Ozark Huckleberry

I respect the depth of TO experience you bring to the discussion, and appreciate the consideration you showed the elder gent in letting him finish the stage. I suspect the amount of time taken to check the barrels and instruct him on how to proceed was not significantly less than the 15 seconds the misses would have cost him, but he got to see it through. But you describe the ideal situation for that to happen — an well-seasoned TO running a deliberate shooter. The SHB is written for the high SASS numbered folks too — the newly minted TOs and the shooters who still whisper ‘load-skip-load-load-load-load’ at the LT. And the SHB says to make the weapon safe and move on. To me, that keeps people with way less experience than yours from trying to evaluate situations and make decisions with catastrophic potential on the clock.

1. First, in what situation would a TO witness a squib and decide NOT to take action immediately -- either STOP, or make the firearm safe? And if STOP is called, isn't that run on the stage done? A reshoot is possible if the TO was wrong, of course. 2. Next, per SHB p. 14, if there is a squib, there is no 'check the barrel'. It is 'make the firearm safe and continue with the next firearm'. How would 'check the barrel and let the shooter proceed' look in practice? If you stop the shooter, isn't the stage done? It's not as if you can call 'time out' in the stage to check the barrel. 3. Finally, once the stage is done, removing the offending wad is just a matter of running a rod down the barrel (I have used a car's radio antennae in a pinch). Why continue with an obstructed barrel if it can be cleared? What would be the logic in allowing a shooter to continue with a gun with a known safety issue? Money's not on the line, we're not defending freedom -- we don't even let people move and shoot at the same time. In letting a shooter continue with one obstructed barrel, you're depending on someone who's shooting routine has been rattled to overcome their established muscle memory and avoid loading the obstructed barrel while they're juggling the sweeps, the shooting order, etc. Some people could handle it, some people who could't. Following the SHB, there is no judgement for who is who. And if you decide to let the shooter continue with one obstructed barrel, as a TO -- would you stand just as close to the shooter as you normally would?

It’s also useful in other ways, and you can think of it in terms of MOA (minute of angle) — rule of thumb is 1” = 1 MOA at 100 yards. At 8 yards, a 16” plate is roughly 200 MOA. At 2 yards, 200 MOA comes out to about 4”. So I can tape 4” targets on the wall 6 feet away for dry firing practice, and have about the same visual presentation as 16” plates at 8 yards.

Too dumb to dump dirt from a boot if the instructions were on the bottom.