TargetTalk

Gordon, your decision to set a higher goal is to be aplauded. That is the way to raise your scores as what you are convinced you can do removes the barier of being satisfied with current performances. Once the team I was shooting on had a shrink councelling one of our shooters, The man advised one of the shooters as follows. "you should never shoor 2600 because that goal is so important to you that should you achieve it you will have no other goal to shoot for. He shot 2600, and less than a month later shot 2630. Two years later he was a 2650 shooter and never looked back. The higher goal gets you back in the training mode and thats how scores are improved. Good Shooting Bill Horton

For the initial poster, Bill Poole's advice seems right on to me. Dont buy until you visit the range and get some idea of whats being used. This will help you avoid investing in something that is too inapropriate to aid you in your quest. Welcome to the shooting sports. Good Shooting Bill Horton

Bill Poole wrote:

there are 100 million public range shooters in the US, 10,000 NRA bullseye shooters 9500 of them are inactive and about, literally, 100 international style shooters in the US... this is a VERY VERY demanding and exacting precision sport!

I am probably guilty of a little exageration and poetic license on that one, but when we hold the national championships or 3X air we have fewer than about 100 shooters in PISTOL combined men & women. slightly more in rifle.
I seriously doubt more than a coupla hundred shooters in the US consider themselves active ISSF style pistol shooters and not many more could even identify what ISSF is or accurately describe a course of fire. (...) out of 300 million people protected by the 2nd amendment....
I've been trying for years to get more folks into this game...

In contrast to this, here are the Italian UITS figures (much much lower than for Germany e.g.):

And these numbers do not pertain to members as such, but only to competition pass holders:

"L’Unione Italiana Tiro a Segno conta 71.000 tesserati, riconducibili a 273 Sezioni e Poligoni di Tiro. Di questi, 12.000 sono agonisti praticanti".

http://www.uits.it/Gestionale/AllegatiP ... _2008_.pdf page 25

Alexander

David Levene wrote: I am certainly not saying that you should only consider the real contending scores to be world class. I do feel however that you should be looking at scores that would get you into the top 50% in major matches rather than the bottom 15%.

David,
I'm feeling frisky today. Yesterday, I shot a competition match. Applying your standard: Of 26 competitiors at the Beijing Paralympics, only nine beat my rapid stage score.

Maddenlingly, For reasons I do not yet fully understand, my preciison stage is nowhere near competitive. However, my duello clearly fits your description.

Glass half full, right?

Best Regards,

Gordon ( aka world_class_duellist :)

gordonfriesen wrote:Maddenlingly, For reasons I do not yet fully understand, my preciison stage is nowhere near competitive. However, my duello clearly fits your description.

Could it be that the reduced time in the rapid makes you concentrate more.

You often find the same thing happens in Standard Pistol when people shoot better 20s than 150s. A friend of mine once explained it as "you haven't got time to panic".

Congratulations on shooting a Rapid stage that made you happy. Isn't that what we would all like to get from our shooting.

David Levene wrote:You often find the same thing happens in Standard Pistol when people shoot better 20s than 150s. A friend of mine once explained it as "you haven't got time to panic".

*Nod* I am experiencing the same repeatedly. The concentrated faster series usually have a rather small core group, with a few fliers around it. Not infrequently better than the 150 secs series.

Alexander

Alexander:

I think you might be misinterpreting some of the otehr posters suggestions.

Depending on what your assumptions are about "what constitutes a proper shot process" the higher scores in series where you have less time to think is either

a) counter intuitive (less time to "aim" is higher scores? Preposterous!)

or

b) Obvious (less time to aim = higher scores; as aiming is not the objective here at all)

Folks,

In Duello, I don`t really aim at all. My attention is completely caught up with alignment and trigger and follow through. The target rings are so big and forgiving. The precision five ring fits in the rapid eight, so even fairly gross flyers are not fatal.

What surprises me is that so many of the sport shooters have better precision stages than rapid. As stated, my rapid is now competitive, but I don`t come anywhere near the precision scores of those with rapid scores comparable to mine.

I suspect most of these people are essentially AP shooters who pass the bulk of their time practicing slow fire. They probably do not feel comfortable with the very approximate aim required for rapid, and are likewise accustomed to a longer squeeze time.

My problem with precision would be the mirror image of that. I have to learn to abort when the aiming point is off, and especially, I have to learn to take a little longer squeezing without chicken(finger)ing out at the end.

Best Regards,

Gordon