Multi-Gun Mastery — Report from 3-Gun Fantasy Camp

On Ammoland.com, there’s an interesting article about the NSSF’s recent 3-Gun Fantasy Camp in Las Vegas. Author Duncan Johnson attended the Camp last month and wrote an “after action report”. He said the Camp was a great experience, and his shooting improved greatly with the expert tutoring from top pros: “If you have ever wanted to try a 3-Gun competition, just go do it, you will quickly find out why this is the fastest-growing shooting sport today. If you are new to shooting and or just getting started in 3-Gun, I 100% recommend you attend the NSSF Fantasy Camp.”

Here are Four Tips/Observations Duncan learned during the 3-Gun Fantasy Camp:

1. Use a Zoom Rifle Optic – “The LWRC 3-Gun ready rifle [provided for the Camp] was topped with a Leupold Mark 6 1-6x20mm riflescope, which made distance shooting much easier than the AimPoint optic [on my own AR]. 3-Gun competitions have rifle stages that can involve distance shooting out to ranges of 500 yards or more. For that reason, most shooters in the 3-Gun TacOps and Practical divisions use magnified riflescopes like the Leupold Mark 6 or the Vortex Strike Eagle.”

2. Use Your Quads and Core Muscles — “There are also a lot of little things that the pros teach you… For instance, some shooters instinctively bend their knees to enter their stance, but once they start firing they tend to follow the recoil with their shoulders and end up leaning back. In order to avoid that, use your quad muscles in your legs to get a solid stance that will absorb more recoil. Also use your core muscles to maintain a strong stance, especially in shotgun stages. The combination of strong quad and core muscles will contribute to controlling muzzle flip and moving onto your next target more easily.”

3. Vision-Based Target Transitions — “Another pro tip from Randi Rodgers on transitioning from target to target with a pistol was using your eyes rather than your sights to switch targets. So imagine it as pull the trigger, the slide starts to come back, using your eyes find the next target, then point with the front sight, find the sight picture, fire, and repeat.”

Editor’s Note: A few seasons back, I attended an action shooting seminar taught by Randi, and she explained the “move your eyes” technique. For multi-target stages, this really works. Move your eyes from target to target, and you’ll find your arms automatically “pull” the handgun into position. You still need to get the sights on target, but this method yields create smoother, faster stage runs.

4. Trigger Control and Use of Support Hand — If you don’t have good trigger control and pull straight back, you can move your sights during the shot. This is a common problem with novice pistol shooters. The solution is lots of dry fire training. Duncan found out he needed work: “In my case, the biggest area where I need improvement was shooting my pistol. There were two different things I was doing that will guarantee a missed shot every time with a handgun. When I pull/squeeze/depress my trigger I have a tendency to also pull the gun off target, resulting in a miss to the low left of a target. I [also] over-apply pressure with my shooting hand. According to the pros, pistol grip should be 40% shooting hand, and 60% supporting hand.”