The next entry in the Practical Pistol Series. This one is a bit longer, as it is hard to explain some of the nuances of USPSA matches concisely. It is a sport built on pedanticism. Check out the earlier articles, the shop, and the YouTube for full match videos!
You’ve got your pistol, four to five magazines, belt with holster and magazine pouches, ear protection, eye protection, sunscreen, hat, and snacks. You read the rules, you watched videos of USPSA matches, you know what to do. You’re ready to jump into your first match. Let me tell you what to expect, from lessons that I learned since I started shooting USPSA matches.
The first thing to know is nobody expects you to be perfect at your first match. You will be expected to make some mistakes, and the range officers and other competitors will give you a fair bit of grace as long as you are safe. The second thing to know is that matches require a lot of work to set up and tear down. If you want to ingratiate yourself to the match staff, the members of the club setting up, running, and scoring the event, I suggest arriving an hour earlier than the advertised start time. If you can’t make it that early, perhaps you have a long drive or you have other commitments that morning, then stay afterward to help tear down. Not only does this help the match get set up and/or torn down faster, but it gives you an “in” with the old hands.
At some point in the morning prior to match start, you will need to check in for the match. If your club uses an on-line registration system, such as PractiScore, I highly recommend signing up for the match in advance. Using that system ensures that you get a spot in the match, and if you show up without registering you may be turned away due to size limitations. If you registered for the match in advance, you will still need to check in with the match director and pay any remaining fees. In my experience, a local match usually costs between $25 and $50, depending on the size and style of match. Some clubs waive the fee for first-time shooters, so it might be cheaper than you expected.
Many clubs require first-time shooters to sit through a “USPSA 101” course before shooting their first match. This 101 course is a basic level review of safety procedures, range commands, and general rules. For the first-time USPSA participant, I think this course is a smart way to start. Some clubs have seasoned members demonstrate the rules for new shooters, and some will even pair up new shooters with seasoned USPSA participants to make sure they get some specialized guidance during the match.
Let us assume you figured out how to sign in for the match, you’ve paid any outstanding fees, and you have sat through the 101 course. Now we can talk about how the match is structured.
Each USPSA match is broken up into individual courses of fire, known as “Stages.” Each of these stages will have individualized rules and setups to present a different shooting challenge. They will have a mixture of cardboard and steel targets, penalties, and shooting areas contained by “fault lines.” Most local matches will have between four and six stages per match.
USPSA stages can be broken into a bunch three categories: short, medium, and long courses of fire. Short courses typically consist one or two shooting locations and require up to twelve rounds. Medium courses consist of up to three shooting locations and require up to twenty rounds to complete. Long courses can have any number of shooting locations and require up to thirty-two rounds to complete. Clubs typically try to have a good mix of short, medium, and long stages at their matches, but I have been to matches that were all one length.
Whether short, medium, or long, each stage should come with an accompanying written stage briefing that tells you several things. First, the stage briefing will tell you the starting position. The start position tells you where in the shooting area to stand and where to place your hands before the starting beep. Next, the stage briefing will tell you the starting position and condition of your firearm. Third, the briefing will give you the stage procedure, the manner in which you are to shoot the stage. The briefing will also tell you the method of scoring, the minimum number of rounds required, the point value of the stage, the number and type of targets, how the targets are scored, and what the start and stop signals will be. Finally, written stage briefings will also often have a diagram of the stage you can use to plan your stage.
Second, fault lines are the borders of the acceptable shooting area. They are a visual and tactile boundary that serve as both a safety mechanism and a piece of the shooting puzzle you are trying to solve on that stage. For safety, imagine the rear fault line goes in a straight line from wall to wall or berm to berm of that stage’s shooting bay. Pointing or sweeping the muzzle of your pistol to any point behind that line violates the “180 Rule,” which will disqualify you from the match. Shooting while standing outside the fault line borders will incur a penalty. In USPSA, shooters can take “shortcuts” by leaving the boundary in one spot and re-entering the boundary in another.
Next, the targets. USPSA cardboard targets are raw, brown cardboard silhouettes, and broken into four different scoring zones. There are two “Alpha” boxes, one in the center chest and a roughly playing card sized box in the “head.” Alpha hits are scored the highest, at five points per hit. Next is the “Charlie” zone, which is scored as three points per hit in the division you’re probably shooting in as a first time shooter. The fourth zone is “Delta,” which is scored as one point per hit. Steel targets are typically scored as two “Alpha” hits, but must be knocked over or otherwise declared a hit to count. More frequently, clubs are also using International Practical Shooting Coalition (IPSC) style, octagonal cardboard targets in their matches. These are scored the same as a USPSA target, but have one, larger Alpha zone instead of two separate ones. Below are examples of the two types, with USPSA on the left and IPSC on the right.
