Tropical Sport Shooting Association held a shotgun/pistol match after the regularly scheduled 4th-Saturday IDPA match at Markham Park Target Range on Saturday 27 August 2011.  The shotgun/pistol match began promptly at 1 PM.  Special thanks go to Oscar and Alan for making it work with the time we had available and in that heat.

The match consisted of two stages.  Stage One required the shooter to move from right to left, beginning at a pair of vertical barricades, then past a table, then to a VTAC 9-hole barricade.  At the walls the shooter was to engage a collection of pepper poppers and bowling pins, then move left and deposite an empty shotgun on the table before moving on to the VTAC barricade and engaging three targets, each from a different hole, with the pistol.  Stage Two moved from left to right and began with the shooter engaging a series of pepper poppers and knock-down targets followed by three paper targets to be engaged with slugs before moving to the right, again depositing an empty shotgun on a table, and continuing on to a vertical wall.  The shooter then drew his pistol from behind the wall, engaged two targets from cover, two on the move, and two from behind the cover of a barrel.

My gear consisted of a Remington 870 police trade-in with 18” rifle-sighted barrel, poly stock, and a 1-shot extension for a total of 5 in the tube.  No sling was required.  My handgun was my Glock 19 with Boresight Solutions grip reduction carried in a Raven Concealment holster and magazines carried in two Ready Tactical magazine pouches all held on my Jones Tactical 1.5” belt.

I have not owned a shotgun in 5+ years after the previous one I owned was stolen from my house in a break in.  The shotgun just never really interested me when I have an AR to grab instead.  However I’ve recently become interested in trying different platforms as I find that often the lessons learned on one reveal things you never thought about with another.  If nothing else, trigger time is trigger time, and you learn why you preferred the other platform to begin with.

I came in 15th out of 17 shooters.  However I had a total of 6 FTNs for a total of 180 seconds of penalty, plus three procedurals for a total of 30 seconds of penalty there.  Subtracting 210 seconds from my score would put me 4th place overall.  Most of my FTNs were pistol shots, and I have made no secret of the fact that I need to work on my pistol shooting skills.

Lessons Learned:

• The factory rifle sights on the 870 suck.  I just plain can’t find the front post.  I thought it was a problem just being inside when I was dry-firing at home before the match, but they really are hard to find in all lighting conditions as this match was outside in the bright sun.  I have a set of Trijicon tritium front and rear on order to try out.  I’d rather the rear wasn’t tritium but I will try it and see, and can always black over the vials.

• The factory length of pull is too damn long.  I of course “knew” this going in, but sometimes it takes getting a beating to be sure.  There is just no good reason for the factory stock to be this long.  My plan is to cut down for a 13” overall length of pull including a Pachmayr Decelerator recoil pad.  I have a set of wood stocks, stock and forend, and plan to cut the wood.

• Shotguns DO malfunction, even pumps. Unbeknownst to me, the cheap bird shot one gets at Walmart and similar is known to cause issues sticking in chambers.  I had this happen, probably no thanks to the ammunition being 10+ years old, on Stage One and frankly was unsure what to do until a friend who was scorekeeping hollered “mortar it like an AR”.  Problem solved.  So two lessons learned here: shotguns malfunction, and you can clear a stuck case just like an AR.

• Carry more ammunition than you think you will need. One of my FTN was due to a pepper popper that I didn’t even engage.  I simply ran out of ammo.  I only carried enough ammo on the first stage I shot (Stage Two) to hit all of the targets available to me plus one or two extra shells.  With the difficulty I had in finding the iron sights, and the subsequent misses, I simply ran out of ammo.

• Reloads from a pocket suck. I am still debating what to do about this one.  On the one hand many people seem to like the 4- and 6-shell belt carriers, which are fine I suppose for competition.  But I prefer to utilize my competitive shooting to get better for potential defensive application, so I’m unlikely to have one of these widgets on hand.  I loaded from pockets at the match though and it was agonizingly slow.  I believe I will need to research sidesaddle shell carriers and experiment with that solution for a bit, but I’m also planning on adding a two-shot belt carrier to try out in matches while I learn the platform.  Loading form the pocket was an impediment to my learning given the stage I’m at with the gun.