The 2015 Designated Marksman Rifle Championship was sponsored by Nightforce and Knights Armament; and was held at Peacemaker National Training Center in West VA on July 25-26 of this year.
July 24, 25, 26
Friday’s practice at Echo Valley consisted of mostly rifle shooting in preparation for the weekend’s DMR (Designated Marksman Rifle) Championship sponsored by Nightforce and Knight’s Armament, being held at Peacemaker. Since I had no DMR setup rifle I was borrowing a Colt 18 Pro from a friend, and a Vortex 4-16x Viper from another friend. A borrowed gun with a borrowed optic, and two days of prep before a major championship – what could go wrong right?
Since I use a 300 yard zero in my irons rifle for 3 Gun, I decided to go with the same 300 yard zero using this setup. Identical gun, shooting the same ammo, ballistics matched, so why not? The bullet drop and accuracy from this setup was exactly what I expected all weekend and I know that dope inside and out. That was the best thing about this setup gun, ammo, optic combo - it was very predictable and I knew where to hold to hit. From point blank to 600 yards.
The worst thing about the setup was using a 16x scope. Now I’m certainly not saying that the scope is bad, or that the reticle is bad, because the scope is fine, and the MOA hashmarks allow for very precise holds with this reticle. However coming from many years of experience shooting iron sights, various red dots, and a 1x prismatic has made me a pretty good 1x shooter. That’s what I know and understand. High powered scopes are not.
My first course of fire was a VTAC barricade in an open field, shooting over natural terrain against 7 targets each marked with a number. Everything was easy to spot and the targets were on the small side of what I would expect to see in 3-Gun. I shot this course of fire in 94 seconds and had some preventable mistakes that cost me huge amounts of time. These little problems plagued me throughout the event –
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First I should have selected a different position on the barricade. The targets were all visible from y positions on through the barricade and along the steps outside however I didn’t scope out every option (pun intended). Instead I picked on that I thought would be comfortable and checked out the first 2-3 targets. Can I see them? Yes. Can I brace well against the barricade? Yes. Can I brace my shooting arm on my knee well? Yes. Okay good enough. - Wrong. Not good enough. I should have scoped the other positions because the center hole through the barricade was a better bracing position and to shoot all the targets all you had to do was swivel the gun instead of reposition to a 2nd step. A planning mistake that cost me significant time repositioning when I could have been shooting.
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Second, I saw something that I was not used to seeing. The target. Yes, the target. What I mean is I usually shoot irons division and I can barely see the target, sometimes I can’t really see the target but I know where it is and where to aim. It’s certainly not an ideal situation but I have gotten used to it, adapted to it, and do it pretty well. But now, now I could see the target. It was HUGE in my scope because I had it on 16x! So my immediate response being on the clock and knowing that this is a timed course of fire was to get on the trigger. And boy did I! OMG THERE IS THE TARGET!! BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG HIT! Then onto the next with the same result. That’s pretty much how that course of fire went until it was over 94 seconds and six more targets later. In the words of Steve Anderson, I was “more interested in pulling the trigger than hitting the target”.
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Thinking back on what happened after the course of fire I also realized that even though I have been shooting a 2-stage Geissele trigger for a few years now, I got used to the 1-stage Timney trigger in my newest rifle very quick. In fact, I was so used to it from a month of heavy use that I wasn’t taking the slack out of these shots with the 2-stage trigger and just pressing through. So not only did I have a complete mental meltdown because I could SEE the target for once, I also executed very bad trigger control and just slapped through most shots. Thank god for a such a solid shooting position on the barricade or I would have never hit anything.
The second course of fire was a Wobbly Chained Platform with half a dozen targets between 300 and 550 yards, generous targets and we all knew it was going to be the platform movement that was going to make this difficult. Because of the movement and I had such a ridiculous performance on the last stage I decided that my shooting position needed to be even better. So I decided the way I was going to do this was to press out and lock my arm against the forward support to stop the sway, then have to for the wobble induced by every recoil to stop before taking the next shot. Of course I picked reverse kneeling for this too and left the scope on high.
- I shouldn’t have left the scope on high. Holy crap. The lesson sunk in this time. I thought shooting irons on this wobbly bridge in the past induced some wobble and movement… now lets intensify that 16 times. I spent a lot of time lost in the scope, trying to get stable, trying to find the targets, and after every shot it was gone again. Finally I dialed it down to the lowest it would go which was 4x and used Kentucky Windage to sling the bullets on target mostly by the grace of God at this point.
I ended up shooting this disaster in 132 seconds.
The 3rd course of fire was out the top window of the Peacemaker house shooting targets between 300-400 yards, some of which were pretty small. This is where I changed the way I was doing things regarding my scope and dope. First regarding the scope, I turned it down to 8x because I knew that 16x was going to be too much again. However with small targets in a high power scoped game I thought I should still be utilizing that “advantage”, even though I don’t consider it an advantage in 3-Gun….
Anyway, regarding the dope changes, up until this point I was lasing, scoping, and memorizing the holds I needed for each target in order. I was using the mental terms of 3.3 MOA, 5.1 MOA, etc. However this time what I did was round the actual 3.3 or 5.1 to 3 and 5 respectively. Then I rounded even further. What was my most efficient hash mark to use as a reference point? Well, I have even numbered hash marks so I could use a 4 MOA hold for both a 3 and 5… hold high on one and low on the other….
So that’s what I did. The actual holds for this course of fire was 3.3, 4.1, 2.4, 0, 0.2, and 1.5. This quickly became 3, 4, 2, 0, 0, 1. That became 4 low, 4, 2, 0, 0, 0 high. Look at how simple those holds are! No decimals, no guesswork, actual holds based on the reticle references, and simple = quick.
I shot this course of fire in 63 seconds and realized that I was on to something. I shot the rest of the match with my scope between 4-8x instead of 16x, and rounding holds. This might be a precision game but once you’re precise “enough” then it becomes about speed again. If the smallest targets were 2 MOA, and my hash marks were also 2 MOA, then rounding to the nearest 2 MOA and holding high or low would get my hits. Unfortunately for me, I just couldn’t get into good stable shooting positions and was slapping through the trigger instead of taking the slack out for every shot. Shooting on day 2 was at the Frontier range and wind calls were hell, along with awkward shooting positions, and most shots were between 500-600 yards. It really paid off to have the extra gear like bags and pods (which I unfortunately, did not have).
I have several things to say about this match – 1) I came to learn, and boy did I learn 2) reasonable shots made very hard due to course design 3) rarely do I get my ass handed to me by a competition anymore and 4) this was fun. I’ll be back again next year.