Last weekend I spent my time volunteering as a Range Officer for the Wyoming Tactical Rifle Championship. For those of you who know the WTRC is the son of the International Tactical Rifle Championship. What happened was the guy who ran the ITRC left the state and went to Arizona. Which meant that no one was running the competition. So a couple of guys in the industry put together a shoot on the same ranch with the same shooting concept.
I wasn't able to shoot this comp for the very good reason that I didn't have number 1 a team mate and number 2 $600 for the entrance fee. That and shooting with a group of Mil Spec and LEO's can seem intimidating. But after about 4 years of guys asking me to go I decided to offer my services as an RO.
As it turns out I enjoyed myself a great deal. I got to score the team that won on one of the 3 legs of the shoot. Talk about great shooting! These guys did very well and deserved the win. I also got to score for the team that came in dead last. I don't think I'm supposed to tell what everyone does for a living but last place belonged to the US ARMY. I also got to score for a team that came in, in the middle. Three days, three teams and three skill levels for the shooters. The number one thing that made the difference between the middle of the pack and the tail end was the mental side of the game. The guys who came in last just couldn't stop shooting at the targets.
The way the game is played is that there is a long range and a carbine shooter. Each shooter has a number of targets they have to engage at each station and each target has to be engaged twice. You get 20 points for a hit and 20 points for a miss with a 40 point deduction if you fail to engage a target. If you hit a target two times you score 40 points if you miss two times you get negative 40 points. If you miss twice and then hit it twice you score zero points. The guys who lost weren't bad shooters they just couldn't stop shooting after their two misses.
Like most things in life a winning mind set is in your head. I doubt that I'll be in good enough shape to run the course next year as a shooter. But if I was able to compete I wouldn't come in last. Which is comforting considering the level of shooters I saw.
Since this competition is aimed at guys who do this for a living, the sponsors tend to be upper crust of the industry. As a RO I happened to be in the right place at the right time and was allowed to play with some suppressed class III toys. Which is always a lot of fun, even better someone else (a manufacture) supplied the ammo.
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