“I only see 5 hits.” I stared at the giant piece of cardboard the range officer was referring to and agreed. There were only 5 bullet holes where there were supposed to be 6. The place was Topton Fish and Game Association in Mertztown, PA. The occasion was my return to the Glock Shooting Sports (GSSF) Keystone Ballistic Challenge match. I had last participated in this shoot 3 years ago. At the time, it was my second-ever pistol match. I did not do well, but I had fun and had sworn to come back and be better.
Shooting guns in general and pistol matches in particular have a bit of a learning curve. I had learned some valuable lesson at that first GSSF match a few years back. The biggest ones were to take some lessons and practice a lot. Over the last 3 years I have done both and participated in many more matches. Granted, I’m not out there every weekend and will never be the second coming of Jerry Miculek but I have at least gained enough experience and training to be vaguely competent. These days I don’t necessarily need to start at the bottom of the result page to find my name quickly.
The reader may get the idea that things didn’t go so well given that it seems like I altogether missed a 30″ piece of cardboard. In the “Unlimited” division no less. Well, the good news for that particular target is that I saved a second or two because I only shot at it once on one string when it was supposed to be two shots. Oops. But there I go getting all ahead of myself again.
Despite my hope to return the the Keystone Ballistic Challenge after the first attempt, I have been unable to the last 2 years due to other commitments. GSSF would love for me to travel to some of their other events. According to the GSSF e-mails a 2.5 hour drive is “close to me”. I love shooting my guns and I enjoy the GSSF format but I’m not driving 5 hours to fling a few bullets when there are a dozen different non-GSSF shoots near my house every weekend. So for now it is the Keystone Ballistic Challenge or none. Fortunately this year my schedule left me open to attend.
Like 2022, I shot Amateur Civilian with my Glock 17, MOS with my Glock 48, but also added “Unlimited” using my Glock 34. That latter was acquired for a discount using the certificate I received when joining the GSSF. It’s a bit of a vicious cycle. At this point, I have more discount certificates from GSSF but have no need for any more Glocks.
I explained Amateur Civilian and MOS in my last GSSF post. Unlimited is basically the “anything goes as long as it’s a Glock” race gun category. By comparison to most, my “race gun” is pretty muted but I have enough stuff on it that it doesn’t qualify for the “Competitor” division. The stuff includes an after-market (non Glock) trigger shoe and a “gas pedal”. A gas pedal is a piece that attaches to the gun forward of the trigger and provides the shooter a place to apply downward leverage. In so doing, one hopes to better control the recoil impulse.
In theory, a competent shooter using an “unlimited” gun with all manner of features added to make it faster and more accurate should have the best scores. This is almost always the case but it still comes down to the shooter’s ability. Like most competitive endeavors, buying gadgets doesn’t overcome lack of practice and proper training.
I arrived at the Topton club well before registration opened, got a good parking spot, and unloaded my gear for the day. Since my first go-round with GSSF at Topton I have purchased a very handy collapsible wagon and have developed a reasonable, repeatable system for these events. I had my wagon, range bag, cooler with food, water and my folding . . . . I forgot my chair! How could I forget my chair!? I didn’t really want to stand around all day so, given I had all day to work my way through the 3 stages, I made a trip out to the nearest Wal-Mart and picked up a $10 bag chair. This new acquisition will live out its life in my truck. It may sound like a silly thing to do but believe me one gets tired of standing around after a while.
Anyway, back at the club I got in the now lengthy line for registration. A gentleman named Alex who parked next to me was behind me in line and we got to talking. It turns out it was his first Glock shoot and first pistol competition of any kind. Alex and I hung out the rest of the day. It seems I have another new friend courtesy of the shooting sports.
Once registered, we made our way to each of the 3 GSSF stages signing in at each one. Again, my previous post and the GSSF page clearly spells out the stages but for purposes of the story they are Five to Glock, Glock M, and Glock the Plates. The shooting sports seem to have a penchant for corny stage names.
Five to Glock
Like last time, I decided to start with Five to Glock. Alex and I returned to that station and put Xs next to our names to let the volunteer know we were present and all set to take our turn. We didn’t have to wait long and wound up squaded immediately. The club had 3 positions set up for Five to Glock so it went pretty quickly.
