Shooting the Waterberg league for the first time this weekend

Grouping at 25m in yesterday’s live session.

While I’m working at covering the 2019 National and Provincial elections, I’m also preparing to take part in the Waterberg IDPA league on Saturday morning. My preparation is lacking slightly, but I’m making the best of an interesting situation … it’s probably not the lack of practice that’s going to catch me, but a lack of sleep.

I’m at the IEC in Pretoria from 12:00 tonight till 06:00 tomorrow morning. Then I’m teaching from 09:00 to 15:00 in Ruimsig and I’m back in Pretoria at 16:00 for another few hours. Still feeling young. That may change.

Fortunately Neil Taylor is driving on Saturday morning, so I’ll make up some sleep on the way. And my ammo is loaded. And I got a range session in yesterday. And I hope to do some dry fire tonight.

Waterberg will be shot unseen and unplanned, with no courses of fire forthcoming. But it’s a league and I think most of the Go for it squad will be there … so there should be lots to learn too.

Looking forward to it. Here is the Facebook heads-up if you still want to join:

Die WBDPC liga vind op die 11de Mei plaas. Dit sal uit 8 stages , 138 rontes bestaan. Daar mag dalk n kronograaf wees – jy weet nooit.

Om te registreer kontak vir DRIES of myself met die volgende besonderhede:

Naam + Van
SADPA No
Klas
Divisie

Jy moet n opbetaalde lid by jou klub , SADPA en IDPA wees. Jy moet ook in die afgelope jaar n classifier in die klas wat jy skiet gedoen het.

Koste beloop R150 per skut – betaalbaar op die dag of vooraf.

Ons gaan vuur verskaf – braai na die skiet . Tannie Henriette 🤣 sal vir ons pryse kry vir vleispakkies . LAAT WEET ASB WIE WIL BRAAI. Koeldrank sal gedurende die skiet beskikbaar wees en na die tyd ietsie beters.

O ja , die inskrywings met toerusting nagaan sal vanaf 7:30 wees . Die skiet sal om 8:30 begin.

Kontak:

Dries by 082 210 3677 of Kobus 082 971 0273

Easter shoot registration closes soon

There are still some open slots for Sunday’s tier 2 IDPA match at Cecil Payne, but time is running out to register.

The club will start consolidating squads on Thursday afternoon, but if you feel that an Easter Egg hunt with your 16-year-old is not the best thing to do after that deadline, send us an email … come join the 100 or so shooters that will be there.

I had a look at the medals this afternoon and they are brilliant. I hope to take one myself, of course, but there are quite a few left after that.

I’m not so interested in the bronze ones, but after this weekend at Rooikraal, I’d be glad to have one of those too.

Here is the release and the link to register:

DON’T BE LATE FOR A VERY IMPORTANT DATE

Our Easter leagues are always well-loved – we typically celebrate Easter with a twist. Come and join us for a “Mad Hatters League” on the 21st of Registrations are now open for this exciting league.

MD for the match will be Tinus de Jager and the assistant MD is  Lynette Oxley.

We have nine handgun stages and 156 rounds are needed; if you don’t miss a thing, of course.

Range building starts at 06:00, safety officers gather at 06:30 and shooters can register from 07:00. We hope to get the shooting started at 08:00.

The fees are R250 for membersand visitors pay R300.

We will have the coffee cart again as well as some catering.

Click here to register and squad: https://www.practiscore.com/alice-through-the-looking-glass-easter-league/register

If you do not win, you have to learn

The headline is loosely based on part of the Lanny Bassham programme on mental management for sportspeople. At this weekend’s Rooikraal IDPA League, I learnt a lot. And I have a whole lot to do before I shoot there again.

As I have it, Rooikraal’s annual handgun league almost did not make it onto the shooting calendar this year. The club is also hosting the 2019 Northern Nationals; the planning, range building, scoring and admin puts a ton of pressure on shooters who organise these events for the love of the sport only. But they pulled it off again.

124 shooters gathered at the range on Saturday morning, 13 April, and nearly all of them finished. Great organisation, fun stages and quite a few no-shoot targets as well. As always.

TacSHAC shooter, Davey Gates, grabbed top honours in semi-auto pistol and Stock Service Pistol on the day. Ruan Beneke took the special division, Bernard van der Walt was on top in Enhanced Service Pistol, Cornell van der Westhuizen won Back-up Gun and Flip du Plessis was the fastest Concealed-Carry Pistol shooter on the day.

Interesting to note is the times for these top five pistol shooters are within two seconds of each other, with Davey finishing the day on 144.92 and Flip on 146.8. The other three are squashed in between those!

