Sometimes things just don't go as planned.

This Saturday morning started with some excitement but it wasn't the right kind for me.

We woke at 4.30 am and arrived Pioneer Sportsmens Club promptly at 6.30. This is the culmination of a year of practice. We have come a long way since last July. Thousands of rounds of ammunition have been spent practicing for the NH State USPSA match.

Thursday night Jeff had received his new Matrix Arms MXI and we met at the Ferry Brook Range to put some rounds down range before the match. It didn't take long to get the red dot dialed in and the rest was smooth as butter. The new firearm will be a heavy-hitter in the competitive practical shooting world. The steel framed, 40 ounce 9mm has virtually no muzzle flip. This allows for extremely tight doubles. With practical shooting, most targets have to be shot twice. Quick doubles are the name of the game and

with reduced muzzle flip, the shooter naturally stays on target for the second shot. This shaves time on each target and that time can really add up over the course of a match. It also boasts a 1911 grip angle, high performance trigger and handles like greased-lightning. This gun ran flawlessly for us. I was, and still am, jealous.

I was running my Glock 34 with my Trijicon SRO. Tried and true. I picked this up last year from Mondanock Firearms and have been running it ever since. I purchased the SRO red dot optic the same day that I bought the pistol and they installed and zero'd it before I even left the the store. Monadnock Firearms is a GREAT place to do business. They have become friends over the last year. I am very happy with my set up and have grown to become very familiar with it.

So we arrive at Pioneer Sportsmens Club in Dunbarton Nh at 6.30am and proceed to take some time to do course walk-throughs. The course is amazing... again. This is my second time visiting Pioneer and it is clear that they know how to make great matches. They have ten stages of excitement with houses to run through, tunnels to crawl under and lots and lots of targets. It seems that every stage has a hidden target that is designed to have the shooter overlook it. Every stage makes the shooter move to the farthest distances of the shooting zone to clear all the targets. Additionally, this is a charity event which benefits Deliverfund.org in the fight against human trafficing. So we get to have all this fun AND it's for a good cause.

And then the other shoe drops.

Stage 9 is our first stage. I'm wearing my AimCam glasses and cannot seem to get them to connect. Its frustrating but I'll just go without the recording. I step up, load and make ready, get the starting signal and drop the first popper/actuator. I shift my sights to the target that it *should* have actuated but there is no motion. We stop, reset the stage and prepare for the redo. Now the stage is reset for a full run, I get the beep and draw, but where's my red dot? My irons aren't high enough to cowitness so I'm essentially shooting without sights. The first target is fairly close so I just give it hell. I'm in the A-zone. Then I send a couple at the popper/actuator that is deeper down range and one lands. It activates the twist target and I send a few over there. Now I've got some confidence in my No-Sight shooting capabilities so I blast through the next six targets. I did much better than expected and by the time I got to the last two targets of the stage, the red dot comes alive. Equipment malfunctions are frustrating.

Stage 10 (our second stage). I've got one eye on my red dot (which seems to be alive and

kicking) and my other eye on my wife and fellow competitor who is shooting right before I do. She gets the beep, darts left, engages the first target, comes right, engages 5 or 6 more targets through a narrow window, proceeds to reload and then gets the command to cease fire. The range officer disqualifies her for reasons that we are not firm about. It may have been the muzzle over the berm during the reload or maybe a breach of 180. It was not clear from my point of view and it wasn't made clear to her after the infringement. Either way, the Range Officers have a very important job to do. They volunteer their time and are an essential part of the sport. And honestly, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not. Range Officers and their judgements should always be respected and that is what we did. Disqualified for the day, she accepted and packed up.

I was next to run through Stage Ten. My red dot stayed illuminated throughout the stage but while walking through for post scoring I noticed that I did fail to engage one of the poppers. I took this as the final sign and made my way to the safe table to bag my firearm. We were done for the day by 9.30am. When all the shooters were finished with Stage Ten, I made sure to shake the hands of the Range Officers and thank them for their time. No hard feelings from either side. We will look forward to shooting at the Pioneer Sportmens Club again.

Life is full of challenges. And if you take those challenges seriously, they can be stressful. It's not a bad thing and it can be motivating. In the grand scheme of things, we won't even remember this blip on the radar. In the short term, we will use it for motivation to get better.

Hammer down and.... bag it....

Jason