As a quick explanation, Five to Glock is simply 5 GSSF cardboard targets at increasingly longer distances. The shooter shoots each target two times attempting to hit the center. The score is a combination of the total time it took to shoot plus any additional time for less accurate shots or misses.
I began with Amateur Civilian and busted out the Glock 17. These days it is sporting the same Dawson precision sights I used the last time I was here but also the full beavertail grip and Talon grip tape. Neither addition moves the gun out of the “stock” category and both have helped me shoot the gun more consistently.
I guess I will always have nerves on the first stage of any shoot and this was no exception though I did not shoot that poorly. It takes me a few shots to get my mental stuff together. Still, my score for Amateur Civilian Five to Glock was 36.41. For comparison, my 2022 score for Five to Glock in the same division was 64.91. That is a nearly 50% better! I feel like I can do better than 36 seconds but I’ll take the vast improvement.
For GSSF, if you are shooting more than one division you can shoot as many as 3 back to back to back without re-squadding. I haven’t seen the limit of 3 enforced and saw several shooters shooting 4-5 divisions at a time. As it was, my next division was “unlimited”. My time and accuracy improved quickly from stock. Not only do I have the optic and better trigger on my G34 but I had also gotten the butterflies out of the way. Still, I left room for improvement and didn’t have all 6-0 (perfect shooting) on all 5 targets. In fact, as mentioned, I completely forgot to shoot at one twice. I guess I have too much steel challenge in my brain. While it wouldn’t be impossible for me to gunch a shot completely into the vast space beyond the target, it became apparent when I reloaded my magazines and still had two rounds left in one.
My Unlimited score for Five to Glock wound up being 31.52 which included a 10 second penalty for a miss. Given that my time should have been 8 to 10 seconds faster had I shot that 10th shot, I’m pretty happy with the score. There is definitely room to improve on the accuracy end here.
My next and last division for the stage was MOS. By now I was really focused on taking my time to make good shots especially since my gun of choice was my slimline Glock 48. I was also using some fairly spicy NATO spec Turkish made ammo. Together these things require some mental fortitude and good gun handling skills to control recoil and not shoot again until squarely back on target. I shot well enough in MOS that the range officer turned to the scorer and commented “That’s pretty good shooting with a 48!” My score for MOS was 26.58. Once again nearly a 50% improvement over my 2022 time of 52.81. Yay me!
Glock M
After reloading our magazines, we moved on to Glock M. There was a brief stop at the Boy Scout food tent for a really yummy and gooey brownie.
For me, Glock M is probably the easiest stage of the three. While none of the stages present any great difficulty (or shouldn’t), for some reason Glock M seems to me to be the quickest and easiest to shoot accurately. As always, YMMV.
Glock M is fairly simple with 4 cardboard GSSF targets and one steel popper style target. The GSSF targets are scored similarly to Five to Glock and the steel plate just needs to be hit once. The shooter can shoot as many times as he or she wishes at the steel.
I kept the same rotation of divisions throughout the three stages. Once again, I began with Amateur Civilian. I should note that at each stage, the shooter shoots at least 3 strings. On my first string the one thing that was immediately apparent was I didn’t have the foggiest idea whether I hit the steel plate or not. It hadn’t been painted recently so I couldn’t see the hit. To my surprise I couldn’t hear the hit. I was pretty sure I had. It wasn’t a difficult shot. When I finished that string, I turned to the range officer and asked “Did I hit the steel?” There didn’t seem to be much certainty so we all assumed I did. From then on, I made it a point to just make sure I center punched the steel and trust my shot. My only suggestion to the organizers would be to paint the steel a bit more often.
For Glock M I was completely calm and really made sure of a good sight picture before tapping the trigger. My final score wound up being 27.9 seconds. The score was a bit slow mostly courtesy of a weak target #4. Somehow I plunked 4 out of 6 shots in the 1 second ring. Glock M was my best stage in 2022 but my score this year was still 6 seconds faster even with the 4 “ones”.
