My guess is that Dave probably left because in the previous two years he had one hit on target. Not everyone can make the transition from static targets.
We are fully aware of the occasional bitching about Walt shooting and doing well. We just find the suggestion that he has an unfair advantage to be bullshit so we disregard it. Can we convince everyone that he never shoots at the targets when he is building the range out? No. Does he? Also, no. You don't have to know Walt very well to know that he is the most rigidly adherent person to rules that you will ever meet. That is why we disregard this complaint without giving it a second thought.
You are correct. Nobody wants to hump across the country to a fire six shots and then be sent home. We don't want that either but we have a narrow band of time between 0800 and 1300 in which we can shoot. Given how much time you have evidently spent there, you know that after around 1300 the wind starts to really suck and there is a 50:50 chance that it will piss rain and pepper the mountain with lightning. We got lucky during Ko2M this year but the FCSA World championships a few days later got repeatedly drenched and driven off the line. Running the match as elimination means the average time a shooter is on the line is shorter and we can move things along faster. It also means that we have fewer rounds downrange that can potentially take out a target or camera and stop shooting for a few hours while we fix it. We are sticking with elimination because there are significant logistics concerns that we need to deal with to allow as many shooters as we can to have their chance.
You are telling me that we are screwing up and driving shooters away but for the last three years we have had more shooters that have applied to shoot than we can possibly accept. The people that wipe out on the first target are usually unhappy about it but literally every shooter that screwed the pooch in 2018 applied to shoot in 2019. The people that are usually vocal in their displeasure are the people that don't get to shoot at all.
To this end we managed to move the line along way faster this year and clear 80 shooters with time to spare. We had some lessons learned from that and we hope to significantly expand the number of shooters we can take next year while running it more smoothly. We are also trying to arrange side events so people can get more trigger time while they are out there.
You talk about perceptions but you seem to ignore the possibility that one of the perceptions that needs to change is yours.
-Alex
