Monday, July 18, 2011

My First Zombie All Gun Match at SVDFI

This past weekend I was priviledged to attend another exciting ZSA Zombie All Gun Match. This time the match was held at the Southern Virginia Defensive Firearms Institute in Nelson, Virginia. The match consisted of nine stages of pistol, rifle, and shotgun both combined and separate. The facilities were amazing and well constructed to endure high round count rifle stages. Mike Oberman, the owner and lead intstructor, did most of the course design and it was an amazing match. With a round count of around 200 pistol, 100 rifle and 75 shotgun, the ammo bag started out extremely heavy and finished light and all for the price of a local three gun match. I was highly impressed with the caliber of and effort that went into this match. I will be very excited to attend the next match at SVDFI and highly recommend it to any three gunner or pistol shooter. Yes, there is enough pistol in most of the stages for you to enjoy yourselves too.

Stage one was a nightmare for me with a horrible double feed occuring right in the middle of the stage and some trouble remembering where the targets all were. All in all it was a good stage I just came up to the line unprepared to take on this challenge. I really need to focus on small target shooting with my glock. This stage didn't do too much for my match standings for the get go.


Stage Two was your basic long standard for ZSA consisting of 3 infected targets at 25 yards and a possible 3 bonus zombies. The second string of this stage was at 10 yards strong hand only and consisted of three infected targets and four zombies. The third and final string was weakhand only from seven yards with the same array as the ten yard string. This was a limited round count stage of 38 rounds.


Stage Three was all set to be a breeze if I had just decided not to use the unproven 33rd magazine. I was going for no reload on the stage, but as you can see it did not happen that way. I ended up just blazing away to get out of the hole the big stick left me in.


Stage Four was a good recovery stage for me. I was off to a decent start finally. This was rifle and pistol and although not as fast as I had hoped, it was a solid stage for me. I also identified a mechanical issue with my pistol on this stage that would stay with me for the whole match: a rounded edge on the sear was causing a dead trigger on the first shot on an unloaded start. This has since been resolved.


Stage 5 was a 25 meter appleseed target shot standing, sitting and prone. It was a limited exercise of 33 rounds. Guess who shot 35?
Stage Six was a rifle only hose fest that I thoroughly enjoyed and had a strong performance on running it clean in fifty some odd seconds. 45 Rounds minimum.


Stage seven was where I gained my new nickname "Sexy Time," from the great Yousef Sansour and finally got to use my beast of a Benelli that holds 12 total rounds. No Yousef, I don't care if it's legal anywhere else.  It was a lot of fun with flying clays and a Cooper tunnel. Twenty rounds of shotgun and 9 rounds of pistol. Now if I could just learn to count the rounds in the shotgun.....




Stage Eight was by all rights the attack of the guarded Texas star. I changed to a tighter choke just so I wouldn't hit those darned clays. I liked this stage until I had to go to the pistol and try and hit all the little targets, which by this point in the match I was too tired to hit efficiently. Solution: Shell the whole thing.



Stage Nine was a welcome sight for us all because we were finishing the match up and all we had to use was the shotgun. I have always been comfortable with a shotgun and the ammo is easy to hold on to. A borrowed shell holder came off in my hand during a reload here and being tired I did not realize that I had more than enough to finish the stage. Lesson learned: Tekloks are a beautiful thing. So I fiddled with that thing for a minute...or so it seemed. I walked by one clay in this stage, but still came out pretty fast.


I would like to thank SVDFI, Mike Oberman, and ZSA for putting on such an incredible match this weekend. It will be hard to top this one next weekend at The Range!
Special Thanks to the Combine Camera Task Force of Virginia, Russ at Wooddude.net , and Ken Kiesler for helping video this match!