Wyn Robertson won Carry Optics and Oliver von Veh took PCC honours. Von Veh shot the best score of the day, topping the table at 135.32.

Lynette Oxley, from TacSHAC, had a whopping shoot, beating almost all the SSP sharp shooters and most of the expert-class shooters on the day. She gets a well-deserved match bump to expert.

I learn, Mr Faulty …

Petri Banks was kind enough to take the video and share it with me.

I was one of those who did not finish the day, however. The rules are rather clear on the issue that got me taken off the shooting roster: Don’t break 180 degrees. It gets even worse when there is a safety officer standing there, checking for something to go wrong. She says I swept her, and for that I am truly sorry.

As Mr Bassham says, there is no use in focusing on the negative. His argument is that only a few make it to the top. When you do not win, you should take the experience, highlight the things you did right and fix those that you did not get this time.

I’ll be shooting to get my accuracy on the required standard in the weeks to come. And I have been opening doors in my house with my Glock 17 in my other hand since early this morning.

Six spots left at Rooikraal

The guys running the IDPA league at Rooikraal this weekend says there are six more slot open for what promises to be another great shoot. I base this on last year’s level of enjoyment and the medal the previous year (of course).

Go to their practiscore page to make a late entry. Duane Wessels promises it would be worth it. In his words, “it’s going to be an awesome match”.

The nine stages look interesting on paper, with mostly shorter courses of fire being offered on Saturday morning. 140 rounds are needed if you make no mistakes or do not have to fill in. A few more in your bag is therefore advised.

Rooikraal has the sun shades on every range, but I’d suggest some sunscreen as well; even though the South African Weather Service predicts some rain on the weekend.

 

 

 

 

Hope to see you on the range.

Armory staff will run Cecil Payne

JMPD’s range instructors were overseeing new recruits writing exams in the city this morning, leaving armory staff to run the Cecil Payne shooting range in Maraisburg.

There were no problems getting onto the range early and indications are that it will continue this way for the next two weeks at least.

While the range instructors will be back on the range after the recruits are done writing, they will not be dealing with the public anymore. Public access will be the sole responsibility of armory staff in future, sources say.

Range bookings, club shoots and training sessions are continuing as usual for the moment, but the range will not be open to late in the afternoon due to a lack of staff.

Armory staff want to set up a communication line through WhatsApp to alert the public to range closures. The details of said group is not available yet.

Cecil Payne on skeleton staff; go shoot in the morning

The Cecil Payne shooting range in Maraisburg will close at around 14:00 for the next couple of weeks, after the Metro Police withdrew all their staff from the venue.

The current range management says they are doing their best to keep the range open for the moment.

Shooters will be able to shoot from early morning still.

The shooting range was previously run by Metro Police staff, but they have been asked to report for duty “in town”.

Sources within the system say they will report back to the range after overseeing examinations for recruits, but it seems as if they are now reporting to the academy only. They will reportedly not be involved in running the range anymore.

TacSHAC Defensive Pistol Club has a club shoot at the range on Thursday and the club’s Easter IDPA league match, which has only 25 spots available, is scheduled for Sunday 21 April.

Go-for-it gets it in Ermelo

Team Go-for-It, an IDPA outfit from mainly Witbank, Middelburg and Pretoria, managed to run away with most of the top honours in this weekend’s Ermelo IDPA/Sadpa league. Flip du Plessis, shooting CCP at Master level, ran away with the top honours (beating the field by almost 35 seconds) on Saturday.

Cold, cloudy conditions greeted the 38 competitors at the Vlakfontein Shooting Range … starkly similar to the Africa Championships that was held on the same range at the end of 2018. But shooters had driven from as far afield as Durban to take part in the league and a few clouds overhead were not going to stop the competition.

The match consisted of eight stages; mostly on the short side and some with very open targets. Which saw some competitors, including myself, miscalculating their ability and adding substantially to their penalty points down.

Du Plessis and Neil Taylor, also from Team Go-for-It, was the most accurate for the day. Both shooters managed to register only 14 points down on the eight stages.

Not a single negative comment was heard and the Johannesburg shooters were unanimous in their view that the trip was well worth the effort.

Results

A wide range of divisions were represented on the day and the top shots in each are listed below:

ESP: John Whatley

SSP: Tinus de Jager

CCP: Flip du Plessis

CDP: Nick Swartz

BUG: Glen de Villiers

SPD: Petri Banks

There were no PCC competitors on the day.

The full results are available here.

The next IDPA handgun league is at Rooikraal, south of Johannesburg, on the 13^th of April.