First experience with Dynamic Precission Rifle

Author: Martin “Saphyr” Rubín

At the beginning of July I noticed Harry Janousek’s invitation to the Dynamic Precision Shooting training and competition in Senica in Slovakia next weekend. DPS was always something that I would like to try… Actually I was always pretty sure I wanted to shoot this discipline and I used to shoot Hunting Rifle Shooting competitions before, so I decided to go.

The rest of the week was quite chaotic at my job, so with the agenda about international travel with gun and the necessity of reloading ammo, the next couple of days were really rushed. There were so many things to do that I wasn’t able to clean my rifle after last week range day. That fact defined events for the next days, I’ll mention this later.

After arrival to Senica we rushed to start practicing and ballistic confirmation. I had pretty new load from last week and my ballistic computer was set up, so I was curious about real results. Strelok was pretty accurate, only on a few distances I needed to adjust my elevation around 1 – 2 MOA. If I would be able to handle the wind better, it would be first round hit even on 800m, so I was satisfied with my load. After ballistic confirmation we were able to take a few practice shots from the obstacles. I tried a few rounds from the rope and after the second round I hit the gong and was quite happy. (During the competition next day I fucked up this position, of course :-D )

Next Day

On Sunday the wind was even more crazy than the last day. Wind in combination with the ever-present sand made really hard shooting conditions. I didn’t have proper equipment, so I didn’t hope to make some wonders. When I realized I’ll start on the fifth stage – shooting on 800 and 900m from the barrel, I thought I would start elsewhere, but what I could do. By the way the 800 was one of the ranges where I had to adjust my elevation last day. Before I went to shoot I was checking other shooters techniques, but because of my “out of the box” hunting stock I wasn’t able to reproduce anything, so I decided to do it my way. When I started I was surprised that I've got pretty solid position. After some wind estimation I tough my shot and I was pretty sure it was a good shot. So I was very surprised when I didn’t see the bullet impact. I tried bigger wind correction, but still nothing. After a while when I wasn’t able to hit the target, I started to be a little bit pissed off. Not because I didn’t hit anything, but because I didn’t know why. Most of the competition went the same way – I was able to get a stable position, good trigger control, but without hits or dust spread around the target.

After the 4th stage I asked the referee where I was hitting and the answer was incredibly high. I was evaluating this information for some time and then I realized I was confirming ballistics with a dirty barrel, so for the next stage I decided to use values from Strelok.

Fifth stage was with an improvised roof. Here I finally saw and heard hits, but the referee still didn’t report hits. He told me “You shoot bad” when I was changing position, but I was focused on the shooting and didn’t care about this. So… There were two targets, the gray one and the pink one… I put all my shots in the gray one… ...but of course, my target was pink :-D So I was without a single point, but happy for successful ballistics debugging :) Due to my happiness I've lost my focus and didn’t zero my turrets. So on the last stage I set up 1MOA up elevation on the turret, but I was turned for two turns. So I missed two shots before I was on the target and after that I picked the wrong target color again. I tough quick look at Harry and obviously he didn’t believe what he just saw :-D After that everything went smoothly except I underestimated terrain recognition and lost some time looking for targets. So when the time ran out I still had two or three targets remaining. It's a shame to lose points because of double stupidity, but it was fun.

And what are my final thoughts? It was simply brilliant. Bunch of new informations, new environment and shooting conditions. Also a lot of new wonderful people, experience and beautiful guns. Definitely better than 10 individual range days.

If I should evaluate my result, I'm pretty happy. I confirm what I’m capable to reach with my shooting system and load and found critical spots what I need to work on. I was surprised by my cheap scope from my AR, I didn’t expect I could be able to see or even hit the target at 800, but I did. But honestly, SFP Mildot reticle and MOA turrets with 4-16 magnification are definitely not ideal. In the end of the day I found out many things which can push me forward and that is what matters. I finished the whole competition even with the hard wind and sand situation, so I wasn’t last on the final results, that fact significantly overcame my expectations :)