I am back home in the Texas Hill Country after a week in New Mexico. I spent two days getting acclimated (7000 feet above sea level compared to 800), and held off going to the range until Tuesday due to the high winds. First mistake, I should have gone on Monday and got in one more shooting day.
Tuesday was the worst wind but the best results. I had low expectations so I was calm and relaxed. Mentally, this is quite an advantage and that is the main take-away from this session. I've seen this result many times before. I didn't overthink the shooting since I didn't know what to expect anyway. If the results had been lousy, I just would not have published a video. But the results were good--mainly because the wind effect was less than a foot, even at 100 yards with a .45, so it was fairly easy to come up with holds that made at least some sense. The difficulty was in judging the quickly varying wind direction and speed. I missed a few. But no one else even came out to battle the wind, so I was already ahead of the game.
Wednesday was a down then up day. Started out with the P-10S with the usual excellent results in calm conditions, then the sight became unstable (have to send it in) so I got ticked off about that. But I did what I normally do to recover from a bad session--I got out my ever reliable, ever predictable P-09, waited until the wind picked up and stabilized somewhat and then proceeded to release 15 good shots in the wind. Recovery complete, mentally. I was relaxed and applied what I learned on Tuesday with the .45 to the 9mm in less wind. So, another good day in the mountains of New Mexico.
Thursday was P-10F day and I struggled some with it but managed three good targets out of five as the morning calm changed to mountain gusts. Still a good day with the striker gun, no problems at all. I had higher expectations than skill, however, so I was a little hard on myself, mentally.
Friday was designated by me as a fun day. I was mentally tired from shooting only paper in the wind, and I had never tried steel at 100 yards with the 97B"E", much less in the wind, so that looked like something that would be fun and entertaining to try. But even on a "fun" day I learned a lot. Early morning sun on a clear day when using a reflex red dot with slightly impaired vision on a dark target in the shade turned out to be more of a challenge than I expected for a "fun" day! So the sun position was a challenge, but the early morning calm helped. I finished before the wind picked up much, with good results AFTER I addressed the vision challenges. Another good session with the 97B"E".
So 4 days out of 6 possible I got to shoot. I learned something each day. That's a good week. All my videography gear worked perfectly, even the stuff that blew off the shooting bench on Tuesday. I didn't shoot many rounds, but I think I got good value from each round fired. And I only had to drive 8 miles for each round fired, or 300 miles per range session. I BETTER have learned a lot! The pistol shooting discipline is as much a mental challenge every day as it is a technical skill. I still have a lot to learn about the mental discipline.
As per usual, CZ firearms were perfect, shooter (and one sight) need work.
I see the optometrist on Monday for new shooting eye prescription after the laser correction a few weeks ago. That one change should help make the sight pictures crisp again, especially with the MTR .22 rifle and scope. I struggled some with the red dot this trip visually.
Plenty of videos for last week's sessions already posted.
Joe
