MGM Ironman: I Didn't Die!

For me there's only one problem with The MGM Iron Man


It's in F****** Idaho.

North America is too large... LoL

For those more easty give the Blueridge Mountain 3-Gun a try... 'Some refer to it as the Iron man of the East.
 
Awesome stuff, TV!

Fantastic video and great shooting! Wow - think of all the cool stuff we could do this side of the border if we could get rid these ridiculous mag cap limits.

So jealous...
 
That looks like a great event!


How long of a wait before shooting?

My experience so far is wait and hour, shoot for 30 seconds. Repeat 9-11 times.

Just wondering if that is what it's like, or if they speed that up somehow......and if it isn't that much waiting, what do they do to speed things up?
 
Drillbit said:
How long of a wait before shooting?

My experience so far is wait and hour, shoot for 30 seconds. Repeat 9-11 times.
Click to expand...

Oh man. Nooo, my problem was that I had to be loading mags as soon as I got off the range to make sure I was topped up for the next stage!

30 seconds of shooting never happens in the Ironman. You're looking at 3-5 minutes of running and gunning each stage. Lots of guys timed out on different stages getting caught up on a particular target or set of targets.

There are a few specific things the Ironman does though to try to keep things moving:

1. Every stage reminds you to help with reset. It's part of the stage brief from the ROs. People are fast and direct when it comes to getting the field ready to shoot again and staging the next shooters guns.

2. The shooting order is laid out early. We did a system where the entire roster rotated up one person every stage. So if you were first shooter on stage 2, you would be last shooter on stage 3. Second last shooter on stage 4 etc etc. That meant you generally had breathing room between when your stage ended and it was time to shoot again. It meant we were less likely to be caught waiting to pack up gear etc.

3. You only shoot 4 stages a day. Two before lunch, and two after lunch. Any more than that and I probably would have died.
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Next year I would definitely bring a magula loader, so that instead of loading mags I could be closely watching the pros and seeing how they shoot different stages.
 
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Drillbit said:
That looks like a great event!


How long of a wait before shooting?

My experience so far is wait and hour, shoot for 30 seconds. Repeat 9-11 times.

Just wondering if that is what it's like, or if they speed that up somehow......and if it isn't that much waiting, what do they do to speed things up?
Click to expand...

I can't speak for the MGM of course and our friend TVPP is doing a great job of that. I do shoot a lot in Texas at two different clubs where I winter. One of the difference there is the amount of space. One of my clubs has 14 pistol bays of various sizes. So whereas here in Ontario, four to six stages are crammed into a small space sometimes with resets in between, both of my Texas clubs can set up eight stages with no problems whatever. So things move very fast as all six or more stages are shooting at the same time. It does take a lot of props and so these clubs have dozens of plates, poppers and other gear.

For me, part of the "problem" is keeping mags loaded and in walking between stages. A lot of my friends have golf carts. I bought a nice gun cart that holds my AR, my shotgun and pistols and ammo for each. I have a lot of mags for each gun and still sometimes have to rush recharging and moving to the next stage. By they end of the day, I need a second cart for my butt!
 
^ Thanks TVPP and hercster for the info!

I guess what seems to slow things down in the ones I've been to is the squad size. Not enough RO's so they spread them out between squads and end up with large squads (8 guys).

The last one I went to had a supervised pre-load table (load guns to capacity and put the safety on) at the stages that really sped things up. 9 stations still took 11 hours though.

And ya, hercster, I bough an 87 Yamaha golf cart years ago for sporting clays, and gopher hunting and it is the "cats meow"!
 
Thanks for the trip report TVPP. I definitely want to do this next year if possible.

Is Trooper class the only class where you could use more than 3 guns in a stage? IE - Long range precision rifle and pistol caliber carbine (for long range pistol targets).

This looks like an event where I would actually pack a backup for all 3 guns.
 
dquick said:
Is Trooper class the only class where you could use more than 3 guns in a stage? IE - Long range precision rifle and pistol caliber carbine (for long range pistol targets).
Click to expand...

So the deal is that normal shooters bring:
1 rifle
1 pistol
1 shotgun
1 long range rifle. The long range rifle is a free gun. Can be semi or bolt, any kind of glass or brakes etc.

On some stages, there will be long range bonus targets that the shooter can choose to engage. Stage 3 and Stage 7 definitely had them, but there might be others I'm forgetting. On those stages the RO will designate a starting position for you bonus rifle, if you choose to go after the far stuff.

Troopers have two cool things:

1. They may switch their handgun for a pistol calibre carbine, and can shoot any pistol target with that carbine.

2. They can carry as many guns as they want. Having one gun for slugs and one gun for the rest makes sense to me! My favourite were the stages where the troopers would "texas reload." Instead of putting shells into a gun, they'd ditch it and pickup another one. One guy had 3 full shotguns laid out through the course and used them all!
 
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