#brian enos

[02.07.00] Brian Enos I’ll start out with some personal history so you know where I’m coming from. When I began, my motivation was purely to master the art of shooting a pistol. It quickly became mastery of competition as well. My entire life was devoted to shooting. I lived and breathed it every moment of the day. After dinner, Rob Leatham and I would stand in the living room and practice mag changes for hours, racing against each other. For twenty years I’ve been practicing mag changes and I still learn each time. My family suffered as I basically came home from work and went into my gunroom and spent the rest of the night reloading ammo or working on my gun. I’m not saying any of this is good, it’s just the way it was. I think, at that time, the matches also reflected this passion. The sport was new; the only reason we were doing it was because we wanted to. We weren’t making any money and there were no sponsors. There were no classification systems at the major matches; all the big matches were heads up. As a beginner at our local club matches I entered in Master class. I didn’t want to win a "class"—I wanted to beat everyone. Rob and I would drive to the Southwest Pistol League in California to shoot a match that only had two stages, Double Trouble and Five To Go. The entire match was only 35 rounds! At that time all the matches tested shooting skills: the Bianchi Cup, the Steel Challenge and all the IPSC courses were strictly shooting skill oriented. Most clubs and organizations were run by top level competitors. My first big out of state match was the Cota deCaza match in California in 1981. At the end of each day I rolled out my sleeping bag and slept on the ground next to my '69 Datsun 510. The match consisted of a Steel Challenge course, a PPC course, and a weird "created especially for the match" course. I shot it with my Colt 45, the only gun I had. I finished well and won a Bar-Sto barrel. I was so excited that I actually won a Bar-Sto barrel! It was at that match that I heard about the Steel Challenge from Mike Dalton. I couldn’t believe I was hanging out with Mike Dalton. He was a God. I returned home fueled by my big prize, determined to practice and go back to the Steel Challenge and kick some butt. Mike Henry and I practiced in the desert shooting at paper plates stapled to sticks. We only had three target stands; steel targets were out of the question. If the course we were practicing had more than three targets, we would just set up the first three targets of the stage, shoot those for awhile, and then set up the next three to practice the last part of the stage. I went back to California and shot well, finishing 5th overall. Soon after that Mike Dillon offered to sponsor Rob and I with 1000 lead bullets per month. This number quickly turned into all the bullets we could shoot. We were in heaven. We could shoot a lot of ammo. I approached a friend at a local gunshop about sponsoring me to go to the Bianchi Cup. He helped me out with the entry fee and I was off to the Bianchi Cup – a fully sponsored shooter. I think I finished twenty-first, I can’t remember for sure. I came away with a huge bunch of experience, determined to go back the next year and win the whole thing. During the actual match I had an incredible experience. I was shooting the Mover Event - my gun was shaking and tracking poorly; everything felt like crap. Just before I started a string I remember thinking, "maybe you’re squeezing too hard, just relax your grip a little." The gun came out and tracked perfectly, just like it did in practice. I was seeing the sights lift, feeling the trigger; I couldn’t believe it. I was so excited when I came off the line I said to the range officer, "I’m going to come back next year and win this thing." He let lose a big belly laugh and made some comment like, "Yea, right kid." That evening I remember talking to Leonard Knight over a beer, telling him about the exciting realization I just had, how it was going to change everything about how I practiced and competed. [Rant mode on.] These days the matches have more rounds on one stage than entire matches we used to shoot. Everywhere you go you see targets stuck all over the place just to get the round count up. Nobody wants to come to the match if you’re not going to be running around spraying bullets all over the place. I’ve watched guys capable of winning big matches shoot standard exercises—they have no basic shooting skills whatsoever. But yet they can win major tournaments because the matches no longer test shooting skill. Instead they test cranking rounds all over the place on easy targets. And then we have the classification system, and the competitors misuse of it. Every match you go to you hear of this or that guy who’s sandbagging on a local level so he can stay in a class lower than he should be so he can win a gun at the next area match. It’s bullshit. It’s that spirit that’s killing the sport. I’m not bitching at shooters specifically. It’s the "American Spirit" that pisses me off— the spirit of mediocrity. It ruins everything. Most sports in the US eventually become "Americanized" and lose whatever passion they had. While IPSC outside the United States is far from perfect, at least they still design courses that challenge your skill level. In the United States it’s all about how many rounds we can squeeze into a match and in what order the "classes" go to the prize table. Today, you’re lucky if you go to a major match and find one good course of fire. IPSC, as shot in the United States, is similar to International Skeet verses American Skeet. Let's look at what’s happened to two great sports, Skeet and Trap. In Europe you have some kick-ass shotgun sports, in the United States you have watered down versions of the original sport designed so you can sit on your couch and watch TV all day, practice the same easy targets every time you go to the range, and eventually you will shoot a perfect score. Twenty-five or one hundred straight. Who cares. At the major shotgun tournaments in the United States everyone is shooting clean scores. Why? Let’s take a sport that originally had extremely fast moving targets, started from a low gun position, and then cut the target speed in half and start the gun from the shoulder, just so it will be easier to shoot that 25 straight. Now we can watch more TV and still shoot that 25 straight. The guys who really do train shoot hundreds and hundreds straight. It’s the same in Trap, let’s cut the target