Hi Everyone, I just got back from Arizona after shooting Superstition Mystery Mountain 3-Gun.  Last year I won the Ladies Division in Open and this year I did it again!  I want to tell you about the match and some of the stages in the hopes that more ladies might be inspired to come out and try their hands at mulitgun.

SMM3-Gun is very similar to USPSA and other 3-Gun organizations with multiple guns shot on a single stage. We shoot everything: traditional USPSA and IPSC paper targets, lots of steel, LaRue sniper targets that fall down and reset automatically, and long range rifle targets that flash when you hit them.  At this match we even shot “E Type Targets”, a silhouette military target that electronically records your hits and is computer programed to fall down after two shots.

Just like in handgun, how you map out a stage and plan your course of fire can make or break you.  Plus, you have the added challenge of transitioning from one firearm to another (safely, of course!).  This is really a thinking game.  It’s all about having your gear placed correctly on your body for reloads, engaging the targets in the right order, setting one gun down and picking up another and staying strong all the way through in stages that are much longer than what we traditionally shoot in pistol-only matches.

The stages in 3-Gun are always new and pushing the boundaries.  On one stage, after shooting long range rifle as far as 350 yards and some super-fast close range rifle, we shot a dark house with pistol!  You grabbed your pistol and a Surefire flashlight then entered a pitch black room holding the flashlight in your weak hand and engaging the targets strong-handed.  On another all-rifle stage you started hanging from a Vietnam-era parachute rig that had been hoisted off the ground.  Your rifle was empty and you had to load and shoot 17 USPSA targets.  The harness was extremely restrictive and it required some wiggling around to see all the targets.  I have to say this is the first time I shot a gun with my feet dangling beneath me!

There were a lot of great lady shooters in Arizona.  Tasha Hanish won the Ladies Tactical Scope division (a few years in a row now, I think!).  I got to meet Tasha’s teammate Dianna Liedorff.  Denise Johnson made me laugh during the awards ceremony and is so supportive of all the women.  I only wish there were more women 3-Gunners.  I hope some of you USPSA shooters will grab the rest of your guns and join us!

See you on the range,

Maggie Reese

P.S.  I want to thank the Women of USPSA.  Tasha and I were talking at the match about how great it is to have a website that showcases all of the ladies in our sport.  Thanks Kippi, Julie, and Sharyn for all your time!

Editor’s note:  You’re welcome, Maggie and thanks for contributing your story!
Congratulations to ALL of the women that competed at the match. To follow is a list of the Top 3 ladies in Open and Tactical Scope Divisions.

OPEN DIVISION:
1 – Maggie Reese
2 – Debora Cheek
3 – Annette Williamson

TACTICAL SCOPE DIVISION:
1 – Tasha Hanish
2 – Dianna Liedorff
3 – Sara Dunivin

For complete match results, check the SMM3G web site.

This year’s USPSA Multi-Gun Championships brought us two new ladies to the national winners circle.  We so enjoyed reading the post on the Women of USPSA Blog from this year’s Open Champion, Maggie Reese. We were also able to catch up with Tasha Hanish and chat about her Tactical Division win…

WoUSPSA – Congratulations on your first USPSA National Title! This must be so exciting for you. You’ve literally grown up shooting USPSA Handgun matches.  What is is like to shoot Multi-Gun compared to the pistol divisions in USPSA?

Tasha – This is just my 2nd Multi-Gun Nationals.  Multi-Gun matches are a lot of fun!  For me, I get more out of these than pistol matches.  There is more to think about, more to do, and a multitude of skills you have to incorporate in your match.  For instance, for all 3-Gun stages you have to think about where to pick up and where to safely drop off guns, as well as remembering which targets to shoot with which gun.

WoUSPSA – How was the match for you this year?

Tasha – My squad was a lot of fun.  The FNH guys were all in the squad, as well as some shooters I am used to seeing (but never had the chance to shoot with) at pistol matches.  I learned a lot from each of them!  My highlights were the long-range rifle stages.  I finally was able to dive into my skills and balance out nerves and patience to get through the 2 stages.  Even though they were my highlights, they were also personal challenges.  Other challenges were minor, and more of a reminder of what I need to work on to better my shooting abilities.

WoUSPSA – What would you tell someone who was thinking of shooting Multi-Gun but hasn’t taken the plunge?

Tasha – It’s a challenge, it’s fun, and everyone is willing to help you get through the matches.  If something goes wrong, there are amazing individuals who will back you and help you get through it.  I truly enjoy the fact that the shooting sports are such a family of people.  I do it, because of all these reasons!!!  My words of encouragement are do it, try it.  If at first you don’t feel comfortable (like I did), try it again.  Try new guns, ammo, etc…only then will you get a true feeling of the fun you can have!

WoUSPSA – So, tell us… What’s it feel like to win your first nationals?!

Tasha – Feelings about winning… well, excitement of course!  I had been trying for so many years to get a national championship!  This year I concentrated so much more on 3-Gun (because I enjoy it so much) that it was that much more rewarding to finally succeed.  I can’t put it completely into words how it felt to finally win, but know that I appreciate everyone’s support, encouragement and love throughout the years that I have been shooting!

