You think you are ready and then........you are humbled again.

Last Saturday night the Rio Grande Valley Shooters had an invitation only night match.  This is when you do IDPA scenarios and it is dark.  Because it was invitation only we had a small group of shooters that thought we were cool.  Well guess what?  We shot horribly.

One of the members said, "If we had to protect ourselves, it would probably be at night in the dark."  We decided that we needed practice, and lots of it.

The first scenario was we were in our car and bumped into a gun fight.  Headlights from other cars  (halogen lamps) were shinning in our eyes.  We had to shoot out and above of the wood fake car window at targets to the left and right of the lights.

My night sights on my M&P were useless against the bright lights.  Plus I could not see the bad guys because of the contrast of the bright lights making the dark look much darker. It takes your eyes too long to adjust from the bright light to the dark, almost temporarily blinding you.

The second scenario we had a flashlight attached to the bottom rail of our handgun barrel.  I was double embarrassed when I didn't even know there was a bottom rail.

As a person with lots of outside survival training I know that if you use a flashlight it prevents you from seeing all around you limiting your view of dangers and of finding your way.  You have to keep the flashlight off until you need to see some detail clearly.

Putting a beacon of light on your firearm, created a lot of discussion about where to hold the gun.  The flashlight is like third on a match.  You are searching for the bad guy and he/she knows exactly where you are.  Not a good time to hold your gun chest ready unless you have a vest on.

We were able to sight the targets better with this scenario, but we also had to memorize where they were so we didn't have to search around for them and waste precious seconds.  Bad guys usually don't announce their position and give you time to memorize their location before you go after them.  Go figure.

In the third scenario we had to hold the handgun in one hand and a flashlight in another.  This made me a bit more comfortable since you could hold the flashlight further out away from your body, but then.....shooting a handgun with one hand loses your accuracy so you need to find a way to stabilize both.

Again, how you hold it makes you the best target around.  The image to the left is how I chose to hold it, however the members who had tactical training held the flashlight up away from the gun.    I was embarrassed again because I had not gone on the Internet to learn more about night shooting before coming to the match. As it happens there are lots of websites and YouTube videos on what to do.

When we do one handed scenarios during our regular Thursday night completions  I moan and groan.  Awww lets not do these.  Now I am going to ask for more.

We all agreed that this was tons of fun even though everyone was humbled by their scores.  We agreed that we needed to do more of these to redeem ourselves after our pathetic scores.

As we left at midnight we also agreed that we need to do these during daylight savings time so we could meet our spouses where we had promised to be earlier in the evening.  (Sure Honey.  I will be able to meet you around 10 at the party!  I will be back and finish up laying the floor then.)  I think everyone is grounded for a week or so.  Lots of roses being awarded to spouses before Thursday's practice.

Watch this video.