I’m honored to have brought home some hardware from the final Rocky Mountain 3-Gun. After three days of shooting some absolutely awesome stages, I managed to pull out a 3rd place finish in Limited Scope (aka Tac Ops). Daniel Horner took home the number one spot, and Jared Milinazzo squeaked past me by a half percent for second place. It was a great race.
More than the finish, I’m very happy with how I managed my mental game though the match. For about a year now I’ve been struggling with worrying too much about results and stressing out over every little mistake—leading to disastrous match performances. I’ve finally come to a place where I can make mistakes and understand how the’ll impact the finish, but not let them get to me so much that they impact the next stage or the next day.
At this match, the mental balance was especially tough because we were squadded with the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit. While I absolutely love shooting with those guys, it’s really a test of will to have three straight days of putting up a good (for me) stages only to have Dan take 20% off my time five minutes later. A year ago I would have thought “crap, I guess I have to go faster.” and then push too hard and make mistakes. Now, I can finally say “damn, that was awesome.” and then shoot the stage the best that I can, not the best that someone else can. Of all the steps forward in shooting ability, this one has been the hardest, and it’s the one I’m the most proud of.
Not only did I get to shoot with a great squad and catch up with a bunch of friends I haven’t seen in a while, but I also got to enter the team event with Brian Nelson, Tim Yackley, and Kurt Miller. Despite some serous hiccups in both the team stage and the shoot off (my fault), we managed to take 2nd to the AMU.
Huge thanks to all the staff who worked their butts off to make this a great match, and to all the sponsors who have supported one of the longest-running events in the history of 3-gun.
