As some of you know, I recently moved to South America. Been here about a week and a half and due to some moving delays, I had this weekend open so I decided to swing by the local club that I'm planning to join. Another CGNer is already a member and he got me in touch with the folk down there. Been following them on their FB page for a while so it was good to actually meet some of the folk I only saw in photos and videos.
The club is called Tralkan (means "thunder" in one of their First Nations' languages). It's got 15 action ranges (most are pretty short and the longest one goes out to 90yds, but it can be extended another 170 for after-hours shooting and special events). More than good enough for pistol, shotgun and rimfire rifle matches (crappy thing about their laws is that you can't have semiauto centerfire rifles). The steel has seen better days so a few bits and pieces came back our way but we shrugged that off and focused on having fun. It's located about 30km away from Santiago (the capital) and you have to take a dirt road to access it, so it's good to have a ute/cute/truck, especially in the winter when they get a bit of rain.
The region is very small. My Canadian club has more IPSC shooters than the entire region, but most of the members train seriously. Their RD is heavily involved in developing and coaching the local shooters and it shows in their skillset. On average, a typical Chilean IPSC shooter is better than your typical member of our region, but Canada's a bigger pond, so at the very top level, of course we could send some guys who'd clean up in these parts. They are also big on developing the youth, so I saw a handful of 12-16 year old shooters out there (one of which I'd rather not go up against with money on the line lol). The range etiquette is similar to ours, such as "if you're not shooting, you're patching" and no yapping while the shooter's doing his/her thing.
2 of the shooters let me play with their Austrian Barbies. Loading those last 7rds into the mags may have been physically challenging without my Maglula, but it felt liberating
Those that know me, know that I'm a pretty unenthusiastic pistol shooter, but I was safe and showed a respectable level of proficiency, so the tips were more along the lines of "you're riding the slide a bit" and "you should speed up your transitions" as opposed to "Whisky-Tango-Foxtrot gave YOU a gun?!" 
Now, they at least know that we don't raise dummies in Canada (and there are plenty of people "back home" who deserve tons of gratitude for helping me get up to this level).
We didn't take any pics, but when there are some, I'll post them up. Hopefully with some Mini Rifle match video. My rifle shooting has been more along the lines of basic skills development and some 3gun, so I'll have to put in some IPSC-specific practice time. At least I'll have great facilities for it. I may have posted this before, but here's some drone/match footage of the club :
P.S. On the topic of youth development. I'd love to see more of that going on in Canada, along the lines of what they're doing here in Chile and the videos I've seen from Moldova. That's the only way we can develop top-class talent.
The club is called Tralkan (means "thunder" in one of their First Nations' languages). It's got 15 action ranges (most are pretty short and the longest one goes out to 90yds, but it can be extended another 170 for after-hours shooting and special events). More than good enough for pistol, shotgun and rimfire rifle matches (crappy thing about their laws is that you can't have semiauto centerfire rifles). The steel has seen better days so a few bits and pieces came back our way but we shrugged that off and focused on having fun. It's located about 30km away from Santiago (the capital) and you have to take a dirt road to access it, so it's good to have a ute/cute/truck, especially in the winter when they get a bit of rain.
The region is very small. My Canadian club has more IPSC shooters than the entire region, but most of the members train seriously. Their RD is heavily involved in developing and coaching the local shooters and it shows in their skillset. On average, a typical Chilean IPSC shooter is better than your typical member of our region, but Canada's a bigger pond, so at the very top level, of course we could send some guys who'd clean up in these parts. They are also big on developing the youth, so I saw a handful of 12-16 year old shooters out there (one of which I'd rather not go up against with money on the line lol). The range etiquette is similar to ours, such as "if you're not shooting, you're patching" and no yapping while the shooter's doing his/her thing.
2 of the shooters let me play with their Austrian Barbies. Loading those last 7rds into the mags may have been physically challenging without my Maglula, but it felt liberating
Those that know me, know that I'm a pretty unenthusiastic pistol shooter, but I was safe and showed a respectable level of proficiency, so the tips were more along the lines of "you're riding the slide a bit" and "you should speed up your transitions" as opposed to "Whisky-Tango-Foxtrot gave YOU a gun?!" Now, they at least know that we don't raise dummies in Canada (and there are plenty of people "back home" who deserve tons of gratitude for helping me get up to this level).We didn't take any pics, but when there are some, I'll post them up. Hopefully with some Mini Rifle match video. My rifle shooting has been more along the lines of basic skills development and some 3gun, so I'll have to put in some IPSC-specific practice time. At least I'll have great facilities for it. I may have posted this before, but here's some drone/match footage of the club :
P.S. On the topic of youth development. I'd love to see more of that going on in Canada, along the lines of what they're doing here in Chile and the videos I've seen from Moldova. That's the only way we can develop top-class talent.
