Our club ran a night time match Saturday Oct 29th with a halloween-style zombie heavy theme. Here are some photos and info on what we did. Photos are limited to ones I took of my squad and a few others when I snuck off from my squad to photograph other stages.

We had 4 stages total that averaged 40 rounds each and the match round count was exactly 160.

The match director put tons of work into this including getting two local gun stores (Four State Shooters Supply & John's Sports Center) to donate prizes. A drawing was held before the match to give away all the goodies which included lights from Surefire & Streamlight some magazines for AK's & AR's, hats & shirts and some other goodies from Cold Steel plus a can of Shockwave Binary Exploding target.

There were two divisions; weaponlight & handheld. We had 38 shooters registeres and a couple had to bail at the last minute. Shooters were a mix of current and former military, LEO's from various agencies and good ol' citizens. Some were more experienced at this kind of thing than others but the match was safe and everyone had a great time plus learned some lessons in how to shoot in low light.

Prize drawing by the match director and a young competitor


A few lucky winners choosing their prizes




All the prize winners


Stage 1 started with you on your knees with a shovel in your hands. On the start you hit a bad guy popper in the head then grabbed a shotgun next to you, turned on the light and shot his two buddies on either side of the range. Only once they were down could you get up, drop the shotgun in a barrel and pick up your pistol from a table to shoot the rest of the targets including a blood oozing zombie target. I didn't start taking pics until stage two so you'll have to live with the description.

On with the pics...

Stage 2 had you starting at a table holding a skull during a seance. On signal you dropped the skull, grabbed your pistol off the table and started shooting bad ghouls.

Start holding a skull


Jump up and shoot the goblins


Run around the corner and get the rising dead


Come to the barrel and shoot the spinning spirits


Head into a room and shoot some ghastly ghosts


Stage 3 was a haunted hay ride. You sat on the back of a trailer with hay bales facing backwards and shot zombies as you drove the 100 yards uprange past them. That sounds easy but the dark green targets were hard to pick out unless your beam was aimed right at them and you couldn't see them until they were receding away from you. If you blew a reload then you would miss a bank of targets because the hay ride keeps moving.

RO standing guard on the hay ride trailer as a shooter engages zombies (the vertical poles acted as safety bars to prevent 180 breaks)


The start of the hay ride had you shoot two poppers at the signal. The hay ride began at the signal too so if you were lucky you would get one shot off before you were rolling over bumpy ground. The ride was about 5 MPH which doesn't sound fast until you realize that's a 12 minute mile and most of us don't practice engaging 20 targets on the trot like that. I missed one bank of 4 targets becasue I ran the gun dry instead of topping off and by the time I had a fresh mag in the targets were gone. Here are the beginning poppers.


Ready GO!





Stage 4 was tough! You started at the end of an alley with your empty gun on one barrel and a mag on another barrel 15 feet away. On the signal you loaded your gun and ran 30 yards down an alley to begin shooting targets around a wall. You then ran through a ghost infested hallway with more targets and before coming to a window where you shot a huge bat, Frankenstein and more ghouls.

Shooting the first targets



Mag in! Mag out!


Moar bullets!!!


Ghost filled hallway





Shoot more through the window


Window targets


Don't forget to reload


More window targets


I shot a S&W M&P 9 with Surefire X300 and DG pressure switch.


After trying or seeing every method of using a light this is by far the best way to run a pistol. Anything not activated with a pressure switch is a distant second place and handheld is so far behind it's in another time zone. Before getting the X300 I used a Surefire G2 with combat ring. Any method will improve with training but the same person using all three methods of light will be noticeably faster using a pressure switch.

A couple folks on my squad had problems with Chinese light shitting the bed and had to resort to backups. I have never had a Surefire die on me for anything but a dead battery. Take that for what it's worth but a quality American made light (Surefire or Elzetta) is all I will ever consider for anything important.

One thing I was (thankfully) prepared for based on reviews I had read was all the carbon and soot on my flashlight lens. Not wanting to trash a new light I took protective measures and ordered a Surefire F04 diffuser. This slip on cover has an opaque lens to soften the beam. I wanted a clear cover to act as a lens protector but not interfere with the beam.

The lens can pop out of the rubber cap so I polished it with 1500 grit wet paper then buffed it with plastic polish to make the lens clear. That gave me a cheap sacrificial cover that did not screw up the beam. It worked well enough that I will always have it on to protect the flashlight lens from dirt & carbon or any scratches.

Here's the front of the gun after 160 rounds


Lens cover removed


You can see the ring of carbon on the light body where the cover ended


The lens cleaned up pretty easy with rubbing alcohol but the rubber body took some elbow grease and some scraping to get the carbon off it. I've now armoralled it to see if that will prevent carbon from sticking to the rubber so easily.

I had read about that as a preventive measure but wanted something as more of a barrier that did not risk hurting the lens or clouding it in any way long term.

Bump for the evening crew.

Its "Mag Out, Mag IN" If ya wanna win.

Just busting your balls. Where at was this?

LOL! Totally screwed that up. This was at Bone Creek Gun Club near Pittsburg, KS.

I definitely felt that a few times! Welcome to the collective.

Looks like a lot of fun.

As for protecting your lens, use lip balm to coat it.
It last and is easy to wipe off and reapply.

That looks like a hell of a good time!

Shooting at night is fun. Our night match is in December.

Set up started at noon and shooting began at about 1900.