Serious question:

What types of action sports do you compete in?

Yeah, it's at the range where I work.

This comment should win Arfcom if the not the internet today.

Honestly I don’t notice much downtime because when your busy scoring or resetting, fixing someone else’s gun, fixing your gun, fixing stage props, etc, while bs-ing with a bunch of cool guys and gals who aren’t leftist retards, the day goes by in a hurry. Where else can you rub shoulders with Jerry Miculek, Taran Butler, or Lanny Barnes?

Same with autocross or track days, when you’re not driving and your car isn’t broken (e.g. you brought a Miata or a Corvette) you can sit in a chair under a tent and whine, or get up and go help fix someone’s BMW or Porsche, shag cones/work corners, man the grill, there’s always something to do.

Anybody skinny involved?

I think Jerry Miculek is the only one.

I have a VEPR12 and a 20 round mag like in the OP.

I made my 590 pump go as fast as it could for a few years but really had no chance against the semi auto shotguns. Our club has an MGM spinner now and a pump with a cylinder choke would never get that done.

It took quite a bit if time and effort to get the VEPR to run reliably so it wasn’t quite a turn key soulution.

I may use the pump again if the round count is reasonable ans if the stage doesn’t have a spinner.

The retched spinner target is one of the things that, IMHO, had done a lot of damage to 3-gun.

The spinner is easy if you don’t suck and can actually hit what you want to hit when it needs to be hit.

Yes.

But adding the element of “when” to shoot a threat target is dumb.

The Army Marksmanship Unit could stand to eat a sandwich or 2.

What BOTW match is that? I shoot just about all the matches at BOTW.

Its not a threat target...its metal plates.  
Oh noes  3 gun is going to get you killed on the streets

This will prove to be invaluable when I’m training to repel an attack from spinning targets.

I kinda want to put a bayonet on my Benelli M2's 12rd mag tube.

I'd go to open with my VEPR-12 but I didnt spend all that time learning to quad load with both hands to just become a quitter

I do love 3 gun, but to accurately depict 3 gun, it should be a picture of people standing with a roll of pasters, waiting to paste targets until it is eventually their turn to shoot for a couple of minutes.

Gun Golf is Sporting Clays... Which is an absolute blast.

Four hours of waiting, two minutes and 15 seconds of shooting.

Winner is determined by who has the gayest and least practical shotgun.

Kinda how I feel about 3Gun as well.

When the retarded MD puts a match together with more shotgun rounds than rifle - you know it has officially gone too far.

3Gun is the ultimate gear queer sport. You will never, ever be competitive without the "right stuff".

IDPA/USPSA you could show up with a bone stock Glock 19 and expect to do okay.

In 3 gun, if you don't have a shotgun you can quad load or a AK variant, you're going to lose.

Pffft he cant even drive that car to go get groceries.

Ever do a 12-25 round mag dump on at bunch of steel with a shotgun, its a lot of fun.  Its a game, you have tools for the game whether that's a cartoonish sized carbon fiber driver or a ridiculous tube on a shotgun.

This is why you are one of my favorites here.

You could show up to USPSA with a Glock 19 just as easy and expect to do okay. You apparently have never read my "fuck IDPA matches rant", nor seen my "fuck this arbitrary bullshit" match designs

Like taking your kid to a swim meet. I hated those things...

At least at Cola Warrior, we have 30 mins or so of running and a fire to sit around.  Oh, we also heckle each other during their runs.  I don't think 3Gun would like that too much.

Watch it these days, it is won and lost by the shooter with the best Quad Load skills.  The targets are so easy for most of the competitors, the never miss.

Make the shooting harder for the shooters, and ditch the quad load race.

What do you have against Taran?

300 yards isn't long range.

Yeah stuff like that's part of why I stopped.

TTIs camp followers are usually pretty skinny.

Pistol and rifle. Trap& skeet as well. I do comps to refine practical skills, not find ways to win trophies or cheat the system with underpowered loads or carrying a drum magazine so I don’t ever have to worry about practical weapon handling.

Huh... 400 to 500 yard rifle shots from a moving platform... 100 yard plus offhand slug targets... 25 to 35 yard 4x8 pistol steel.... Boring stuff like that.

