Unloaded starts are certainly one of my personal pet peaves.
So right there the stage results are randomised in favor of blind luck.
I had exactly this happen at my last match. Painted popper, solid hit in the circle, popper didn't fall. To make matters worse I wa shooting the match with the "calibration" gun and ammo. And it failed to fall. When I called for calibration I handed over my gun and ammo to the RO to shoot (thought it might be a bit unfair if I as the RM used my gun and my ammo on the stage that I just shot to calibrate the popper that failed to fall for me) the RO hit right beside my original hit and down goes the popper and I score a miss. But it's a perfect example of the calibration gun and ammo being used to put two shots side beside on a popper and one failed to drop it and the next one did. FYI it was a Glock 17 shooting factory Remington 124gr.Problem with steel, you can calibrate it to fall with a rolled up ball of wet kleenex, but if the hinge gets could with lead splatter, or dirt, or if the popper settles a bit, or any number of other mechanical issues, it won't go down. So now the shooter has to make the choice to either keep walking at it 'till it drops, or leave it and risk having to eat a miss. Now having already hit it once, the next thing to contact the popper is in all likelihood going to knock it th rest of the way down. So no matter how it turns out it will likely factor out as a miss for the shooter, when he actually hit the popper square the first time. So right there the stage results are randomised in favor of blind luck.
So what is the solution.......
Simple, remove calibration from the rule set entirely. If the popper doesn't fall it's a re-shoot. It's range equipment failure, just like a plate that spins on-edge but doesn't fall.So what is the solution.......paper targets only......no Vis?.......we got to have our Vis!
Simple, remove calibration from the rule set entirely. If the popper doesn't fall it's a re-shoot. It's range equipment failure, just like a plate that spins on-edge but doesn't fall.
Look at it this way; if you hit a paper target anywhere on the scoring surface, it's scored as a hit...even if it just barely touches the outside edge of the D zone. But if you hit a popper anywhere on the scoring surface and it doesn't fall because of something totally outside the shooter's control, it's a miss. How is that fair or logical? And it sucks huge to loose a match by less than 15 points with an unearned miss on a popper.
Or we could go with the Tannerite.
I had exactly this happen at my last match. Painted popper, solid hit in the circle, popper didn't fall. To make matters worse I wa shooting the match with the "calibration" gun and ammo. And it failed to fall. When I called for calibration I handed over my gun and ammo to the RO to shoot (thought it might be a bit unfair if I as the RM used my gun and my ammo on the stage that I just shot to calibrate the popper that failed to fall for me) the RO hit right beside my original hit and down goes the popper and I score a miss. But it's a perfect example of the calibration gun and ammo being used to put two shots side beside on a popper and one failed to drop it and the next one did. FYI it was a Glock 17 shooting factory Remington 124gr.




























