Kick ass day at Talon!

I stayed home this morning, I had a feeling that since John scheduled a match it would rain, and it did. I sent out the word to a few friends, and all of them passed on my invite. Whatever...I went anyway. Got there at about 11:30 and ate a What-a-Burger in the parking lot while the drizzle lightened. Burger, fries and the British Open on the radio ain't a half bad way to wait out a storm.

When the rain lightened to a fine mist and the last of the fries were gone I headed into the pro shop/office to sign my waiver and take my "quiz" - I'm a Gold Charter member but hadn't been since the official opening. Simple process and took about 5 minutes. I watched the videos online before I went so that saves time. I recommend it.

I bought a few targets and perused the pro shop. Good selection of goodies including plenty of ammo. Excellent stuff. I see a Talon shirt in my future.

Put my name on the board in the Steel Pit in Bay 14 and drove down. There I found 2 other trucks and 3 fellas shooting. My first thought was "we'll, so much for signing into a bay - who are these dudes?" The range was hot so I walked down and chatted them up, confirmed this was bay 14, and was quickly encouraged to join in. It's a big bay with lots of targets so I said "cool" and retrieved my stuff from the truck. I quickly figured out they were doing reload drills and I observed for a minute and took up a position about 15 - 20 feet to their left and mirrored their drill. One of them yells "Threat!" and Bang, bang, drop the mag, reload, bang. Simple. I did it a couple times at my own pace and it wasn't long before they noticed I was joining in on the fun and I blended right in. I offered to call "ready" to let all of them shoot at the same time and they were grateful. From there we were basically one group of 4. Cracking jokes, diagnosing misses and strange mag behavior from one of their M&P 9mm's. about 200 rounds later they asked if I had a rifle and did I want to run some rifle drills...

Duh. Of course I do.

We moved a couple bays down (I signed out of bay 14 and into 11) and setup 3 target stands. One of their group was former Army, another was former Air Force and I guess they thought I was shooting pretty good because the two of them asked me separately if I had been in the service. "Nope, but thanks for your service!"

Several drills and a couple hours later, my ammo was gone and I was whooped. I thanked my new friends, said I hoped to see them around again and headed out. A solid 4 hours in the steamy muddy heat and I was spent.

Picked up a porterhouse steak and a 6-pack of dark beer on the way home. Awesome day! Awesome facility!

Join. Today. Thank me later.

Maaaan. I always miss the good stuff . . . ;)

Thanks for the post. I would be interested in hearing details of the drills, always looking for new ideas and ways to improve.

The drills were stuff that one of the dudes had picked up from watching VTAC videos on youtube.

Here are the ones I can remember.

2x2x2 Drill

1-5 Drill

Triple Threat Drill

Then we did some mystery malfunction drills where the shooter was handed a rifle and told to engage a headshot, rifle goes click, and you have to diagnose your malfunction and clear it, and get back in the fight ASAP.

We also did one where we start with our backs to the target and a guy calls "threat" and points at one of the 3 targets, you turn and engage that with 2 shots, then 2 on the second of your choice, reload, and 2 on the 3rd target. Not sure what that is called.

It was like this (El Prez Drill) but it was 2x2xreloadx2 instead of 2x2x2 reload 2x2x2. Make sense?

We didn't have a timer, but one would be handy in the future.

Oh yeah!

One more thing.

Those safety rules are there for a good flippin' reason.

On the steel range one guy was shooting and diagnosing some issue with his gun while the rest of us stood a few yards behind. He fired a couple rounds into the IPSC style steel target and all of a sudden a bee stung me in the stomach!

Except it wasn't a bee. It was a piece of lead splatter about the size of a grain of rice. It embedded itself in my shirt and without thinking I picked it out and discarded it before taking a picture. It was nowhere near my face but dang if it didn't make me grateful to have on my eye protection.

A good reminder for all of you. Eyes and ears, at all times, no excuses.

Ah HA!


No rifles on steel less than 100 yards away. It is in both the member and visitor orientation videos and on the written test every person who comes on that range to shoot does.




Makes me wonder . . . .


http://www.canopy.net/arms/holysteel.jpg

Ouch! Hopefully not too expensive to replace!

Where were these steels set up? He said they went to bay 11 and set up 3 target stands for the rifle drills. Having never been to Talon, I dont know who things are set up, but it is looking like you should have a record of who signed in to use the bay where the damaged steel was, right? Still, it would seem that after seeing the first round go thru the target, the shooter would have figured out it was not a good idea to keep going.

Common sense isn't so common!!! :o

Well, now, nothing in BR's post made me think they were shooting steel with rifles at any distance. In fact, the act of them "setting up target stands" makes me think that they definitely didn't.