3 Gun is a frustrating shooting sport to be a fan of. It is what got me into the shooting sports but it looks like I am on the tail end of its popularity. Like most shooting sports in my area the closest matches are 2+ hours away. There is a major in the area almost monthly during the season but most of those require a drive up into the Carolinas. I have not explored Tennessee and Kentucky but I think the majors there are mostly over as well.
Once upon a time there was a local match at East Alabama Gun Club as a 5th Sunday event but it has stopped. River Bend Gun Club is the most regular match which is also the furthest and requires me to drive through Atlanta. At close to a 3 hour drive it is hard to get excited for a match with the longest shots of 50 yards.
Atlanta 3-Gun hosts matches as well but these are largely adaptations of their USPSA matches. While the two sports have quite a bit in common, I am not a fan of matches not designed specifically for 3-Gun. Coincidentally this is also the only match I have ever been DQ’d at. This match is South East of Atlanta which I can get to using two lane highways.
Finally there is Marion Road Gun Club over in Macon. These are not regular matches and this is otherwise a private club. Lance Guest is the member who puts on the local 3 gun matches there which are usually pretty solid with what he is working with. He usually works in at least one open terrain stage and they have a 200 yard bay. A 1/3 IPSC steel at 200 does not require the hold of a 600 yard shot but is still pretty tough at the end of a stage.
3 Gun Background
As I stated, 3 Gun is what got me into competitive shooting. I began compiling firearms for it in 2017 when I lived in the Tacoma, Washington area. I moved in the summer of 2017 to the Indianapolis area. Indiana has a solid 3 Gun community that travels around the state to various ranges, but I did not understand this at the time. My daughters were also both toddlers and I traveled a lot for work. These events conspired against me getting started then. In 2019 I moved to Texas by myself and decided now was the time. I was living in our 5th Wheel at the time and spent a lot of time at a local indoor range and watching youtube videos. I had the intention of using a Mossberg 500 at my first match but ended up buying a Stoeger M3k to get started.
Once again, I got lucky with squadding and squadded with the local pro shooters and some up and coming juniors. Mark Witt was the Match Director at Republic 3 Gun and I shot that first match at Liberty Hills. I shot one more match with them that fall before deploying to Afghanistan. I also traveled up to ETTS near Dallas to shoot which really opened my eyes to what a 3 Gun match could be.
While I was in Afghanistan COVID-19 hit the world and it hit the shooting sports hard due to the ammo shortage. I paid attention to what was going on and round counts were cut significantly. By the time I got home in late summer of 2020 the shooting community was done being couped up, especially in TX, and matches were happening again. I shot one more match with Republic 3 Gun before I had to move to Georgia. Little did I know what an opportunity I had wasted in TX with the amount of shooting sports that could be had.
3 Gun in Georgia
When I moved to Georgia I had been away from my family for 2 years and my wife was tired. In 2020 we celebrated our 18-year wedding anniversary a few days after I moved back in with them. For the first time in 18 years, she said she was tired and needed some help around the house. Being away from the military support network while COVID hit had run its toll on her. I kept shooting at my local range about once a month but focused on getting our house the way we wanted it and spending time with my family for most of 2021. I also started a new position that consumed time on weekends as well as weekdays. I kept an eye on 3 gun and noticed it was hard to find in the local area.
The first match I shot while living in GA was a PRS match. The following month I shot a GA 3 Gun match out in Macon. I had missed the chance to shoot the local Columbus match and it had died due to lack of interest. Lance put on a great match and rekindled my love of 3 gun. I left there planning to get ready to shoot Benning Multi-gun in November despite some work conflicts. In the summer of 2022 Fort Benning changed some garrison rules which essentially killed the Fort Benning Match. I tried to sign up for Memorial 3-Gun and was deep on the wait list. With the help of the Facebook community I landed on Donnie Flow’s Microtech Pro-Am for my first Major. This is exactly what I was looking for.
I shot a few more matches around GA in 2022 before heading up to South Carolina for the Micro-Tech Pro-am. I took advantage of the rile and shotgun classes offered on Thursday and had a solid squad. I also paid for Joe Farewell’s Dry Fire program and used that to work gun handling, draws, and pistol presentation in the weeks leading into the match. It was what I needed to add some structure to my practice. I closed out my 2022 3-Gun season getting DQ’d after firing my final shot at Atlanta 3 Gun.
