Re: Matches with Fieldcraft too?
Having organized a match or two and having attended both the Badlands AND Storm Mountain matches, I can tell you fieldcraft exercises sound really good on paper, but don't necessarily work in practice. The reason, for one the man power necessary to run the events and the time required for the events to be run correctly, and the fact that very few people will sign up. If as match directors you don't mind only having 20 people or less at an event, then you might get some joy in pulling one off, but you'll soon realize 20 competitors won't cover the cover the costs unless you do like Badlands did and charge 3X more and give 3X less back to the competitors.
People rarely want the physical gut checks and like Tony said above, it sucks to do a 48 continuous hour match and only fire 11 rifle shots. People want and expect the round count to be over 100 meaningful shots and not simply 5 events with two or 3 being barrel burners to get the numbers up.
I was at Thunder Ranch this week, and read the Oregon Sniper comp COF and it looks pretty good, ambitious for the number of shooters, I would be curious to see how they pull off field events with long times over 50 shooters. There was one I saw they give the shooters 5 minutes each to engage the targets, and it didn't appear to be a firing line type event, although I could be wrong. That is easily a 5 hour stage with that many people to shoot only a few rounds. Timing is very important and having a lot of down time can kill a competition. The Oregon event looks to be pretty good though I hope they have the timings worked out.
Interesting fact in regards to the Badlands match, during the actual match the rules were changed, the teams manipulated, and I asked Bobby Whittington about it recently, and how it appeared that the changes were designed to influence mine & Kevin's placing in the event and his answer was, and I quote, "things change in real life all the time". Sort of backed up my feelings about their operation, that they don't run a very fair event. As well it was determined the recent attack on here of my standing as a confirmed graduate of the USMC Scout Sniper school originated from their facility by their employees, where again, Bobby told me was "Not to my (his) knowledge" and what his instructors and range hands say about me when he is not around is none of his business even if it is said to his students, and are known lies. So I would recommend avoiding that place like the plague, but that is only my personal opinion on the subject having experienced these things first hand. However if you're not me, it might be fine for you, just be sure to ask them their opinion of me, as its sure to be quite entertaining from what I hear as any good piece of fiction often is.
The Storm Mountain event was pretty good, they had a 4 hour stalk, and the forced march was tough, I know I was on overdrive to finish it. They even weighed the rucks before and after to make sure you finished with 40 lbs. You got 1 round, walked a mile shot it, walked back and got another 10X... took a while and put a lot of teams down.