Practice, practice, practice.

That's the mantra of the next few weeks as I gear up for a few upcoming matches and championships.

In a few weeks I'm shooting in a force on force event with IDPA World Champion Glenn Shelby. It'll be interesting to see how he reacts to a target that has the potential of shooting back or reacting before he does....

Later next month it's also a return to the Colorado IDPA State Championships in Montrose. I'm trying to get back into my match mentality and I'm delving back into the study of Mastery, as taught by the late George Leonard. I'm gonna get a little zen here and say that while I don't believe that any competition is already decided before it takes place by the preperation of the participants, I do fully believe that as a competitior there are only certain things you can control. The main thing you can control is yourself.

I intend to be as in control and fully prepared as I can by June 23rd.

So now it's time for a little dry fire and some live fire when the sun comes up tomorrow.....

Well....it's been a long winter hibernation, but it's getting that time of year that the sun stays out long enough to actually do something after work.....that includes working on this blog, which I've woefully neglected for the past few months....

Some new and interesting shooting opportunities coming up this summer have presented themself. One of which will be an interesting Force-on-Force shooting contest where I'll be teamed with a multi-time National and World Champion shooter......it'll be interesting to see how the gamer handles the transition to gunfighter....

Also coming p we've got a repeat of the Colorado and New Mexico IDPA Championships as well as a possible trip to the Colorado USPSA Championships in August.....stay tuned....

All hermited up for the winter....

Ouch.....looks like it's really been awhile since the last post... see what being so busy and the weather turning to crap gets you ? "The Walking Dead" is on a mid-season break (what's with the firearms paranoia this season?) and "Justified" won't start for another 3 or 4 weeks....of course we can get all the high drama we need by watching the supreme liar's in the Fast and Furious/Gunwalker arena. Frustrating and soon leading to an impeachment if questions aren't answered....mark my words.

Last weekend I spent a few hours of my life doing the silly two year "refresher" requirement the state of NM mandates for concealed handgun license holders. While I am normally pretty content with the laws in NM regarding firearms, this is one of those trade offs that was made in the original implementation of the concealed carry law to appease the anti-carry crowd.

NM is the only state in the now 49 states that allow concealed carry to require a mid-life cycle refresher course to retain privileges of the license. The flip side is that at least people are required to shoot to a proficiency level (and at least shoot) at some point during the life of their license (which is 4 years in this state) before renewing.

Judging by the looks of nearly everyone there I didn't see anyone that would be a public menace....if anything just one person that needs more time on the range behind the trigger.

Competition wise, it's the off-season now, but the good news is the NM State IDPA Championships will be at my home range next year....yea for the home bay advantage. Also looking at shooting the AZ IDPA champs in the spring down in Phoenix and the Colorado State championships have been pushed back a month to June, which will be a nice break out of the desert as it starts heating up....although Montrose in June can be just as warm so I suppose it's a bit of a push. Dry fire practice is soon to commence again with the primary intention of breaking out of my top 5 finish zone, with the ultimate goal of a win this year at the State/Regional championship level.

Training wise I'm still preparing for the 24 hour Survival Trial as well....I've finally gotten off the plateau with my training and am feeling like if I can keep this steady progression and try to time my peak with it I'll be ready to compete for the win, not just show.

Alright, time to shut down for the night....more later this week....

An old friend....tested & revisited

Recently I was contacted to provide a test and review of some ammunition chambered in the ubiquitous .40 S&W Round.

The test for today.....Federal HST (sometimes call the "Hydrashok Two") 180 Grain JHP in .40 S&W

Now I'll readily admit to being a HUGE fan of Federal Ammunition products. I've shot them in hunting rifles, in competition and have carried them as a duty/issue round as well. Federal was of course famous for having one of the first .40 S&W rounds with it's mainstay Hydrashok personal defense line of ammunition. That design, while effective is nearing its late-teens as far as design, and while not yet an obsolete round, there has been some improvement in bullet design over the years.

Enter the Federal HST in the late 2000's, used by the FBI, DHS,DOE, US Border Patrol and several other law enforcement branches agencies and branches.

While originally marketed as a Law Enforcement only round over the years, this was simply a ATK/ Federal Ammunition company policy and had no legal base. Occassionally, due to overrun or some other reason a limited amount of this round will show up in the civilian market with different ammunition distributors. While the HST's are indeed close to the ballistics of Federal's Premium Tactical line, they are a bit hotter than even that over the counter round.

I've personally fired probably close to 2,500 rounds of Federal HST's in the 180 grain .40 S&W over the years. Usually it's always been in a strictly controlled range environment and I haven't had the ability to test expansion and construction.

