Click here to download the catalog as a PDF file. To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. BETTERSHOOTING Dave Anderson Moving & Shooting n the early days of practical shooting competition the ability to shoot while moving wasn’t too important. Course designers used shooting boxes, usually about three feet square, defined by 2x4s. Putting a foot down outside the box while firing resulted in procedural penalties. We’d shoot from one box, reload while running, stop and shoot again, reload while running and it went on. It wasn’t a bad system, and the rules were the same for everybody so it wasn’t unfair. It did limit creativity, and sometimes forced shooters to hold fire even on close targets until they reached the next box. Not too practical for a sport which has “practical” in its title. Currently course designers try and place as few restrictions as possible on shooters, without compromising safety. Instead of several small shooting boxes the entire shooting area is defined by boundaries. Instead of shooters running around in plain view of targets, vision barriers are used to separate target arrays and define safe angles of fire. In essence the challenge is “Start here, engage the targets as you see them, solve the problem.” Club course designers really should attend the USPSA Nationals regularly, even if not competing or officiating. Or at least get a copy of the match book from USPSA headquarters. Not necessarily to copy the stages, but to get a sense of how good stages and matches are put together. i Chris’ aggressive “forward” shooting position still hold together when he moves and shoots. Max Michel’s less aggressive, heads-up stance almost looks like he’s relaxed as he moves. Distance? Limber And Springy I H learned shooting on the move from Mike Plaxco and Rob Leatham back in the mid-1980s, although with stage design of the era there wasn’t much need. Not so today. To be competitive, at the higher levels at least, you must be able to shoot on the move. The shooters shown here, Max Michel Jr. and Chris Tilley, have both won national championships. Incidentally Michel recently left the U.S. Army after ten years in the famed U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit and will be working with SIG SAUER. The technique is similar to methods developed by video camera operators (at least before the Steadicam was invented). Keep the legs bent so they act as shock absorbers, while the top half of the body remains relatively still. Many shooters take shorter steps than they would normally. I wouldn’t get too hung up on this as it depends on terrain as well as individual build and style. The important thing is to keep the legs bent and to keep the leg muscles limber and “springy.” It’s the difference between jumping off a chair onto a hard floor with the legs locked and rigid (ouch!) or landing with the legs flexing and bending to absorb the shock. Even while moving, shooters have their individual style. Chris Tilley has an “aggressive” weight-forward stance, even when shooting from a fixed position. For both of these shooters, the upper body position while moving is no different than it would be while standing. Sometimes it helps to think of the body as two “systems,” like a tank — the bottom half moves and absorbs the shock of movement, the top turret remains steady and aligns the gun. ow far can you shoot accurately while moving? As with anything it gets better with practice. It’s a skill worth developing, certainly for the competition shooter and I believe it’s a useful skill for any handgunner. Start out with full targets really close (as in 2-3 yards close) and develop your technique. Top shooters engage even partial targets at 10-15 yards. At the 2008 Nationals there was a target partially covered by a noshoot, with a shooting lane extending towards it. The closer you ran to it the more of the target became visible, but the sooner you engaged it the better your time was. It was an excellent risk/reward challenge, one where shooters who worked on shooting on the move could really pick up points. Some shooters ran up on the target pretty darn fast, but I didn’t see any who could run faster than a bullet. Something to think about there. * 22 WWW.AMERICANHANDGUNNER.COM • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009