Shooters aim for speed, accuracy at pistol competitions
By Shelley Bindon, edmontonjournal.com June 30, 2012
EDMONTON - Alison Lincoln removes her ball cap to swipe away the sweat on her brow. Despite the steady breeze, it’s hot, and the dust seems to kick up just as competitors take their marks at one of the last local IPSC qualifiers of the season.
Lincoln, a 57-year-old computer programmer, has just moved across a confusing layout of targets and no-hit targets tucked behind snow fences and blinds. As a competitor in the growing ranks of the International Practical Shooting Confederation, her aim is to put two rounds into the “alpha” portion of eight targets and lay down two metal targets that ping when they’re hit, all while moving through a course at brisk but controlled pace.
Her sweat is well-earned. Using a pricey Italian-made Tanfoglio pistol, she’s hit alphas on almost every target, but her time is double that of most competitors so she’ll have to speed up if she’s going to challenge the top shooters. With only two months of competition under her belt, however, she’s happy with her progress.
“I really respond to the challenge of this competition,” Lincoln says. “I want to master this sport.”
Like most of the women competitors, Lincoln came to the sport through her husband’s involvement. As she relays her story, a fellow female competitor adds, “yeah, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” and Lincoln says she’s glad she did.
While she was always supportive of her husband’s IPSC hobby, now that they both compete, she says it’s become something they share, rather than something to be tolerated.
“This sport is a lot of driving on weekends, so he’s not driving by himself anymore. Plus, it’s something out of my comfort zone. It gets me out and active. My other hobby is quilting, so this is definitely way more active.”
According to the IPSC governing body, competitive IPSC-style shooting developed in southern California in the late 1950s and quickly spread around the world. Its aim is to promote practical marksmanship, which can generally be considered as the proficient use of a service pistol, much like any police officer, sheriff or armed guard would carry.
Accuracy, power and speed are fundamental, and after watching a competition, it’s easy to spot the marksman who hits every target and the athlete who excels at running the courses. Only a few manage to shoot these high-powered handguns well while on the run.
IPSC winners are determined by factoring in accuracy points with course time to come up with an overall score for each category of firearm — production, which uses handguns just as they are produced; standard, which includes pistols in the style of Browning’s first model, the 1911; and open, which welcomes many styles of pistols, along with upgrades and tweaks.
The open category is the Formula One of the sport, and is often the most expensive. Competitors typically spend thousands on equipment. The production category is the most popular because it uses standard firearms available at any gun shop. For about $500 for a gun and $300 worth of ammunition, a newcomer can start competing once he or she has taken the two-day Black Badge safety and qualification course offered by most gun clubs and ranges.
At a weekend competition at the Spruce Grove Gun Club on June 16 and 17, drew 175 shooters. Organizers expect 150 people will take part in this weekend’s provincial competition held just outside Sibbald. All in all, about 300 Albertans compete regularly in what is a growing sport with a sanctioning body set up in Hong Kong and lucrative sponsorships being made available to the world’s top shooters.
Tony Dube, an Alberta sheriff, has seen the range of sophistication. There are the dusty Prairie competitions at which one eats a peanut butter sandwich, legs dangling off the tailgate at break. But there is also the glamorous side of the sport, where brand-name manufacturers and ammunition makers pay tens of thousands of dollars for their logos to appear on a top competitor’s jersey.
Dube was a Canadian category winner in 2011 and got to take his A game to big events across North America. He has a video online that shows some of the more challenging courses he’s faced — some that require shooters to open doors to see targets, hit the turf from a sprint to peek and shoot through sight holes, courses that snake through stacks of barrels while targets spin or appear briefly, then disappear in an instant. The courses are limited only by the rules of the governing body and the imagination of the course designers, who are typically the most competitive shooters.
Dube is a hard-core competitor, spending, on average, $3,000 for travel and shooting at least $1,000 worth of ammunition per year. In his winning season, he spent more than $6,000 competing. As is the case with most Canadian competitors, he didn’t see much of a monetary return on his investment.
This year he’s scaling back. He switched to his service pistol, a Glock, which he says is extremely reliable but difficult to excel with.
When his turn comes up at the Spruce Grove course, Dube shows great poise through the final stage of the competition, involving multiple targets spread across a course that requires several planned magazine changes. It looks like he’ll be a clear winner, but it’s not until the yellow score sheet comes out that he discovers he’s missed a few alphas, scoring some charlies and one dreaded delta — the last scoring opportunity on the outside of a target before a miss, which is called a mike. Plus, his time is almost a full second off the fastest.
The guys rib him and his choice of firearm, but Dube says he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“For me, it turns what could be a deadly weapon into a hockey stick — it’s just a tool. This allows me to stop thinking about (the Glock) as a tool to kill people. You learn to respect the danger of the tool. I now look at it in a positive way.”
Alison Lincoln echoes that sentiment. Where she was once hesitant to pick up a gun, now she’s expert at handling one. She says she’s learned through competition that there are absolutely no shortcuts when it comes to safety. She was recently disqualified for breaking the 90-degree safety plane. Competitors must keep their pistols aimed down range, and any lateral movement past 45 degrees on either side is a DQ. It’s a lesson she won’t soon forget, she says.
“I’m good with a gun, but on course, these guys make you safe.”
www edmontonjournal com/life/Shooters+speed+accuracy+pistol+competitions/6864832/story.html