Many thanks to Tasha and Maggie for taking the time to share their experiences winning their first USPSA National Titles.  Congratulations to them and all the ladies who competed at this year’s Multi-Gun!

Hi Everyone,

In October, I attended my first USPSA MultiGun Nationals.   I won my first National Title as the 2009 MultiGun High Lady in Open!  It was a challenging yet rewarding match and I wanted to share the highlights with those of you who couldn’t make it.

The match was held October 22-25 at the Boulder Rifle and Pistol Club, twenty miles outside of Las Vegas.  It was a great range for 3-Gun with a dozen small bays, a 1000-yard high-power range (thankfully we only shot up to 350 yards!) and three stages set up in open desert terrain.

The weather really cooperated, staying in the mid 80s with the wind only coming up on the last day.  Co-Match Directors Michael Voigt and John Amidon put on 12 stages which required a minimum of 160 rounds of handgun, 110 rounds of rifle, 115 rounds of birdshot, and 20 slugs – though most competitors fired substantially more.

The props and stages were really amazing!  There were 137 walls, 50 barrels, 65 poppers and 2 (!) Texas Stars, one shot with pistol and the other with shotgun.   There was knock-down steel, a handful of swingers, lots of paper and two shotgun traps throwing clay birds.   All in all, the match used over 10,000 clay pigeons.  

LaRue Tactical was also extremely generous, loaning the match over $30,000 in Sniper Targets.  For those of you who have not seen a LaRue Sniper Target, it is a 12 by 22 inch self-setting steel silhouette.  About 9 seconds after the target is hit, it returns upright.  Having those targets set out at up to 350 yards really saved the competitors and ROs a tremendous amount of time and effort resetting the long range stages.  If LaRue would only come up with self-taping paper targets, my life would be complete!

I was lucky enough to shoot with true Super Squad greats and National Champions Mike Voigt, Bennie Cooley, Taran Butler, JoJo Vidanes, and Jerry and Kay Miculek.  What also made our squad great was having other first-timers to the match. Dave Cutts (a pistol GM out of California) and Bennie’s son Jaxon (a great junior who is almost as good as his dad!) rounded out our squad.  I had the benefit of watching true experts, along with the camaraderie of new 3-gunners who understand what it is like simply trying to survive a stage.

There were a lot of great runs made on the range and stories flew as fast the bullets.  Daniel Horner, who took first in Tactical, had an amazing run of 66.17 seconds on Stage 1, Bunker Boogie, and it was immediately relayed throughout the match.  He shot a total of 10 targets at 350 yards, 5 targets at 150 yards, not to mention 17 shots of close-range pistol just to get started.  And he did it over 20 seconds quicker than the next fastest competitor in Tactical!

Tasha Hanish won High Lady in Tactical.  She’s had a great year in 3-Gun and this match was no different.  She really showed off her pistol skills with a Top Ten overall finish on Stage 8, Slot Match, a Comstock 24-round, 120 point all pistol stage.  She shot it in only 15.70 seconds!  This was also Tasha’s first National Title.

Stage 11, Desert Quail and Rabbits, was an extra challenging stage for a lot of us.  At the beginning of the stage, there were two poppers and two hidden clays set about 15 yards in front of you.  A foot activator set off two trap machines, all of which were shot from within a typical sporting clays shotgun “cage”.  Since the flying clays were disappearing targets, they were no-penalty mikes if you missed them.  They were worth 20 points each if you could hit them, though, and that made it really hard for people to pass up potentially 40-points on a 200-point stage.  Open Champion, Mike Voigt, set the bar high with a run of 25.77 seconds.  He nailed both flying clay birds, ran through the rest of the shotgun and close-range rifle, and finished the stage by shooting three 80-yard targets off hand rather than running to the end to where you could engage the targets on a rest!  I ran the stage in 41.59 seconds and finished 22nd overall.

My favorite stage was probably Stage 7, Around The Bend.  It had everything! 26 rounds of rifle with lots of no-shoots, eight rounds of birdshot with two of the poppers flipping up clays, and 13 rounds for pistol, including a Texas Star!  That stage really emphasized what MultiGun is all about with shooting on the move, transitioning from one gun to another, moving targets and a lot of multitasking along the way.  I finished 25th overall on this stage, with a total time of 47.17 seconds.

I also really enjoyed the two all-pistol stages, Stage 4, X Games and Stage 8, Slot Match.  For the first time ever at a major match, I felt that my times on the stages more accurately reflected my skills.  For once my nerves were under control and I saw things happening in my sight picture that normally I only see in practice.  It was truly one of those “a-ha moments” and I had the quiet satisfaction of knowing I had reached a new level with my competitive shooting.

There’s always the other end of the spectrum though.  Stage 1, Bunker Boogie, reminded me of how far I still have to go to be a great shooter.  It’s almost too painful to speak of! I will say I had a “death jam” on the pistol part and timed-out before I could finish the rifle.  Yikes, even now I cringe!

All in all, it was a great match and I am looking forward to shooting it again next year.  I hope to see some new faces and old friends, who could not make it this year, at the 2010 match. 

Thank you Women of USPSA for letting me share my first MultiGun Nationals win.