I dont think you go to the same match's I do. Its not easy.... It actually sucks when your developing your skill set but with practice you can make it look easy.

Some of the best hilarity I've seen have been pistol stages at a precision rifle match.

It's sorely obvious most of them are single discipline shooters.

That’s a little vague... 3-Gun, USPSA, IDPA... things like that?

Also, Trap and Skeet isn’t an action sport, but ok.

Nope, not the same stuff I have seen.

I have seen short courses, snow fence netting and such with runs beng less than 3 mins long.

Maybe the 87 billion YouTube videos of 3G don't match what they do at the matches or you have found a rare outlet.

I may or may not have see video evidence of such skinnyness.

How many matches have you been shooting?

I used to compete in high school in .22 matches that had “hunting gun” style rules.

At the time I thought it was lame that I couldn’t use a tricked out 10/22 with every gadget from the catalog. But age has revealed the wisdom of those rules. No super big barrels, overall weight limits, 3 or 4 lbs trigger pull limit, no adjustable stocks, no butt hook, blade or bead front sight (no diopters), etc.

Personally, I observed 1 to decide if it would be something of interest to me.  It was exactly as I described.

My son and I are dipping our toes into IDPA because we don't want to mess with the SG portion, along with Run and Gun events.  There is a Run and Gun in Ga each month that I am going to do, the last one I could attend happened very close to the CW SE3 weekend and I have to keep my travel costs down.  Headed to Ga for a Run and Gun next month it it all lines up.

I can shoot skeet and trap on base, it can be challenging and I have the guns for it but I don't want to dive into the quad load game.

Most good matches do have some easy hammer stuff to keep the match fun but also incorporate a coup!e "fu@#" me targets in every stage to keep it interesting for the higher level guys. Shotgun often consists of hiding targets or some sort of mental game to screw you up... Loading fast on the move is a given.

Im lucky in that the i get to shoot a number of major matches a year and the club i shoot monthly in michigan has 3 or 4 of the old 3 gun nation shoot off pro's making the stages.

Not that kind of threat, not trying to get all tactical on you.  

I was referring to a threat target as opposed to a “non-threat” or “no-shoot” target.  Moving/swinging targets or no-shoots are a good incorporation of timing.  Swingers are not.

They’re only not a good incorporation of timing if you suck at it.

Don’t practice the things that you’re already good at.

Pretty sure he's talking about my match.

I'm the MD of an annual LE/MIL only multi-gun match that brings in competitors from all over the US. It's really a 2-gun match, but we always have one stage that starts with a prop 870 initially used to breach a door then engage some shotgun plates before transitioning to a pistol and/or rifle. We provide ammo and bring four shotguns to keep the stage running. Two shotguns will keep the stage running smoothly, but we always start with four since we're often down to two by the end of the match due to parts breakages.

Here's a competitor's video of last year's match (shotgun stage starts at 5:56) that I found on youtube (paper targets on that stage require 2 body / 1 head shot to neutralize):



80% of our competitors have never and will never shoot another match besides ours, so we tailor our stages for them knowing that it will end up being a hose-fest for the top shooters. We've actually changed our equipment rules every year to try to accommodate the most amount of people, but honestly most of them don't really care--they just want to shoot, have fun, and test their skills as this is the only place most of them get to shoot like this.

Sorry, even in the gun games I’d like to adhere to some degree of practicality, and swingers just aren’t.  Learning to shoot one won’t help you with anything except shooting spinners.

Ballistic equivalent of a stupid bar bet.

Those happen,

It's funny because those guys will adjust their gear accordingly, or show you how to manipulate that weapon.

I think 3-gun is  a blast.  I run heavy, and will probably run tac-ops once or twice this year to see if not reloading pistol so often or having a semi shotgun helps my overall.

Go get a +9 tube for whatever semi auto 12 you have and you can run borrow enough shell caddies or a chest rig from someone.

Some stages suck because of all the shotgun, but you know what, you'll learn to reload that shotgun in case you ever NEED to reload that shotgun fast.

Ah, OK. I was thinking small local matches, I guess.

