Different kind of stage

It was a pretty good pistol match, all things considered. Dad had picked me up, and we chatted in a good mood before shooting the IDPA match-- he with his old 1911 .45 and I with my issue Glock 31 .357 Sig out of my duty rig.

Stangely, I wasn't covering myself completely with shame, but was actually running about dead center of the pack. That's a pretty good showing in that group. Were it not for some silly procedural stuff (all speed reloads must be made with an empty gun, not just an empty magazine. They're literally training you to run dry. Dropping an empty magazine with a round in the chamber is too "gamey." Huh.), I would have scored even better. I especially did well on a "Texas Star," a 5-pointed star on which heavy steel tombstones were loosely affixed by way of springwire tension and cut-out notches, with the center of the star welded to an axle, so that it would spin when off-balance. Shoot a tombstone plate off, and the thing would suddenly be majorly off-balance, and would spin. From 15 yards, with 8" plates spinning around a 7' star, that's an interesting challenge. I only dropped one shot on that one, and made it up quickly.

We got to a round with three targets set several yards from the shooter. The shooter was to start in "surrender position," (hands up), then draw at the beep, and fire a double tap into each target, reload, and fire 2 more in each target.

"Oh," I said. "It's a modified 'El Presidente'." The "El Presidente" is a shooting drill designed by Jeff Cooper, in which the shooter is supposed to start facing away from the three targets at the starting buzzer, usually with hands up.

Another guy quipped, "If it's modified, then maybe we oughta call it the 'Vice Presidente'."

Steve, who was administering this match, only looked up briefly, and said, "No, we don't any 'Vice Presidente' stages. Most folk wouldn't want to shoot 'em."

"Why not? What does it entail?" the quipper querried.

"Well," Steve said, a thin smile breaking loose and widening rapidly a big grin, "For a 'Vice Presidente,' the shooter starts with a single round of 7.5 shot field load of 12 gauge in an over and under shotgun, and then he swings on his buddy..."