Today's test was done with my very trusty Smith & Wesson M&P40 sidearm with the standard 4.25 inch barrel. Test conditions were 45 degrees F, with low humidity at 5,600 feet MSL, giving a Mach 1 speed of 1117 FPS (feet per second) according to the old handheld CR3 Flight Computer (I knew I'd have a use for it someday....). That's not a useless fact...it'll relate to the chronograph info found later....

On the chronograph, the HST had an average velocity of 1247 fps (six shot sting), comfortably exceeding the speed of sound. The trusty "palm of my hand meter" recorded the rounds as being strong (as you would expect from personal defense ammo) but nothing uncontrolable. Grouping was acceptable at 20 yards and controlled pairs (double taps) were easily acomplished.

One of the knocks against the older Federal Hydrashok rounds was overpenetration. While the round expanded reasonably well, there always seemed to be some unexpended energy that got transfered from expansion and instead left a wad of lead and copper exiting it's target at a reasonably high rate of speed. In response to years of hearing this from shooters and agencies that contracted with ATK/Federal the focus of the newer HST round was to achive much greater expansion, which of course leads to much great adynamic wounding and stopping power.

As you can see below, I've got a picture of two fired rounds, on the left an HST and on the right a Hydrashok. Both 180 Grain rounds were fired through 4 water jugs at a distance of 20 yards. The HydraShok penetrated all 4 jugs and the fiberboard backstop before impacting in the sand berm 10 yards behind the target stand. The HST when fired from the same position punched clean through the first 3 water just before entering the 4th and coming to a stop within the jug.

Federal HST on the left and an older HydraShok on the right
after being fired through a water jug test at 20 yards.

Upon later bench inspection with a digital caliper, the HydraShok has expanded to a .75 Caliber while the much more agressively expanded HST comes up as a .84 caliber. The advantage on retained weight also goes in favor of the HST. The Hydrashok shed some weight (lead and copper) after being fired and impacting and comes up with a weight of 177 grains. The HST comes in at 182 grains. Both rounds were cleaned as throughly as possible to remove any stuck plastic and sand.

Clearly looking at the above photo, you can see the HST on the left would cause one hell of a nasty wound channel. I wouldn't want to be shot with either one, but considering the deceleration difference caused by the expansion, one has to wonder about the effects the Hydrostatic Shock might have on someone/thing.

Below you see a photo of a clean unfired HST, and a glanced/angled shot. I wanted to angle a shot to check the expansion and weight retention characteristics of this round as well as the reliability. The round on the left was fired through a .080" aluminum sheet at an angle of about 40 degrees from 10 yards. The HST penetrated the aluminum sheet and impacted the soft sand beneath it and expanded three petals fully while the petals I believe to be on the top of the bullet at impact show some signs of beginning to curl. Expansion measurement came up with a bullet measuring .69 caliber and a weight retention measurement of 185 grains. Some of that is no doubt some impacted metal and sand I couldn't remove.

A clean bullet on the right, and an angled inpact on the left.

Once home at the bench I pulled an unfired bullet and took a look at the propellant. 6.0 Grains of what appears to be Alliant Power Pistol Powder came out. While some manufacturers use non-over the counter gun powders for their propellant, seeing as how Alliant is owned by ATK (owners of Federal Ammunition) and looking at the similarity in the powders found in the round and in my own can of Power Pistol I believe this is the mixture.

So all in all, the proof is in the performance and the pictures. I've long known that the Federal HST was a marked inprovement on their defensive ammunition line, and now I've done the testing to confirm it. With the availability of this round intermitent to the public (but getting better), I'd advise anyone seeking the higher end defensive ammunition from Federal to grab some when you get the chance.

So Americans like guns !? How about the new Mustang !?!

Much to the disdain of the Obama administration, the Brady Bunch and other left swinging stooges and anti-gun/gun control groups Gallup polls announced that public support for forms of gun control is WAY down. There has been quite the movement over the past few years in regards to Americans taking responsibility for their own actions and defense, as well as the view that the second amendment affirms the right to not only own a gun but to defends one's self with it, right to carry laws spreading to 49 of 50 states in the Union, etc....


These are dynamic shifts (over time) that can't be brushed over or easily ignored by the media......no matter how hard they try. I question how many people hung up the phone on the pollster when they were asked if they owned guns....but either way the numbers are impressive!

In other news.... Colt is set to release the updated Mustang .380acp Pocketlite by the end of the year.  Of course SIG SAUER has been doing really well with it's clone of the Mustang (the P238 with the bad trigger) but the new updated Mustang is going to be bringing back it's single action trigger goodness along with a new lighter and stronger slide, and finer tolerances that before. 

Colt is entering back into the highly competitive CCW market of pocket carry .380's (9mm Short, 9mm Corto, whatever else you want to call it) with a proved design and one that is familiar to a lot of shooters.

