage the plates while standing still.

Stage Two

Course Description

This stage consisted of four (4) cardboard targets to the left, a steel silhouette with a swinging plate beside the head in the center, and four (4) pepper poppers to the right.  The course of fire was to begin at the left and engage all of the targets from left to right while standing still.  Two shots were required on the steel silhouette and one shot was required on the attached swinging plate.  The shooters began the stage with only 11 rounds in their carbines and all shots on the pepper poppers were required to come from the pistol as the poppers are not rifle-rated.

Intent

The intent of this stage was simply to work on the transition to pistol while static.  The targets were all no more than 15 yards away and as such did not present much challenge.

Gaming

To properly "game" this stage the shooter would take their time on the four cardboard targets to ensure that they could make two good hits on each, allowing them to have one shot left over to hit the swinging plate after engaging the silhouette.  The transition to pistol would then come at a logical break in the stage and only the large pepper poppers would remain for the handgun.

Stage Three

Course Description

The targets were arranged in a straight line at approximately 10-15 yards from the firing line.  The firing line was indicated by two barrels and was parallel to the array of targets.  Each target stand had one high target and one low target.  The shooter started at the barrel on the left, moving to the right, and engaged all of the top targets.  After rounding the opposite barrel the shooter then returned while engaging all of the bottom targets.  The shooter began with a carbine loaded with 11 rounds, and a spare 11 round carbine magazine.  If (when) the carbine ran empty the shooter was required to first perform a speed reload to the second carbine magazine, and then transition to pistol.

Intent

The original design of this stage was for the targets to be shot with the rifle to be at >15 yards, and the targets to be shot with pistol at <10 yards.  Due to the limited number of shooters for setup, limited number of target stands for the match as a whole, and space limits on the range due to flooding, the design had to be compressed as described above.  The intent of the original design was to reinforce that speed reloads may be better for longer range targets while a transition may be more applicable to short range targets.  With the change in design this was somewhat lost.

However, this proved to be the hardest stage by far with only one shooter managing to neutralize all of the targets.  For a stage that was intended to be the "easy" stage of the night, this one proved to be the match challenge.

Gaming

As shown by the one shooter that shot the stage clean, the key to this stage was to take it slow.  At 30 seconds per Failure to Neutralize, having five FTNs (as I did) put you out of the running very quickly.  Had I taken even twice as long to shoot the stage I still would have saved 120 seconds off of my final score.  This was one of those stages that looked easy until you tried it.  It also paid not to shoot the stage first, since many shooters thought they shot the stage very well only to be surprised when they walked forward to view the targets and found their FTNs.