TacCon 2019 part 3

The 2019 Rangemaster Tactical Conference was held at the Nolatac Training Facility in New Orleans, March 15-17. I’ve been a part of this conference every year since the early 2000’s, presenting training at 17 of the past 21 events. This is part three of a series of posts summarizing the sessions I attended and observed, and my experiences shooting the match.

Part one is here, part two is here.

The first session I attended was taught by Jon Skubis from Vortex Optics, titled “All About Optics”. It was an excellent technical presentation covering many concepts and definitions related to scopes, rangefinders, red dot sights, binoculars and other optical devices used by shooters.

Second session of the morning was Gary Greco’s “Gunners in Chairs Getting Coffee”. It was a sequence of short (10-15 minute) interviews. Among those interviewed were Claude Werner, Darryl Bolke, John Holschen, Michael Bane, Gabe White, and me. I didn’t take any pictures from this session, because the next thing on my mind was shooting the match.

Each year the TacCon event includes a pistol match. Over the past decade it’s mutated from a multi stage, surprise, 3D target event to a more traditional square range + shootoff format. Cold rainy weather took its toll on the ranges, as you’ll see from the pictures.

I shot the match using my new Glock 48. My match got off to a less than ideal start when my very first shot on the first string landed in the “4” ring of the RM-Q target (one point down), blowing my chances of a perfect score and tying for first overall. I ended up on a relay standing next to Massad Ayoob, and he and I ended up in a 10-way tie for 4th overall, at 195/200 points. That earned us both a slot in the next morning’s shootoff.

After shooting the match and getting lunch, I went to the classroom where I was going to present that afternoon, and caught the end of a session of Dr. Lauren Pugasli’s “Trauma Care for Pets”. I wrote about that course in detail when I attended it at the 2018 TacCon.

My final session of the day was teaching my “Correcting Common Shooting Errors” lecture. It goes through 10 common errors – how to diagnose and observe them, and how to fix them. Many in attendance were trainers looking for tips on how to coach others. Jan Sabo from Coolfire assisted me and had some Coolfire gear for people to try. I was able to demonstrate one technique for using the Coolfire recoil simulator to teach trigger control that Jan caught on video.

A few more pictures from that talk.

Saturday night was the trainer’s dinner. We celebrated Lynn Givens’ birthday with cake and caught up with friends old and new. With many of us in the shootoff at 8 a.m. the next morning, the event broke up fairly early.