At a Tournament

Bullseye shooting is a competitive sport, hopefully you are involved in it to compete at tournaments. The first thing you have to understand is that the other guys can't beat you but you can beat yourself!

This is an individual sport where the burden of performance is on you and you only. If you fail to perform at your best, then you have beaten yourself. There are a number of shooters that experience anxiety so bad that their hearts race and they feel flush. It is very hard to shoot with that going on in your mind so you have to manage the experience. I have been lucky so far in that regard, when I go to a match I am pretty calm. I am doing it for fun and challenge, but not for life and death so I try to keep it in perspective.

I do a fairly good job of preparing for a tournament so that I have as few problems as possible and I advise that you do the same.

I always try to shoot the day before so that I can make sure all is well. I clean my guns first, oil them up, and shoot like I always do in practice and training. I go through my training targets (10 ring black), I shoot a National Match Course with the MP3 player doing the range commands. I pay extra attention to if anything feels different with the guns or myself. After shooting I leave the guns dirty and I honestly can't say one way or the other if my guns shoot better squeaky clean or 100 rounds of dirty. In my mind I think they shoot better dirty so that is what I do.

I load up special ammo for the match. I use brand new brass just to eliminate that as a potential source of problems. I also shoot some of those rounds on the day prior to match make sure they are good. During the loading process I will go through each bullet and inspect if for dings and dents and check the bottoms to make sure they are flat and consistent across the surface. If I have time I will weigh each of the bullets but only if I have time to kill and I am bored. I load them on the press in the usual way and inspect them again as I put them in the box.

Packing for a match is something I do pretty quickly and have been lucky most of the time. One time I forgot to pack 22 ammo which makes it really hard to score any points without ammo. Luckily shooters are good guys and I was able to buy some ammo at the match. After that I try to spend a bit more time packing. I also now carry twice as much ammo as I need for the match. Perhaps someday I can help another shooter who is suffering from the same mistake I made.

I go through the gun box and range bag to make sure I have everything I need to support the shooting of the guns. I don't have a written list, but I should. I know I was going to write that down on my to do list, but never did. I need to spend some time making lists so I don't forget things.

I make sure I have a rain suit. In the summer of 11, I shot 3 tournaments in the rain. I normally don't wear a hat so I make sure I have a couple with me to help keep the rain off my glasses. Having an extra came in handy at one match where a fellow didn't have one so I lent it to him - he was grateful which helped keep me in a positive mood. I make sure I have glass cleaner and dry towels to clean my glasses, I hate looking through dirty glasses and it is one distraction that drives me nuts. I also bring two types of footwear, boots and sneakers. The boots are good for wet and/or muddy ranges and the sneakers are just plain comfortable so I prefer them.

I pack a cooler with water, being dehydrated is not conducive to good shooting! I also try to pack some food, nothing special, just something to keep me from feeling hungry. Most 2700 matches have a lunch break so I don't need to pack a lot of food, just enough to tame the hunger pains. I like beef jerky and beef sticks so I usually bring that. Along with that, I also keep some toothpicks handy. I hate having food stuck in my teeth and I will obsess with getting it out. If I deal with that while shooting I am assured of a major distraction!

I try to get to the range ahead of time by at least 1 hour. That gives me plenty of time to acclimate to the range and the people. I hate rushing and I am sure it won't contribute to shooting a high score. I talk with the shooters, have some fun bantering a bit and generally do what I can to relax.

Knowing what I shoot on a regular basis, my goal at the match is to do the same thing and shoot at the level I normally shoot. I don't try anything unique or different to try and gain an extra point. I just do what I normally do and let the chips fall where they may. This also helps me to keep calm and collected throughout the match. I also do not take it all that serious. If I shoot good, great, I have something to brag about for a few days. If I shoot bad, okay, so I had a bad day and that's it. I will even have fun with bad days and I have one example I would like to share...

During a match in the summer of 11, I was shooting next to a junior shooter. He was a fun kid and really enjoyed shooting and competing with everyone. He was fun to tease and he didn't hesitate to throw it right back at me. This was probably the most fun I had a match with a lot of good laughs. During center fire slow fire, the command was given to load the gun which I did. I then lowered the gun on the bench with my finger on the trigger (which is a technique I picked up at a clinic a few weeks earlier). When I went to lift the gun on the "Ready on the left" command, the gun went bang. I scanned the line and made sure all was well, indicated to the range officer all was well and we proceeded to shoot the string. Of course, that opened me up for a lot of teasing and the kid jumped on it with gusto. At that point I could have caved into the pressures of the peers and embarrassment but I laughed it off with everyone and continued the match. As serious as this mistake was, no one was hurt so that allowed for some levity (the bench had a new hole in it though). At this match, they score right away and hand out trophies at the end of the day. I ended up winning the match and my class (Expert) in just about everything - I think I had 3 trophies and 6 medals.

Had someone got hurt with that stupid mistake, I am sure things would have been much different. In years past I would have been so embarrassed and spooked by that accidental discharge, I probably would have been shaking so bad I couldn't hold the gun (without any exaggeration). I have, for the most part, learned to react to a situation in a calm manor that works towards to the solution rather than towards fueling the problem. Dealing with adverse situations is an important and valuable attribute which is something you can bring from the real world into shooting and vice a versa.

During the match I write down my scores on a piece of paper which I use to log into my spreadsheet at home. I try not to beat myself up on bad scores and try to crack a smile with good scores. The one bad habit I have gotten into that I cannot seem to break is looking at other people's targets when we walk down to score. I always scan the targets looking to see if my target looks better. This is bad because it sets yourself up to push yourself beyond your capabilities and do things you normally don't (which is a violation of rule #1, don't do anything different at a match).

I also shoot the last relay of a tournament. I do this so that I can know at the end of the day how I did, otherwise I may have to wait weeks for the published results. The down side is that before the match you also see what everyone else shot and you set your goals which again, can set yourself up to beat yourself. To keep myself and my emotions and goals in check, I always try to focus on just shooting my normal routine to achieve my normal scores.

In summary, I think a lot of what needs to be done at a tournament is self management. You can control some things such as what you bring to prepare. You cannot control the weather, the speed of the range calls, the bugs, or how well other shooters did. With this mix of things you can control and cannot control, you have to manage how you deal with it. You know from your previous weeks scoring average what you are capable of shooting so you should expect to perform at that level, manage yourself to perform at that level. Don't let your emotions run wild in either direction, take one shot at time, and do what you always do.