SoCal Rifle Championships at West End Gun Club. 35th/145 overall, 16th/63 in Tac Optics, 2nd/24 AK

I’ve never shot a rifle-only, paper-centric match before and took this (fairly rare for CA) opportunity to make that happen. West End Gun Club is always a fun time and luckily the squad I was in was nothing short of epic with jokes, smiles, and banter throughout the day. I decided to do this a little differently than most after I had gathered that this was essentially rifle USPSA with Multigun scoring, and loaded up the Meridian Defense VOLK-S, complete with a Vortex Razor 1-10 and Unrivaled Siege brake on it, and clicked the registration box for “AK Combloc”. The match itself was extremely well run, challenging when it needed to be but also nothing about it made you roll your eyes. A good mix of challenging targets, wide-open hose fests, and steel meant that you had to be able to quickly transition between the three and I leaned pretty hard on my positional shooting skills for the farther targets shot from barricades which were only 110yds maximum. Overall I think the decision to take the 5.56 AK was the right one as the soft shooting nature of the platform and extremely fast Meridian trigger made for quick work. My overall scores were plagued with what mainly amounted to poor ammo plans on my part, a symptom of being new to the style and just not being smart up front with my plans, however I still finished in the top 20% of the field and with an AK at that, so I’m trying not to beat myself up too hard about it and to prepare better for the next one.