speed in half, and decrease the angle of the target release to a point where it’s no longer a challenge just to hit each target, now the challenge is to not miss one out of hundreds. It’s pathetic. (If you want to try a tough shotgun sport, try wobble trap. That’s a sport even the best never master.) At the modern day Bianchi Cup (where, unfortunately I had a hand in starting the trend) – the challenge is not to just hit the ten-ring like it was when the course was designed; but now the task, should you decide to accept it, is that you can never shoot a shot that isn’t a ten. If you do you may as well pack your bags and get on the plane. What started out as a great match twenty-five years ago with a stock gun is now a joke with the modern day "Bianchi Open Gun." Instead of the Bianchi Cup being the place to be in May, the only shooters who show up are Bianchi Specialists or old timers. It eventually kills the original intent of the Carnival Match. I’ve seen this happen to all the major matches. Bianchi Cup, Steel Challenge, The Sportsman’s Team Challenge, and The Masters. (What happened to the Masters is an even bigger bitch session; I’ll save that for another rant.) The Carnival Matches start out as a good idea, then after 5 or 6 years they deteriorate into a boring game of repetition. There are several reasons behind this. The first is that the courses of fire are never updated or changed to reflect competitor improvement in skill level. As soon as you know exactly what you have to do every time you go to the range, you can set about perfecting it. This starts the stagnation. Then we have to consider the temperament types of the competitors who are attracted to these events. Most of the Carnival Matches draw from IPSC shooters. Within IPSC shooters there are various types, some that prefer diversity and some that prefer repetition. The repetitive nature of all the Carnival Matches eventually draws shooters who excel at working out systems to effectively tackle those challenges. I am one of them. Most of my major wins were at Carnival Matches. After a few years of training by seriously motivated competitors, it’s difficult for the match to draw new blood; potential competitors are too intimidated by the evolved specialists. The last problem is one of administration. Even if top competitors are involved in running the match, they resist change because of the "uncertainty factor." Once the match is established they are afraid the core group of shooters will stop coming if they change the course of fire. This seals the fate of the Carnival Match to the specialists. I used to list the Steel Challenge as my favorite match, now I absolutely dread going because I know that I have to go to the range a week before the match, practice the same courses that I've been shooting for over 20 years, over and over until I’m so bored that I just want to go home before the match starts. Unfortunately, even in IPSC, this need to practice at the match is becoming more apparent. If you consider yourself a true IPSC shooter you should do whatever you can to encourage surprise formats and no practicing (other than a function fire range) at or near the match. The current state of affairs at the Bianchi Cup in Open class is ridiculous. Fortunately the stock gun rules are great; shoot the match with iron sights, standing. Now that’s a challenge. One that I’ve failed the last few years. It may be too late, however, to save a dying match. Today, the problem is the potential group of shooters the match draws from (IPSC) can’t shoot. The match intimidates the hell out of them. I think the same thing is happening in the United States in IPSC right now. If someone were to actually set up a good match with challenging courses of fire, nobody would come. The first thing they would want to know is—what’s the round count? Few care about the actual quality of the match, the stage design. It’s sad. I can practice an entire afternoon shooting at one single target. Does anyone know what I am talking about? A major aspect of the Carnival Matches that eventually leads to their degeneration is the fact that at every one of them, eventually there is a "practice range." The "practice range" is the start of the decline of the match. Eventually, after a few years, if you want to win the match you have to go a week before the match to practice. Not many can afford that luxury. In the early years, we went to the Bianchi Cup and fired 192 rounds—the exact number required to complete the event. The last few years I don’t know how many thousands of rounds I shot at the practice range at the match. This year (2000) I was so sick of it that I nearly drove back home before the match started. No wonder I shot like shit. Being an IPSC shooter, (and being OK with that label), my original attraction to IPSC style shooting was the diversity. That’s what I still love about the game. It’s the greatest sport in the world for the individual that enjoys that type of challenge. I love the idea of never knowing exactly what you have to do until you get there. You perfect your skills as best as you can, then go to the match and see what you’ve got. Understand that I am not talking about right or wrong, or good or bad; I am just talking about what I like. I’ll end up with the topic of fully sponsored shooters. I am familiar with this because I was fully sponsored for 10 years. When I received my first big offer I thought it was going to be the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I could accomplish things I never thought possible when I had to work for a living. Before I accepted their offer I spent weeks thinking about whether it was the best thing for the sport. I had some thoughts on this subject because the military was already paying shooters to compete full time. When a sport hits this level it eventually makes it difficult for the non-sponsored competitor to win. I was greedy and I took their money. Not long after that a shooter approached me and thanked me for writing Practical Shooting, and then, with a twinkle in his eye said, "I’m happy for you that you are being paid to do what you love, but I couldn’t do it. I love shooting too much." He knew. Sponsorship is not what you think. As soon as you are being paid to do something you love, everything changes. If you haven’t been there I know it’s hard to believe. But trust me, it’s true. I clearly remember the determination and drive I used to have. I haven’t felt that in a long time. Not since I have been paid to shoot.