Myself and another member of the Spotter Up shooting team participated in an IDPA match in Thurmont MD recently. We placed 4th and 5th overall, and as usual took away some valuable lessons and had lots of fun.

IDPA is different than USPSA and Multi-gun shooting games in that it requires you to usually shoot from behind “cover”, draw and reload from concealment and you have to retain any magazine with rounds in them on your person when you reload. The scoring system places heavier penalties on sloppier shooting; every shot that lands outside the “down zero” center target zones on the body or head of the paper targets adds 1, 3, or 5 seconds to your time. It pays to take a few tenths of a second to line up your sight(s) and break a clean shot instead of shooting a couple inches left of center. This game is quite different than the “run-and-gun” style of USPSA and multi-gun matches.

Check out the video below for a few runs from the match. There is currently no optics division in IDPA so i was shooting my current carry gun with iron sights. I shot alright with the irons, and didn’t experience any real issues with them after shooting a red dot for the last several weeks, although i did have to consciously remind myself to align them and focus on the front sight, especially for the longer shots. Because of that, i really didn’t shoot the longer (~20yd) shots very well. I should have slowed down a little and focused in order to get good hits on those long shots. The advantage of the red dot for distance is obvious.

Scores for this match can be viewed here.

For this match i was shooting my carry Glock 19 Vickers edition from a GunCraft Arcane Holster.