Team Erhardt Project: What Went Wrong?

This is the fifth installment in the Team Erhardt Project series which appears on The Shooting Wire. 

I started this series with the simple declaration that, “as a competition shooter, I suck.”

Well, I’m pleased to report that, after shooting a 1/2 Steel Challenge match hosted by the Harvard Action Shooters this past weekend – I still suck.

In fact, I think that at the conclusion of the match I was actually elected the Mayor of Suckville. I promise to serve out my term as Mayor with distinction, committed to be the kind of leader Suckville needs in these trying times.

Now, going into that match I wasn’t expecting a quantum leap in performance, but I was hoping there’d be a slight improvement. A holding of my own, if you will. But after shooting a time of 102.74 seconds, Moody’s is downgrading my expectations from ‘slight improvement’ to ‘the hint of slight improvement’ and threatening me with a further downgrade to ‘the vague suggestion of a hint of improvement’.

Now here’s the kicker. I shot the match a second time, again in the Production division with the Smith & Wesson M&P Pro 9mm, and I did even worse – 113.07 seconds.

Clearly very little was learned on that first run. After the second I came to the conclusion that it’s not a slow draw, or a less-than-solid grip that’s my biggest obstacle. No, it’s missing… a lot.

At some point during each four stage run I missed every target out there. I missed 10” plates. I missed 12” plates. I missed 18”x24” plates. And I of course missed stop plates.

Usually a miss is the result of a bad sight picture. You think you’re aiming dead center of the plate and then bang, you miss. The problem I ran into was that I couldn’t diagnose my misses. I’d slow down, get a good sight picture with the front sight nestled comfortably between the two sides of my rear sight groove, the heights matched up, and then bang, a miss.

Eventually I’d hit the target but something was going very wrong. Meanwhile I found a growing tidal wave of “what the hell am I doing wrong” rising up in my mind and threatening to, I don’t know, make me suckier?

Up until the multiple misses, I was pretty comfortable with my mental game. I wasn’t nervous when stepping into the shooter’s box. I recited in my head the performance statement of “grip the gun see the sights” that Mike Seeklander uses, and recommended to me. I even incorporated the “focus breath” technique that he outlines in his book which helps calm you down and clear your mind.

These are valuable tools for managing the mental aspect of shooting and a major element in Seeklander’s program. However, I kept missing and that was undermining my confidence – and pissing me off.

Fortunately, the training program that Seeklander outlined is packed with work on the fundamentals, not the least of which is dryfiring. Lots and lots of dryfiring. Which is great because dryfiring is one of my favorite things to do, right after gouging out my own eyeball with a rusty spoon.

But the solution to my shooting problems is right in front of me and easy enough to follow, which I better do since there is another 1/2 Steel Challenge at Harvard on July 2, this time with the other four stages: Smoke & Hope, Roundabout, 5 To Go and Speed Option.

If you’d like to shoot the match registration is at 8:30am and it’s a mere $10, $5 for the second gun. So for only $15 you could have the satisfaction of beating me like a rented mule, twice. As an added benefit, if you do show up and beat me I’ll immortalize you here on The Shooting Wire by listing your time with those of Jerry Tetreau (78.25), Nick Henry (93.93) and Michael Joffe (97.02) who beat me last weekend.

– Paul Erhardt

You can also follow the Team Erhardt Project on Twitter at @TheShootingWire, use hashtag #TeamErhardt.