In addition to targets you want to shoot, there will also be targets you don’t want to hit. The most notorious are the “no-shoot” targets. The back of each cardboard target is painted white, and a hit anywhere on the white incurs a -10 point penalty. Multiple hits on a no-shoot each incur their own penalty. If you shoot the no-shoot twice, that is -20 points. Some targets will have a section painted black, this is known as “hard cover,” and shooting the black does not incur a penalty, but does not count as a hit. Failing to hit a target is registered as a miss, and is also a -10 point penalty. A scored target can have only as many misses as it has scored rounds. For instance, most cardboard targets score the best two hits, therefore you can have two misses. If you fire three rounds and miss all three, you still only have two misses.
USPSA stages are scored using “Hit Factor.” After shooting a stage and totaling up all the points, the raw score is then divided by the number of seconds the shooter took to finish the stage. In addition, every stage brief will have a shorthand for two different scoring methods. The most common is “Comstock,” which means that a shooter can fire as many rounds as they want over the minimum without penalty. “Virginia Count” means that the shooter is limited to the number of rounds stated in the briefing. If the stage says you get six rounds, you only get six rounds. Your seventh round and beyond will incur penalties.
Finally, the stage will have vision barriers or other barricades to direct your shooting. For safety reasons, the vast majority of these barricades are see-through mesh. You are not allowed to shoot through the barrier. Barrels and wood paneling will sometimes be used to block your vision, and you have to work around these physical and visual barriers while planning your stage.
Let’s now walk through a single USPSA stage, and what I (try to) do while planning. I am going to use USPSA Classifier Stage 23-02 “This could be the Greatest Night of Our Lives” as an example because it is relatively straightforward and I recently shot this stage at a match, so I have video of it. I think the name frickin’ sucks, so we will just call it 23-02 from here on out.
First, I start by reading the stage briefing. The official stage briefing from USPSA reads like this: “23-02 is a 12 round, 60-point, Comstock Classifier course. There are 6 USPSA targets. The handgun start position is anywhere in the shooting area with handgun loaded and holstered and wrists below belt. The PCC start position is anywhere in the shooting area, PCC loaded with safety on, stock on belt, muzzle generally down-range. On the audible start signal, engage targets as they become available from within the shooting area.” A “PCC” is a pistol caliber carbine, a rifle that shoots pistol bullets, and is a recent addition to the USPSA rules.
After reading the brief, I now check out the diagram. The diagram tells me where everything should be, and gives me a general idea of how I plan to run the stage.
23-02 has two clusters of three targets that are divided by a vision barrier, meaning I have two shooting positions to get into in order to see all six targets. I know that, as a right-handed shooter, it is easier for me to run left-to right while keeping my muzzle pointed in a safe direction. I also know that running backwards in a stage is not usually the most efficient.
From the briefing and the diagram, my initial plan is to start at the left side of the shooting area and engage the first target array, then run to the right to clear the barricade and forward to the end of the shooting area. I will plan to reload as I run, because my Hawai’i-compliant magazines only hold ten rounds and I know I will require at least twelve. I plan to stop just short of the fault line and engage the last array of targets as I see them. Below is a rough, Microsoft Paint approximation of my plan.
The read numbers represent the order I plan to shoot the targets in. I usually like to shoot targets from inside out, so that I am leaning in the direction I want to go when I finish a target array. This is important at the beginning of this stage, but at the end I will be done moving, so I plan to shoot the targets as they become visible to me in the final position.
Now that I have done a theoretical plan for 23-02, I will then do a walkthrough or two. I will check the shooting positions I envisioned in my head to make sure that I can see what I think I can see, and I will walk my route to make sure the reload timing makes sense. 23-02 is very straightforward, so my walkthrough won’t be very long. On more complicated stages, I will try to come to the walkthrough with a couple different plans and routes to see which one works best. I also make sure to count the targets and assign them numbers in my head. That way I am less likely to outright forget a target.
With my stage plan in mind, it is now time to execute. Execution is the tricky part, as many competitors tend to forget their plan the moment the starting beep rings in their ears. Focusing on your plan during your walkthrough will help you stay on track. The video of 23-02 below is a good example of (mostly) staying on plan.
You’ll notice about nine seconds into the video, I grunt “dammit.” That was because my magazine did not drop free of the pistol as intended, and I had to pull it out before reloading a fresh magazine. For reasons I do not know, I opted to fire three rounds into target four, even though the first two shots were “Alpha” hits. Either way, this was a good stage for me, and an improvement over the last time I had shot 23-02.
That’s really all there is to a USPSA match. You show up, help set up, sign in, shoot the stages, tear down/clean up, and head home. Every club is different, but most will welcome new shooters with open arms and a fair bit of advice and grace when you forget some of the rules. Nobody expects you to be perfect, so just go out, be safe, and have some fun.
Thanks for sticking it through this long article! Treat yourself to a book with the code holidaycheer for 10% your order!