In August the Invercargill Pistol Club held their annual match. It has a reputation of having the weather to match its name and while this year it was clear, the mornings were cool. I think it was two years ago they had snow, I did ask and even suggested trucking some in, but they ignored me, which I reckon was kind of rude.
Twelve time stages over two days, eight on the first and four on the next. Numbers were down as the timing wasn’t the best with it being just over the week before we were due to fly out to Bali for the Australasian competition. While some flew to Invercargill, I drove down from Nelson, which was 2060 kilometres return trip. My squad had both Open and Production Optic pistols in it, which was fun as it made us look at the challenges differently, with some being much the same and others not so much.
There was plenty of running and shooting with some targets up close and personal, others needed a slow approach and reach so required a bit more control. All this is what makes IPSC such a challenge and a fun style of shooting as you never know what the next match or stage will need you to do.Once again, we had all ages and both male and female competing together without any special favours given or granted. Lots of banter came from some of the younger ones to some of the more senior and humbler members of the squads.
While I was happy with most of the weekend, things fell apart when I had a reshoot. Plenty of people will admit reshoots often don’t go well, and this one went to the dogs fast and hurt more than I could afford when wanting a good result. It’s just the nature of the game and keeps us going back to do better. Speed is the biggest challenge, or more to the point how fast we push it, go slow and hits are easy, but you can’t win doing that, too fast and hits start to go missing or spread out all over the place, and again you lose. I went too fast on my reshoot and sunk. I still managed a decent score, which wasn’t too bad for an old fella.
By the time this edition is out, the New Zealand Team will have travelled and competed at the IPSC Australasia Handgun Championships in Bali, and I trust all went well. I will have a report on this ready for October.
