Sunday IDPA Practise

My first IDPA club level match is approaching inexorably but slowly.  This weekend I set up two different courses of fire.  Tactical shotgun courses are proving to be wildly popular with our group.  The first COF was two strings of fire.  The first string was four targets moving to cover with a shotgun loaded to division capacity (slugs).  There were two common mistakes. The most common by far was stopping to fire instead of continuing to move.  The second was to work the targets from left to right  rather than engaging the targets in tactical priority (T1, T2, T4, T3).

The first scenario 'Port of Call' by the blog author.

I'm a fan of Larry Corriea's Monster Hunter series and a a saying one of the character's in the books uses rings true when I'm shooting courses of fire. FLEXIBLE MINDS.  One of the cardinal skills is having a mind flexible enough to identify priority targets yet still able to use skills based on muscle memory.  I find it difficult to get into the zone on complex courses of fire.  On a simple course of fire I do very well.  Throw in a bit of a wrench and I generally screw up by the numbers.

The second course of fire had a design flaw which I ended up correcting. We had three barriers and seven targets.  The shooter would start at the left most barrier armed with a shotgun loaded to division capacity and service T7 throught T1, while transitioning from P3 to P2 to P1.  The flaw was in the muzzle safe points for the range and in the placement of the barriers.  By changing one barrier from an east-west orientation to a north-south orientation we forced the shooter to conform to the muzzle safe points and to provide sufficient cover to engage the middle targets without being exposed to the T1.  The limitation on our range is that we may only fire into the side berms at forty-five degrees, I use that limit as the muzzle safe points 

Second course of fire 'Flexible Minds'.

I managed to shoot well generally although I have a terrible charlie-horse on my right bicep from not placing the shotgun correctly for a couple of shots.  Of course I was shooting slugs at the time.