Next up was unlimited. I have noticed with my Glock 34 that I am beginning to be a good enough shooter to see how long it takes to recover from recoil and get back on target. I may need to look at making my 34 a bit more “unlimited” to help get that under control. As it is, I buzzed through Glock M with a 20.53 with only 1 shot outside the 0 seconds scoring area and that shot was nearly on the line.
Lastly, I brought out the trusty 48 for MOS. I don’t believe most people shooting MOS are shooting what is essentially a sub-compact carry gun. Typically, a full sized, stock gun with an optic is the go-to. But I’m not buying another gun and I use my 48 for daily carry enough that I like to shoot it. While not quite as fast as the Unlimited 34, I still scored a 22.9 with the same level of accuracy as the bigger, heavier gun. Not to shabby for a little stock slimline Glock. This was 11 seconds faster than 2022 with the same gun.
Glock the Plates
If there was one stage I wanted to do well on this year it was Glock The Plates. In 2022 I went in to the plates all kinds of cocky after Glock M. It seemed easy. It wasn’t. It was an absolute and total failure. It probably isn’t healthy to hate an inanimate target. But I wanted to kill those plates for not falling 3 years ago.
Again I started with Amateur Civilian. The range officer gave me the go ahead to get an unloaded sight picture. The targets had been freshly painted and the red fiber sight glowed against the white paint. I put the fiber in the middle of the plate and, in my head, said “BANG! YOU ARE DEAD!”
I loaded a round from my Barney magazine* and inserted a fresh 10 rounder. “Shooter ready?” BEEP! BANG! CLANG! BANG! CLANG! I aimed with deadly precision focusing that bright red dot on the bottom middle of each target. (My 17 shoot a couple inches high.) “Take that you stupid plates! And that! And that!” BANG! CLANG! BANG! CLANG!
(Such hostility . . )
Unlike the other two stages, the plates includes four strings instead of three. In 2022 I dreaded that extra string when I couldn’t make the plates fall. Today I joyously loaded that 4th magazine as the range officer set ’em up again. I think I had one or two misses in each division and one of my cheap Turkish bullets failed to go off despite the primer being smashed, but overall the plates were a clanging, gravity-fed success. The stage was as fun as it should be. It’s amazing how that works when you have some basic fundamentals to fall back on.
For Amateur Civilian I wound up with a score of 23.49. My fastest string was 5.33. To show how spectacularly bad my 2022 plates stage was my score then in Amateur Civilian was 111.5. I was nearly 80% faster this year.
As before I have no previous time to compare for Unlimited. This year my score was 19.04 with a fastest string of 4.25.
My MOS score was 24.48 with a fast string of 4.34. Once again a night and day difference from 2022 where I scored a dismal 168.36. At least they didn’t have to use a lot of paint when I was finished that year.
Overall
My overall score in Amateur Civilian wound up being 87.8. This placed me 16th overall and 5th in the Senior category. Senior is age 55+. For reference, the top shooter scored 59.34 and the top senior 77.73. I’m not unhappy with this at all and could make up a bit of time with more accurate hits. This score was world’s better than the near dead last from 2022 when I scored 207.81. That’s a full 2 minute improvement. Yes please and thank you!
In Unlimited even with the miss on Five to Glock I posted a score of 71.09 and placed 33rd overall. There were 66 competitors in Unlimited so I landed exactly in the middle. Considering none of my 29 shots for FTG were worse than a 1 second penalty, had I actually shot that 30th shot, I’d have moved up 6 spots overall. But shoulda, coulda, woulda, didn’t. I was also the 11th overall Senior.
MOS was one of the bigger divisions with 81 entrants. I placed 34th overall with a time of 73.96. This was only 2 seconds slower than my Unlimited score. I am thrilled with this result. Of the handguns I own, probably have the most confidence in my Glock 48. It is a great little gun for me. Once again the improvement over 2022 was borderline astronomical. MOS was a brand new division for GSSF in 2022 and there were only 41 entrants. I finished 4th from last assuming you count the two no shows. My time in 2022 was 255.15. I’m not good enough with math to know how much better I did this year but it was a dramatic improvement. I also placed 5th among seniors.
* A Barney Magazine is an extra magazine used to pre-load a round into the chamber. GSSF rules allow a maximum of 10 loaded rounds in the magazine but provide for a chambered round for 11 total shots.
Bring it On 