Adaptive Defensive Shooting Summit

Time to put up or shut up

Way back in June I posted about training for the Adaptive Defensive Shooting Summit.  I saw the event posted on Facebook by the organizer and adaptive shooter Trevor Baucom.  If you would like to learn more about Trevor, you can read his story here. From the beginning I emailed him and got a lot of help making this work out for me.

Training Day – Not the movie

The event was October 23-24 at the Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH.  When I first arrived we all went to a big tent for introductions and safety meeting.  We then split up into 2 groups.  My group went for a class to learn to administer first aid and how to use a tourniquet in the event of an accident.  Side note there weren’t any accidents. After that finished we went up to the top training area where we were introduced to how the competition would work.  We first did dry fire training so the instructors could evaluate where we were at in our skill level.  Then we did live fire training to become familiar with the commands during competition and also to classify our skill level from novice to expert.  I am pretty sure I was in the novice area but I never found out for sure.  I had only shot about 800 rounds or so before the competition.  That may sound like a lot but the top shooters had definitely shot in the thousands of rounds.

Demo Time

Another really cool part of the training day was getting to demo guns from a lot of major manufacturers.  There were representatives from Smith & Wesson, Canik, Sig Sauer, Colt, and Glock.  I worked my way down the entire line and tried every one of them.  Hey why not? Free ammo and practice was definitely a good idea.  Ammo is like gold right now.  It was amazing to see the amount of support the industry gave to this event.  Thousands of dollars and man hours went into pulling this off and it only cost $95 per person to attend. That even included meals.

Competition Day

We were divided up into 7 squads. There were 8 stages to the competition. The eighth stage was the classifier which we shot in training.  Each stage had 2 strings of shooting.  This means that we would shoot one string stop setup for the next and shoot again. Each squad started on the stage that matched their squad number so my squad started at 7.  At each string an instructor would stand behind us giving us commands.  They would start with load and make ready . This meant put the bullet magazine into the gun and pull the slide back to load a round. Then place the gun back in our holster.  They would then say “Is the shooter ready?” We would respond shooter ready.  The next command is standby and when the beeper goes off its time to shoot the sequence as fast and accurate as you can. I approached it as a learning experience knowing I wasn’t going to be anywhere near the fastest.  There were a few people with sponsor shirts on. It was pretty obvious who was going to rock it.

At the very end we had ammo left so we did a person to person competition.  We had to shoot 7 steel targets before our competitor.  I got past the first round but my friend Ed Clark smoked me in the second round.  He also happened to take 8th overall so I don’t feel too bad.  He is really good.

My friends Mark and Beka of Team Zespy showed up around 11 am thinking they would be there in plenty of time to see some of the stages.  Little did I know we were going be on the last stage by then unfortunately.  It was awesome they got to be there for the afternoon though and see some of the person to person competition. I appreciate all the support and help they gave me.  Mark even came up with a way to mount my holster and magazine holder on my wheelchair.

This is not video of that part of the competition.  Here I am demoing a rifle but its the same targets we shot during the competition.

Stage 1

All of the stages were designed to represent a scenario in which you may have to defend yourself against a perpetrator.  Stage one was called Terror at the park. In this scenario we engaged 9 targets over 2 strings.

Stage 2

This stage was a backyard bbq.  We engaged 4 targets over 2 stages.  One of the targets was a cutout of a cougar which we had to fire on 5 times.

Stage 3

This one is called swing by the ATM. Here we had to either shoot from behind a car door with it open or from the seat with it closed.  I chose to shoot with the car door open. This was my most accurate stage of the day.  I put 2 rounds in the same hole and then 3 almost into the same hole.

Stage 4

This one was a road block. We were engaging targets while hiding behind a car.  First from the front then from the back.

Stage 5

The next stage was called 21 gun salute.  This stage had 3 sets of seven steel targets.  They were painted in red while and blue.  We had to shoot six 6-inch targets then engage a full size target which would fall over.  The middle set had the full size target placed in front of some of the small targets.  I did pretty well on this stage.  I think I only missed 3 out of all 21.  This stage was to honor a man named Mike Critser.

Stage 6

This was the coolest stage in my opinion. We were shooting in the indoor range for these next 2 stages.  Stage 6 was under black light with all the other lights off.  There were 3 body targets with a large yellow circle and in between those were 6 steel targets painted bright orange.  This was super fun! I did pretty well on this stage too.

Stage 7

Awards

The awards were unbelievable. The sponsors had donated so many firearms that they drew names for the volunteers to get some and then all of the competitors got to choose one based on their ranking in the competition. I ended up with a certificate for a Ruger Mark IV .22.  I am hoping to pick that up this week.  The swag bags were amazing too. So much stuff and even just the bag it came in was awesome.

The first place competitor for whom I failed to get a name, shot all 8 stages in 96 seconds.  That is 102 rounds in 96 seconds. Doing the math that is ..94 seconds per shot.  It was almost impossible to even hear the separation between rounds.  He was amazing. Something to shoot for pun intended.

Time to practice

As I said before I knew I wasn’t going to place really high.  I think I might have been around 20th or so but that’s ok.  I got to learn from some world class instructors,  I met a lot of amazing people.  In the end I found something I really enjoy doing and I think with some time I could be really good at it. I can’t wait for next year.