Armory Sponsor
Posted: 2/14/2010 7:12:47 AM EDT
|
Shot my A3 in a tactical 2-gun match yesterday: www.actshooters.com I've been shooting with these guys for several years, and it's a great format. Handgun & carbine at ranges from near contact out to 100yds. They mix things up with barricades, doors, hidden stages, movers, bobbers, etc. It's a ton of fun, and the camaraderie always eclipses the excellent shooting. This was only my 2nd time running the AUG in one of these matches. I'd run it more, but usually family things happen on the weekends, and I can't get to as many matches as I'd like.
There's a good mix of weaponry here. I'd say the AR platform usually makes up about 70% of the rifles, with the rest made up of AK's, M1A's, and the occasional SCAR, SIG556, PS90 thrown in. Handguns are M&P, Glock, HK, 1911's, FN... Yesterday's format consisted of 3-stages (there's usually 4, but the snow was about 12" deep). Stage 1 was shot from barricades with cutout shapes at steel poppers from ~60 to 25 yards, with some movement and pistol mixed in. Stage 2 was 1/2 handgun, 1/2 rifle from contact to 15yds with some barricades, hostages, and trudging through a lot of snow. Stage 3 was a hidden stage. You were walked to the backstop, shown a picture of a face and told to turn around. The 10 or so targets were situated like they were seated in a movie theater. You had to memorize the position of your guys (they were twins), move back to the firing line and engage the two targets through the back of the head without being able to see their faces. You had 15 seconds from the time you saw the face to complete the stage. Lots of fun! Stage 1 is where the AUG shined. There's lots of folks who discount the AUG platform because they can't see how it can be effectively shot from the weak side, well here's proof that you can: There were 3 barricades all with 6 windows each of various size and shape that required lots of contortion to get a sight picture out of. (The hardest were two lower horizontal ports that were about 3"x8" and only about 16" off the ground. They were especially hard for me, since I just started a new workout regimen and was stiff as hell.) Anyway, from the 1st barricade, you had to make 2 shots from each port at steel 60yds away... move expediently to the 2nd barricade which was at the same distance from the steel, shoot from each port using only one hand on the rifle... move to the 3rd barricade which was about 20yds closer to the tgt, and engage with 2 shots from each port alternating strong and weak side. The AUG was perfect being so short, and I had no trouble transitioning to weak side, putting my off-hand behind the ejection port to act as a brass deflector, and making the hits. In fact, I beat the next fastest guy by 23sec on this stage, and he's an instructor of some renown in this area. I ended up in 1st place out of 34 shooters yesterday. I would've had a substantially higher score, but I had a dumb-ass attack on stage 2 and thought I was done about 1/2 way through. I started down-loading my handgun before I realized that there was still a lot of cardboard that didn't have holes in it yet. I'm 100% confident in the AUG at this point. I've run it in a carbine class and a couple matches now. Probably over 1,000rds without any stoppages or malfunctions. It's my go-to gun, and sits in the closet near my bed with a 42rd mag in it. One of our other shooters, G-Lock, just snagged a beautiful tan STG556 from Ratworx and will probably start running it in matches. Lots of folks were pawing our bullpups yesterday and I'd wager we get some more converts in the near future. Here's the only pic I could find that has the barricade in it. 
|
Lookin' forward to the pics! 
|
Quoted:
That sounds like a ton of fun. Just out of curiosity, which handgun were you running? G17, but I'm switching back to the M&P9 soon. I was holding out to see what Glock was going to do with the Gen 4, but I'm not impressed. I shoot the Glock just fine, but it never felt as good in my hand as the M&P. |
|
I've used my STG-556 at the Ft. Benning 3-gun for the last two years with some success and talked my shooting partner into buying one and using it last year. He really like the bullpup .223 and I never thought he would ever use a STG-556 over his AK-74 clone and he had no issues that were related to the rifle itself. A couple of stage were CQB type and the full size AR-15 rifles were actually at a slight disadvantage at times. Long range flasher targets out to 325 yds. was a piece of cake. I'm glad to see other shooter using these rifles in matches like 3-gun.
Stage 1 Stage 7 |
|
The AUG platform used to be pretty popular back during the now-defunct Soldier of Fortune matches. I'm glad to see it is making a comeback.
I don't currently have an optic on my MSAR. Otherwise I'd use it at The Texas State Carbine Championship next weekend. |
|
At one of the last of the SOF 3-gun matches I had the opportunity to be on the same squad with the gentleman who first brought a new AUG to the SOF match. All SOF matches up to that point did not allow any optic sights on the rifle/ carbine as none were currently issued then by the military. Robert K. Brown, editor of SOF Magazine was one who made the decision that this was indeed one of the first issued battle rifles with integrated optic sights and therefore had to be accepted. All SOF 3-gun matches (and today's various other 3-gun matches) evolved from these basic match rules and now we have several divisions such as "Tactical Optics" within 3-gun.
When the match started, I figured the AUG he had would be at a slight disadvantage compared to all the AR-15 rifles and larger battle rifles. After a couple of days watching him compete with the AUG, I had much greater respect for his then odd bullpup carbine as no problems in it's use were seen by me. I always wanted an AUG after that and only my meager paycheck plus their rarity kept me from buying one. |
Armory Sponsor