Talladega
This is by far the smallest match I have ever been to. There was only one squad of 9 but it was a stacked squad. This match is held at the Talladega CMP (Civilian Marksmanship Park). This facility is better known for their service rifle and shotgun sports but they have some pretty solid bays and an unknown distance range. It is a little over 2 hours away and in Central time Zone so I get to sleep in a bit and do not have to drive as early.
The match is put on by Keegan Singeton and is a stacked line up. Of the 9 shooters present, 6 were pro shooters. Then there was me, a young man at his first match, and the friend of a pro at his second match. The month prior they had 15 shooters so it just lives on the smaller side. Keegan set up four stages; a long-range rifle stage followed by three bay stages.
I was not happy with my performance on the long-range rifle stage. I had zeroed my rifle that week with three types of match ammo and did not adjust my zero to the ammo I decided to shoot. The course of fire was simple; large steel off hand at 200 yards, followed by 6 steel targets from 100-385 yards one shot each kneeling supported on a rail. After that move to prone and engage the same 6 steel targets. I was the first one to hit the off hand 200 yard on my first shot but when I kneeled I failed to hit a reverse kneel (thank you Army training). I was on the 200-yard target when I realized it and swapped knees. Prone started out good but the wind switched. I struggled to find my holds as I was adding the adjusted zero to the dope in my head while adjusting for wind. A stage that needed 13 rounds to clear and shouldn’t have taken an open shooter no more than 17-18 shots took me about 25 shots. I also failed to close my bolt on the start. I can handle poor shooting but the two mental mistakes, bolt and kneeling, upset me.
From there we moved back to the three bay stages. The first stage started with rifle off a V-TAC, three targets, one round each from two steps and a hole. From there you moved forward to a shooting box engaging three rifle targets before switching to pistol for some cardboard on the move. The stage closed with shotgun with a spinner and 6 poppers. My first two shots with my shotgun were very low which threw me off on the spinner. The poppers went down easily but the spinner added a few seconds to my run. I was not happy, but I could live with it.
Stage 3 was another mental mistake leaving an FTE. This stage started off with rifle off hand at static steel and paper before moving left to a hidden steel and a hard left lean for paper. You dumped rifle and engaged hard left lean paper with pistol along with two poppers and more paper before moving forward. The forward pistol had a swinger set off by a popper and several paper. It required the shooter to engage from about four positions and I failed to go hard left in the shooting box and missed concealed paper. I transitioned to shotgun and engaged two steel poppers with aerial clays but one clay barely cleared the cover so I did not engage it either. The stage closed with eight static clays hard left and hard right on the stage. After being worried about the swinger I failed to engage other targets. Typically I focus on knowing my engagement positions during walk through. This one got me as I was more worried about my marksmanship on the swinger than hitting firing positions.
The final stage was a fast and furious stand and deliver, all three guns. I was the only open shooter so most stages were designed to make the tac-ops shoot clean with 9 rounds or had one reload. This stage was comprised of a pistol array with a typical plate rack and four additional static steels, a rifle array with six paper targets, and nine clays split four on the left and five on the right. The weather in the area had been in triple digits all week so we really appreciated Keegan making the final stage a simple one. I had a restart due to a resetting issue with the plate rack. I was okay with that because it essentially gave me a warmup drawn and target engagements. I started the stage with pistol because it is my weakest firearm. I think you should shoot it with the freshest arms and hands possible. I think I took 12 shots to engage the 10 pistol targets which is solid for me. I took my time and made hits rather than missing fast. I shot the rifle clean with no trigger freezes which I had been doing that day. I then shot the shotgun left to right with one make up. It was a 24 second stage for me with most of the pros between 18-22 seconds. It was a good end to the match for me and a fun last stage for all. The CMP handles the stage breakdown so it was a bit of a different end of the match. I will be back to this match. There are no match results for these matches in Practiscore after 2022. The matches are on the 4th Saturday of the month when the shooters are around. For me this is a great place to shoot with people much better than me and learn how the pros do it. For now, I am getting back to my dry fire practice and shooting a 2 gun tactical match in Macon this weekend with a run and gun two weeks after that.