Shoot This! January 2025 Postal Match Course of Fire and Results

Email subscribers got a heads up at the start of the year that we were hosting a friendly postal match within the Everyday Marksman Community. The plan is to host these regularly from here on out. They’re low stakes, with no entry free and no prizes. It’s just a way to get out and try a standard course of fire with your friends. We’ve done this before, but it was always rifle-based. This time around, we went for pistols.

The Course of Fire

Let’s start with the course of fire. The official target was an NRA B-22 (AKA the Army “L” Target). Officially, the target says 25 yard slow fire and 15 yard rapid fire. I’m not actually familiar with the history of this particular target, but I get the impression that it’s been around a long time, and was replaced in formal competition by the well-known B-8 target. The B-22 target is on a 22″ x 22″ piece of paper, and has a 5″ bull at the center with scoring rings going out to 4 points.

I know the state of Rhode Island uses this particular target for their concealed carry weapons test, and that’s what I based the postal match course of fire on- with a couple of twists.

With the target placed at 25 yards, there are three strings of fire.

String 1: Two Hands

With two minutes on the clock, fire one string of 10 shots at the target with two hands. There are no points for going faster. This is purely an accuracy-based assessment, so take your time to make every shot as perfect as you can get it.

String 2: Strong Hand Only

With four minutes on the clock, fire one string of 10 shots at the target with strong hand only. Again, no points for going faster. Take your time and make your hits.

String 3: Weak Hand Only

With four minutes on the clock, fire one string of 10 shots at the target with weak hand only. As before, take your time.

Scoring

Add up the score from all 30 shots. Line breaks count towards the higher value. There was a maximum of 300 points available for the match.

Divisions

We’re going to change up the divisions a bit in the future, but for this match we had five available divisions. Everyone could enter as many divisions as they want, and could submit as many targets as they wanted to each division with only the highest score counting.

• Centerfire Irons
• Centerfire Optics
• Rimfire Irons
• Rimfire Optics
• Revolver Irons

Competitors shot a wide variety of guns, from subcompact carry guns to full on heavy match guns. It was all in good fun.

The Match Winners

With the course of fire out of the way, let’s announce the winners.

• Centerfire Optics: Honeybadger (AKA CJ)- 282 points with 21 x’s
• Centerfire Irons: Honeybadger- 252 points with 14 x’s
• Rimfire Optics: Shaggy- 296 points with 17 x’s
• Rimfire Irons: ReconDave- 182 points with 3 x’s
• Revolver: Model of 1917- 252 points with 1 x

As for myself, I came in third place on Centerfire Optics with 257 points (6 x’s) and second place on Rimfire Optics with 286 points (14 x’s). I was set to have top points overall until Shaggy came out of nowhere a few days before the end of the match and shot nearly a perfect score.

Lessons Learned

So what was the takeaway from this little exercise? First, the course of fire is very simple to run and gives you a great idea of what your capabilities are from a purse pistol marksmanship standpoint. The time limits were generous, and nobody mentioned coming close to running out of time.

Secondly, the real man-maker of the match was the weak hand only shooting at 25 yards. Everyone reported that this was the part that caused them the most trouble in containing their shots. I myself ran into not only the marksmanship issue, but the way I’ve configured my Mark IV with a prodigious safety lever on the left side for my right hand thumb badly got in the way of my left hand shooting. This wasn’t an issue on the CZ P10F, though.

Third, because the time limits were generous, it really would have paid off to take more of a break in between each shot to rest the arm and reset the brain. I’m so accustomed to running a string of shots before putting the pistol down that I really struggle with the idea of making each shot an entire process to itself. There would be a lot of value in executing the perfect shot process, setting the gun down, taking a breath, and then repeating it nine more times.

Lastly, I think we all enjoyed the target for what it is. The B-22 is not common, and everyone noted how large it was. It provided ample space to make mistakes and yet still stay on paper. The only real issue with them is that they’re hard to find and you can only get them in thick stacks of 50 or 100 at a time. So we’ll keep using them for postal matches the rest of the year, but I expect we’ll switch over to the much more commonly available B-8 after that.

Dimensionally, the two are quite close, with the B-22 being a bit more generous on the scoring. The 9 ring to the 6 ring have very similar dimensions, but the B-22 offers you one additional point per ring. In other words, the 9 ring on the B-22 is about the same as that 8 ring on the B-8, and so on.

Wrapping Up

Thanks to everyone who joined up to participate in this one. I’ll be sending out the next postal match to the community and email subscribers soon, so make sure you’re on the email list for that!

In the future, whether it’s on this target or any other, I think it’s very worthwhile to test yourself out at 25 yards from time to time just to gauge where you’re at. It’s so easy to get fixated on close distances and rapid fire because it’s fun. You don’t really know what your’e able to do until you stretch it out there beyond your comfort zone and train.