My First Year
That first match was a local IDPA match in February of 2019, and dead last in my division meant 222.90 seconds over five stages. The folks around me finished between 112 and 177. I wrote at the time that it was humbling, yet exhilarating, and that’s still the best description I have.
Up to that point, shooting meant driving to the range by myself, punching holes in paper, and driving home. No clock, no plan, nobody to compare notes with. I honestly thought those trips were keeping my skills up as a license holder. The match told me otherwise in about four minutes, and nothing I’d been doing alone could have told me the same thing.
So I took a class. The class was great. Then it ended, and I was right back where I started with one difference: now I knew I was slow. Nobody handed me the next thing to work on, and nobody was working on it with me. That gap, after the first class and before the first match, is where AmmoFans starts.
What Actually Moved Me
This blog is a little over 600 posts deep now. The early ones are a new shooter guessing. The later ones are a Rangemaster Master Instructor who finally made B-class in USPSA and Steel Challenge in 2024, a goal I’d missed the year before.
Gear didn’t get me there, and Lord knows I gave it every chance. Three things did, and they’re the three things AmmoFans is made of. A plan for every range trip, even a simple one. A record of what I did and what I learned, which is what you’re reading. And people to shoot with, who told me when I was fooling myself and showed up at the same matches I did. By my second month of IDPA I had taken 36 seconds off my match time, and the post from that month credits a class and dry practice, not a new gun.
That record is this blog, all 600 posts of it. Not everybody wants to run a website to keep one. That’s what the journal is for.
Why AmmoFans, Take Three
I’ve built AmmoFans twice before, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Both times I started with the organizers: clubs, ranges, match directors. The thinking was that if the people who run things listed their events, shooters would show up. They didn’t. An organizer has no reason to post to a room with nobody in it, and a shooter has no reason to walk into an empty room.
The lesson took two tries to sink in. Organizers come where shooters already are. So this version starts with shooters, and with the two things a shooter does between events anyway: practice, and write it down.
What AmmoFans Is
Find shooters and training near you, practice with a plan, and see yourself improve. That’s the whole pitch. Here’s what’s behind it.
Drills. A library of drills, qualifications, and standards, live or dry, each with its course of fire spelled out: target, distance, rounds, par, scoring. It started with my own drill write-ups from this blog and with John Daub’s collection of drills, qualifications, standards, and tests, which he gave me his blessing to seed from on one condition: every drill keeps the credit of whoever devised it. That was already how I wanted it. You can open any public drill without an account and read the whole thing.
The journal. After a session, you write down what you practiced and what you learned, not only the numbers. The method is Lanny Bassham’s, from With Winning in Mind: the facts of the day, what you’d fix, what worked, and where you’re headed. A logged run tells you what happened. The entry is where you work out why.
People and events. Follow shooters, and see the matches and classes your people are going to. I post the matches I’m shooting from the Austin Practical Shooting Club schedule, and the classes I’m interested in, so there’s already something on the calendar. When somebody you follow is going, you see it. Shooting with the same people week after week is how I got better, and it’s the part no drill app does.
Privacy, in Plain Terms
Gun owners are careful about this, and they should be. Here is exactly what AmmoFans enforces, not what I hope it does.
A stranger with a link to your profile sees who you are and that you shoot: your card and a year of weeks showing when you practiced. They never see where you’ll be or when. An event page a stranger opens names nobody on it.
Whether you’re going to an event is for the followers you accept. Not for members in general, because anybody can make an account, and signing in is no wall.
If that’s still more than you want, make your account private. A stranger with the link sees nothing, and a member who wants in has to ask. I won’t promise it stops a determined person, because nothing online should promise that. I will tell you where every line is, and the privacy policy says it again in longer words.
Who AmmoFans Is For
Shooters at every level, and especially your first year: after the first class, before the first match. I built it for the version of me who drove home from the range alone in 2019 with no idea what to work on next.
There are no leaderboards. Your levels and your bests are your own. The drill page shows who’s running a drill this month, not who’s winning it.
Start Here: October’s Drill of the Month
Every month there’s one drill everybody on AmmoFans is on. October’s is the NRA Basic Pistol Qualification: five aimed shots into a 4-inch circle at 10, 15, and 20 feet, with no clock. All five in, step back. It isn’t an official NRA course of fire. It follows the live fire of the NRA Basics of Pistol Shooting course as Karl Rehn records it in Strategies and Standards for Defensive Handgun Training. Fifteen rounds live.
Here’s the part I’d push on if you’re in your first year: run it dry at home, often. A dry run is the same drill, same circle, same distances, one aimed press at a time. Shooting it live at the range is the stretch goal, and the only run that earns a pass. My own dry runs are on the drill’s page, logged as Public, so you can see what one looks like before you log yours.
If you want a warm-up, Lynn Givens’ Visual Trigger Break and Reset is a dry drill that takes five minutes and teaches you where your trigger’s wall, break, and reset actually are.
Dry fire means a cleared gun and no live ammunition in the room, and I don’t do a single rep without the safety routine I learned from Memphis Beech. The drill card below carries it. Read it before you start.
The ask this month:
- Log a run. Dry counts.
- Write a few lines in your journal about what you learned.
- Follow three shooters. I’m one of them: ammofans.net/UncleZo.
November’s drill is Todd Louis Green’s Walk-Back Drill: five rounds into a 3×5 card at 3, 5, and 7 yards, a yard back each time it’s clean, no time limit. I’ll have more to say about it then.
Closing Thoughts
I’m not selling you anything here. I’m asking you to do what I wish somebody had asked me to do in 2019: pick one drill, write down what you learned, and find three people who are doing the same thing. If that’s you, you know where I am.
Shoot with others. Get better.
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