Texas Tactical Carbine Match

This past weekend Christy and I decided to shoot a carbine match put on by Texas Tactical. It has been a couple of years since we had shot one of these matches and after shooting the match this weekend, we cannot imagine for the life of us why we stopped!

If you are not familiar with what a carbine match is, it is essentially an IDPA match that can be shot with either a pistol [traditional IDPA style minus the concealment garment] or you can shoot it with a carbine [.22, 5.56, 7.62, .308]. Basically, the idea behind the match is to use defensive type rifles or pistols and to "shoot what you have". Some of the stages are a combination of pistol and carbine similar to a 3 gun match minus the shotgun. The concept for this match was developed by our friend, "Iron Mike" Webb and he busts his butt to put these awesome matches on.

The day before the match I had the worst migraine that I have ever had. It took all the strength I could muster just to get up enough energy to clean our guns on Saturday night. I cleaned the guns while Christy got all of our gear and ammo together. I was really doubtful that I would be feeling well enough the next morning to even compete.

I was awoken [yes, its a word....Christy had me look it up] by an upset stomach around 6am and at that point I knew for sure that the match would be a no go. After sitting at the computer for about an hour watching Youtube videos of various competitions, I heard Christy's alarm go off and I knew I had to make a quick decision on whether or not I was feeling up to the challenge. Luckily, Christy did not get a lot of sleep that night so I knew it wouldn't take much to convince her we needed to stay home. Well, after about thirty minutes of contemplation, we both decided that we needed to do this match.

We arrived at Austin Rifle Club with not a lot of time to spare. As we were signing in, the decision was made to add another squad since there were so many shooters. The problem with this was they did not have enough Safety Officers to run the additional squad. As we were unpacking the truck and loading our gear onto the War Wagon III  [the name of our gun cart], our good friend Trey walked up and told us about the dilemma. He said that he was asked who he thought could run the squad, and he said, "The Ross' are great Safety Officers! They can run the squad!". Now, all he had to do was convince us to do it. Since it had been a couple of years that we had done this type of match, we were a little reluctant to say, "Yes". Trey is a pretty convincing guy though, and we just "happened" to have out trusty timer on us so it was meant to be.

We saw a lot of familiar faces as we walked up to the shooter's briefing including our newest friends, Louise and James. We had met them the weekend before at Temple Gun Club for a Steel Challenge match. Louise's warm smile and enthusiastic greeting made us feel right at home. Of course, some of the greetings we got were a little more sarcastic since we have been absent from the carbine matches for so long! After a good dose of ribbing from our friends, we got our game faces on and prepared to get to work. We were hoping to see "Iron" Mike, since we have not seen him since the IDPA Nationals, but he himself was feeling under the weather and didn't make it out. He is the match director, but he had to pass the reigns off to the very capable hands of his wife, Jennifer. She did a great job and kept us all in line.

Christy was shooting great and looked in fine form through each stage. Unfortunately, I was having issue after issue including my red dot kept failing. Thanks God for my Magpul back up sights! I was fading fast as the day wore on as I was still suffering from the aftermath of the migraine the day before. My legs felt like they weighed 100 pounds and I was aching all over. On a shoot and move stage I was doing good just keeping my sights on target and by the end of the stage I was severely winded. I owe a lot to Christy and the rest of the squad for helping me and encouraging me throughout the day. I started to feel much better as I downed about a gallon of water between each stage.

Overall we had a great time and we are glad that we decided to go. Even though I felt terrible, it was worth every minute getting to spend time shooting and getting to hang out with such awesome people. One of the guys on the squad kept commenting that Christy and I did a great job running the squad and that we made it a lot of fun for him. Hearing that made me feel a LOT better. Making sure that everyone stays safe and has a fun time is always our goal when we run a squad. No one likes to shoot with a grumpy safety officers, including us!

Here is the link for the pictures of our squad:
ARC Carbine Match