Saved the Fake Baby

I have been known to pull the trigger on a loaded gun about a billion times in my life. More is better  as long as return fire is not coming back at you, right? I enjoy competitive shooting weather in sanctioned matches or at the range playing the equivalent of horse with guns. As I am fond of saying, anyone can shoot the center out of a defenseless paper target. But I digress, as you can tell.

This year has been weird. I only shot three sanctioned matches. I will blame it on having two knee surgeries in the last 15 months and not on a lack of desire or declining skill, although my eyesight has unimproved.

19 staples holding everything inside the 16" incision

The other surgery




The tactical walker got a lot of use this year.

The first two matches I shot this year be like...hey dude you ever done this before?  And the results were less than exciting, to me at least.

So I have a seventh surgery coming up in December (hopefully it will be the last one) and the plan is to shoot in November and then not shoot again until next year or basically when the morphine and rehab run out.

My mindset going into the November match was to shoot well enough to feel good about things. Let me give you a little clue, competitive shooting is more about thinking your way through a given course of fire than it is about shooting. I have had days where I blasted my way through a match to record the quickest raw time, only to have penalties and misses bring me back down to mid pack. It is always a balance between speed and accuracy.

 

As my fearless squad of shooters assembled for the walk through on our first stage, I took one look at the baby carrier and realized this was going to a one handed stage. One handed shooting can be intimidating to those who don't train that way, however one handed shooting is part of the way I train. The scenario had us walking with our precious plastic kid when we are suddenly attacked by a gang of stationary cardboard thugs. At the start we are to draw our gun from concealment and engage the limited view targets with 2-shots each, move to cover, engaging targets as we go, all the while toting the fake youngin in our weak hand.

I was moving through the stage getting good hits, performed my reload flawlessly and needed to move to another position of cover to pop the last two targets. All of a sudden, a massive adrenaline dump occurred and I felt I could cover the last 15 feet or so in a blaze of speed. With baby in tow, my mind began to send signals my body was going to have a difficult time implementing.

And yet, my being tried to comply. Mind you, I am running with a loaded gun in one hand and ten pounds of fake baby stuff in the other, on unstable terrain. Guess what happened? Yep, I landed on my bionic leg and then on my non bionic chin. As I was falling, in s l o w - m o t  i o n, I recall reminding myself to not drop the baby. Instinct and training dictated that my trigger finger rest on the frame of the gun and to keep the muzzle pointed down range. Safety first is a good way to live.

I gathered the poor kid and my senses to polish off the last two perps in tactical sequence. It was then I realized how much everything in and on my body hurt. Forget the ego, it was on life support.

So this whole event must have knocked some sense into me, because I shot well the rest of the match, in fact decent enough to win my class (Enhanced Service Pistol). I believe had I not taken the tumble, the over all match win would have been mine. "I could have been a contenda". Oh wait I was but finished juuuussst a bit outside the top spot.

SSP - Mark Walsh

ESP - Joe Johnston

CDP - Andrew Casavant

CCP - Neil Munson

The moral of this story if you save the baby, good things will come your way....maybe. Don't quote me on that, but it might happen.

Be safe.

PS- I drove the truck to get there listening to AC/DC, JJ Grey & Mofro and Doyle Bramhall II. May have to repeat that cycle, not that I am superstitious or anything. Carry on.