In this age of new ammo and new powders, too many people have no clue about how effective the modern .380 ACP is as a self-defense round. It tickles me to no end when I listen to people that stand there and badmouth the round about stopping power, yet I'll ask them if they'd like to be shot by one to certify their belief's they usually get very nervous and admit they're not willing to try it. (Note to you readers that still maybe remembering the mid 1970's and the .380acp of yesterday.....this is the 21st century, things have changed....in ammunition's case mostly for the better)

Of course like I always say and teach, it's about placement of the shot and what you can control. I'd rather be with a person that REALLY can shoot the balls off a flea with a .32 or .380 than with a square range commando that carries a .50 Desert Eagle but hasn't shot once in the past year....

Anyways, I wish Colt well and there's a good chance you'll be seeing a test and review of it here in the future...

Not your Mk. I  Mustang....

Speaking of tests and reviews.....you'll be seeing some more of those here on the blog shortly. I won't get into too much detail yet, but there's some new things coming down the line that should be a lot of fun and informative.

Home and tired....

Back from the NM IDPA state championships.

5th place in Stock Service Pistol, and I'm content with that. That makes two championships that I've finished in the top 5 this year as well as being in the top ten percent of the field. Tag that along with six local wins this year and I'm pretty happy with the the current state of things. Of course, I'm always looking to improve and increase speed....and admitedly I imploded on one individual stage and shot two non-threat targets (+10 seconds) as well dropping a lot of points and getting myself a procedural error (+3 seconds). Looking at the results I would have been in the neighborhood of 2nd place without the non-threats and procedural...ah well...

The event was really well put together, and very technical in it's design of the stages as well as the procedures. Not only was accuracy required but a lot of emphasis was placed on ammunition conservation and planning your reloads. I don't know if that's ideally a good thing, but it is what seperates IDPA from USPSA/IPSC in a big way....and it's part of the sport. As long as it's equal across the board is all that matters....

Kudos to the Tactical Environment Shooting Team (TEST) for promoting/hosting this event. The prize table was one of the better stocked that I've seen (6-7 guns and loads of other shooting equipment and clothing) and it was well recieved. One of my buddies scored a new pistol (Springfield Armory XDm 9mm) simply for being the second name pulled out of the entrants box.

Predator tactical was again out in force with its team of shooters as well as it's demo guns and factory hauler. There were also a couple of factory shooters there from CZ and STI. A quick scan of the parkign area and license plates showed lots of cars and trucks from NM, AZ, TX, CO, and UT. I even saw a couple of CA, NV and OK plates, so  it seems like most of the western states were represented well.

Here's some video below.... (best watched on YouTube in 720HD)

Building momentum again

A whole lot of enemies and just enough cover.

Sunday was another local IDPA shoot, and in this case the last IDPA local shoot for me before the NM State IDPA Championships down south in Las Cruces. This weekend was a good warm up run, and while I'm still awaiting the final results to come in, but after a quick scan of the score sheets after the match and my overall feelings about it were pretty positive. On the first stage of the match I had the 2nd fastest time of the day (New IDPA World Champion/Distinguished Master Glenn Shelby had me covered by 9/10ths of a second) and managed to best a Master class shooter by about a second.

*When Shelby went through stage 1 my squad was in a different bay/stage and everyone just stopped at the sound of his rapid fire .45acp echoing through the canyon in what sounded like a Thompson gun on full auto....that guy is UNREAL....and everyone just looked at each other and said "Glen"....n

I was really focusing on mental preparation , visualization and efficiency of movement this weekend. I also made a conscious effort to NOT watch the shooter that was immediately ahead of me, all under the idea that I would visualize myself running the stage perfectly and didn't need the distraction of seeing how someone else did (or didn't) run the stage correctly..... it seemed to work. I felt more comfortable and seemed to be shooting more within my comfort zone. Now for the next to weeks it's going to be more dry fire exercises and a little work on accuracy.

I will say that we had more shooters this past weekend than I've seen in a long time at one of our local matches. We also had 13 new shooters....so I'm glad to see the sport seems to be gaining more traction.

Those of us that are experienced IDPA shooters stepped up to mentor one of the newbies. Craig was the guy I picked up to guide through his first event and he did a good job. Here's some film of him below running his own M&P 40 through stage 2. I get a pretty good sense of satisfaction taking a person that hasn't ever shot an event like this and watching them figure out how to plan the stage and think about tactics and such....

While I've been waiting for the video above to upload  the results came in. I managed to win the Stock Service Pistol class by a comfortable margin. I'm feel building momentum again like I did back in the spring before Colorado's championship..... feeling good and going for peak performance in two weeks.