Well said!!
A competitor is a competitor in all things.
I think it comes down to personality types. You're either an Alpha, or a Beta.
How much time do you think you lost on the pull bcuz of your hearing??
.10 or more??
Less??
The electronic timers of the time clicked a tenth of a second before they buzzed. I couldn't hear that click so that was a tenth lost right there. Then when the timer buzzed I had to be very careful to identify the buzz, starting on a false sound would disqualify the run at the least.
There is a strange contrast when drawing a gun fast on signal. If the hands start down early it is a DQ but naturally you want the first part of the signal to start on. The click is short, clean, gives a clean signal to launch on. The buzzer is a long comparatively soft sound. It is similar to other noises in the building. Not hearing the click before the buzzer cost a tenth as already mentioned. Then pausing to confirm it is actually the buzzer costs another tenth or two.
Average cost per start was probably a quarter second or more. That is a lot to give up when talking about around two seconds flat for a total run.
There was another place I lost time too, stopping on each target. Faster to sweep across the targets firing as you swing onto and past a target. Stopping is better practice for self defense in my opinion and that was the real objective for me, practicing for real world.
In the shoot off at an event we could start with a round in the chamber. The winner was determined by the fastest of three runs. I was putting seven rounds in my pistol figuring that two misses were a half second or more lost. I was saving weight with fewer rounds loaded that wouldn't do me any good anyway.
I had shot all seven rounds one run, rare. I assumed one in the chamber and the next run was met with the dreaded click. I had aligned properly, my stance was perfect from earlier runs. The buzzer sounded, I had a near perfect draw, the gun came up perfectly, and I snapped the hammer on an empty chamber. Stunned by the very rare failure to fire it took me long fractions of a second to figure out the problem. Put me out of the competition.
I racked the slide and brought my pistol up. Unusual for me, I just panned across the plates shooting as I went. It was poison fast, maybe a quarter second between shots on separate targets. Afterwards I asked a very facetious "Did I win?" Needless to say I wasn't in the same zip code as a win! The match was stopped for a few minutes while all of the young guns checked my splits between shots though, those splits were wicked tight. A semi-auto was claimed to jam if shooting under .15 second splits. My Hubilt pistols would cycle at 0.10 seconds without issues. I have seen them cycle properly at 0.08 seconds but that was just somebody playing putting bullets in the berm, no aiming involved.
I set four records with Hubilt guns. While they were local records, nationally and internationally ranked Masters and Grandmasters shot those matches so I was pretty pleased. I could build guns, had built close to a dozen, and I could have stayed busy just doing trigger jobs. My trigger jobs were well respected locally and my guns ran like seven day clocks.
Early morning bragging but I have never let time of day interfere with bragging!(grin)
Hu
www.onepocket.org