To all the people whining about gear keep in mind that there are different divisions for people with different gear.
There are divisions for those with scopes and those without. There are divisions for those with Saigas and those with pump guns.

Stop worrying about the mean fat guy in the jersey who has a VEPR. He is in open class and his score is not comparable to yours.
You are welcome to come to a match with an 870 and load it out of your pockets. You can shoot against yourself and not worry about the "gamers".

Do you really think the only difference between you and the guy that wins is a +4 extension and a quad load caddie?
If you want to be as fast as him spend 80 bucks on a caddie and set aside an hour a day to practice loading.
After a year of that you will be the fastest shotgunner at your club.

If you cant be bothered to stop worrying what other people are doing and you won't put in the time to git gud then don't come to the match. You are welcome to sit by yourself at the other bay and shoot off the bench all day.
The best shotgunner at our club uses a Benelli Nova that he bought for 300 bucks and he has been known to mop up the open shooters at times.

Magazine extensions are not a significant advantage because regardless of how many rounds you can fit in it you can only start with 10 in the gun. The longer the magazine is, the more unwieldy the gun gets.
I get by just fine with a 500 dollar Mossberg 930. The only thing I have done to it was opening the loading port with a dremel.

The easiest way to get to the front of the line for the prize table at my club is to shoot in our "production" division.

1. A rifle with irons or a non-magnified optic

2. A pump action shotgun with no optics or feeding devices (magazines or speed loaders)

3. No more than 10 rounds loaded in the handgun, no compensator, no magwell, no handgun optic.

None of the good shooters even bother with this division so its basically a free win.

This picture perfectly summarizes OP's thread.

I get that competition isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It really sucks to spend a lot of cash on stuff and then go get your ass kicked, but if you stick with it and learn you’ll eventually be the one doleing out the ass kickings. If you’re not a churlish sniveling whiny-pants you’ll make some great friends too.

As @sdc360 said it is an apex sport. I competed casually in action pistol, sporting clays (shot in leagues), and smallbore silhouette for many years before I made it to 3 gun. In one stage at a match I have to incorporate things I learned in all of those sports. All of those disciplines are exceedingly difficult on their own, I claim no mastery of any of them.

Little things make a big difference, here’s a few examples.

Like having your shotgun fit properly. You’ll suck at clays with a poorly fit shotgun, in 3 gun it’s worse because of the speed you shoot at and unhit aerial penalties suck. Break out those shims and if you have to a saw and new recoil pad to get LOP right.

Pistols, I prefer to shoot 9mm with a 124 gr bullet loaded to +P velocities, yeah it recoils harder and follow ups are slower but it shoots flatter at distance, and pounds down steel and spinners a lot better than Win or Fed bulk pack. I hate hours behind the loading bench but the results are worth it. 40 S&W is great too, a USPSA limited gun will kick ass.

I came to silhouette after sporting clays, gun fit shouldn’t be ignored with rifles. Because in silo you get your five rounds and that’s it, I learned to make my shots count. In 3 gun, I’ve seen guys standing offhand with $2k rifles with a $1k LPVO chuck half a dozen rounds at a 10” plate at 50 yards, and then do the same to the 8” plate set next to it at the same distance. With irons I dropped both plates one for one, because I took the time to take a stable position, properly control my breathing, and run the trigger right. I had the lowest limited time on that stage, and beat several tac-ops and open shooters too.

Sports like 3 gun are fun because they aren’t easy. It is a difficult test of everything. You have to be good at it all, from marksmanship, to gunsmithing, to ammo manufacturing. You have to have the funds for it. You also need to be flexible and in shape, all other things being equal, a fit guy is going to beat the fatass. It is the apex gun sport, and I’m addicted to it. I’m not great at it yet, working on it. If you want to challenge yourself come join me.

Competition is awesome. Like 2 gun.

Shooting bird shot at plates at 10 yards is not hard. It's arguably the easiest shooting "challenge". Does anyone but the biggest newbie ever miss?

On top of that - shotgun loading Speed is a money game.

That's why 3G is inferior to 2 gun

Yep. All you need is a 200 dollar caddie and you will instantly be loading 8 shells in less than 4 seconds. Has nothing to do with hundreds of hours of  dryfire practice or anything like that.