Something is conspiring against me, whatever it is it doesn't want me to be competitive.
I've just got back from a weekend competition. This was a three gun shoot, one pistol, rifle and shotgun.
To begin with I thought I'd go steady and try to shoot clean, I shot second on the first stage and went a bit quicker than normal, missing one pistol target through my own fault.
So plan B was go faster.
Second stage I shot first, the course of fire was ten rifle Nevada sweep, six pistol rounds loading the sixth on the line before engaging, then four knockdown shotgun targets to finish. The rifle went smoothly, clean and fairly quick. The transition was good to the pistol with me having my sixth round in my hand as the pistol came out.
Now is where Murphy made his presence felt, as I flipped the gate open and half cocked the pistol something went wrong locking my pistol up solid. I couldn't turn the cylinder at all to fire or load, couldn't even get it to full cock. I ended up having to take six misses on that stage but figured that I'd get the pistol sorted and make the time up later (as much as I could)
I went to the unloading bench to clear the pistol and it functioned perfectly straight out of the holster (insert head scratching and muttered foul language mixed with threats of gas axes)
The next stage was quick and simple, five pistol followed by ten plus 1 rifle then four more shotgun knockdowns.
Going as fast as I could on this stage I missed one rifle target, got to the shotgun and was going smooth, first target goes down, next one gets a solid hit and stays up, re-engage and it goes down, next one doesn't go down so I re-engage again, another solid hit and it still doesn't go down, third hit and finally it falls but I'm out of shotgun ammo on my belt. Fumble in my shirt pocket and found one more round I'd picked up earlier, now I'm sweating but the last one goes down cleanly.

THAT was when I decided that Murphy was the winner on the day and I'd just shoot for fun.


So, an eventful weekend but I still came away smiling, and that is the name of the game.

It happens to the best of us my friend, Murphy has kicked my butt more than once.

The worst was when the wedge came out of my 1860 Colt and I sent the barrel assy down range on the second shot!

I've seen that happen before.

Once Murphy gets involved there's no point fighting it so I just relax and focus on enjoying the day. I become the posse joker even more so than normal.

Yep, just laugh and move on with the day, it is about having fun IMHO, a serious competitor I am NOT. I do it for fun and if I shoot a "clean" match it is frosting on the cake.

I know I will not be the fastest and try, as you did, to shoot a clean match. It really does take up a lot of time when the guns don't work as expected. My shotguns seem to provide the most surprises. It is all fun.

Shotguns are one of the reasons I finally gave up on CAS. I probably owned 10 different shotguns and all gave trouble. If I'd been willing to settle for a gun that wasn't historically accurate things would have probably been easier.