Jul/Aug - uspsa

3-GLN
NATIONALS continued from page 41.
ing at 175 degrees to the plane. You then had to run to the
other side of the range, and through one port fire the other
22 rounds the stage required. With partial targets and hard
cover all over the place, and firing from one location, you'd
think someone shooting a major-caliber rifle wouldn't have
a chance. (There were four shooters using major-caliber rifles,
by the way.) Well, don't tell that to Kelly Neal. Using
an FN chambered in .260 Remington with a modified Jakenator
comp (talk about exotica!) he shot the stage a second
and a half faster than Bennie Cooley, who seems to own the
3-Gun Limited title. Fast indeed, as there were only two
Open shooters who posted faster times on that stage.
As far as equipment was concerned, you didn't have to
go far to find extraordinary gear. Yes, most of the rifles were
AR's, but they weren't all basic black. There were some Mini
14's, and I swear I caught a glimpse of an FN-FMC, but I
may have been hallucinating from the heat and my back. For
shotguns, the field seemed evenly divided between Remingtons,
either 1100's or 11-87's, and all the various iterations
of the Benelli system. On stage #1, I managed to eavesdrop
on a conversation/argument over the relative merits of the
Russian and Chinese shotguns that feed from box magazines.
The consensus seemed to be that the Russians were
better, but the Chinese shotguns could be made to work if
you knew a gunsmith who was also a blacksmith. (They tend
to be a bit rough, apparently.)
Everyone was digging into their gear for shotgun shells
loaded with #4's, to take down the steel being propped up
by the wind coming off the ridgeline. As for rifle ammo,
those who felt the need used various match or match-quality
reloads. The shooting didn't require anything better than
surplus-ammo accuracy to turn in a good score. Indeed, of
the 104 rifle shots, only two were over 100 yards, a point
that had a few shooters grumbling. The handgun shooting
required a minimum of 93 rounds, and for shotgun you
needed 64 shot and 26 slug rounds. When our club started
shooting 3-Gun back in 1983, we kept it strictly separated.
At the Nationals, and apparently even my home club when
I wasn't looking, they combined stages. Two stages required
a combination of guns, No. 3 with shotgun and handgun,
and No. 12 with rifle and handgun. I heard of one DQ
where the competitor's rifle butt whacked their handgun
hard enough to knock it out of the holster. Be warned, and
test your gear!
To make things more interesting, USPSA held a Manual
Rifle side match as an adjunct to the 3-Gun Nationals. By
manual rifle, most everyone assumed bolt action. Not so for
Jake Kempton, who used an AR-15 with the gas system disabled,
turning it into a straight-pull bolt gun. The best description
of the Manual Rifle match would be an NRA High
Power match shot on falling steel, using Comstock scoring.
MR-1, "Don't get discouraged," was the toughest. With a
plate at each of 200, 300, 400 and 500 yards, you had to hit
Bolt-AR? Jake Kempton's straight-pull AR-15 came in
for much attention. Especially once we saw his 5-shot
magazines for 80 grain match bullets in .2231
each one once, then go to the next shooting mat and repeat
for a total of 12 hits. If we do this again in the future, I'm
for sure going to get dialed in for the various ranges. (I was
only zeroed at 300 and 600.) MR-2, "From the mind of
Mike G" called for knocking down 10 plates at 300 and then
hitting two "flash" gongs at 400. The most fun was MR3,
"Lemon Drops." Due to last-minute equipment and range
problems, it was changed from the book description to become
the simplest, and the most fun: six 10-inch plates at
600 yards. Procedure: Take them down as fast as possible.
A note for whoever does the 2003 3-Gun Nationals; include
this one and you'll have people lined up to shoot it.
As for me, I spent the first day taking photographs, and
then jammed the whole match and Manual Rifle side match
into the day and a half left. (I hadn't flown all the way to
Las Vegas just to walk around and shoot film!) On more
than one stage I had to hand my rifle or shotgun to the RO
when I was done, but I finished, and finished upright and
ambulatory. And I'm already planning for the changes I'm
going to implement to my gear for next year. As the level of
interest in 3-Gun matches grows, even if they slot 300 people
for the 2003 match it will fill up early, so I'm going to be
ready to enter as soon as I can. You should be, t00.
Custom Remington 700's (bottom) in .308 were the
norm at the Manual Rifle match. But the 6.5-08 AWI
sported by the President was much admired.
70 FRONT SiGHT • July/August 2002