How would a ten second penalty for misses change the game?

[John Barleycorn]

What are your thoughts?

[Dr. Bob]

Gee, you would have an NCOWS match.  I makes it harder to miss fast enough to win, but is is possible!

[Marshal Will Wingam]

I guess more people would have to work up accurate loads. That's not easy unless you load your own. You'd see a few people go up in the standings and a few others go down, but everyone would adjust and keep on shooting at their best level. What's the problem with 5 seconds? Why not just shoot within the existing scoring?

[Doc Shapiro]

It would slow the game down.  It would hurt the middle and bottom of the pack shooter more than the top notch shooter. 

Now I ask you, what's your motivation for this particular suggestion?  What would you like to accomplish?

[John Barleycorn]

 I think that putting more emphasis on ringing steel would in the short term change the final scores but in the long run the cream will still rise to the top, and we would all end up better shots, but on the other side after a few matches 10 seconds would mean no more that 5 seconds, I suppose Im just looking for a way to improve everyones accuracy without hurting the game, and the FUN.

[Wymore Wrangler]

Not much, I shoot with clubs that have five and ten second misses, the final outcome is always about the same...

[Pettifogger]

One of the local clubs had ten second misses, little bitty pistol targets and rifle targets way up on the side of a hill.  Attendance started dropping dramatically.  Made no difference to overall standings at matches.  Just served to frustrate middle of the road and new shooters.

[Marshal Will Wingam]

Doc is absolutely right, it just slows things down. I had forgotten this aspect of it.

Our club tried all different types of peanalizing for misses. 10-second misses made people shoot way slower while they took careful aim. They finally decided on no-miss scoring where everyone with no misses was at the top, in order of time, followed by those with 1 miss, then 2 misses, etc. All it did was put the worst shooters who could take 4 minutes at a stage followed by the ones who took 3 minutes and so on. I stopped shooting there until they got their heads on straight and went back to the same scoring as SASS.

[Hill Beachy]

One of the very first clubs with which I started shooting CAS in the mid-90's had a 10-second scoring rule on misses.  It did tend to slow things just a tad, although the best shooters still finished at the top.  The club founders chose to use the 10-second miss penalty in order to place a greater emphasis on accuracy.  This was due to their background; they had come into CAS not from IPSC but from buckskinning, where they were used to making every shot count from their muzzleloaders. 

At that time, this particular club also placed a heavier emphasis on "realism" -- for example the shooter was frequently required to duck behind cover (the false-front) while reloading the shotgun.  In fact, many of the stages  at that time resembled a "Seneca Run" -- a scenario where you had to use your wits along with your shooting skills.  Back then, there were only about a dozen shooters at a match, so the additional time that it took to shoot a stage didn't slow things down very much, or at least it didn't seem to matter.  We were having fun.  Heck, back then we timed stages with STOPWATCHES because we didn't have timers. 

The club president succumbed to cancer in early '96 (I was privileged to be one of the pallbearers) and my rich Uncle moved me away from there in the spring.  Over the intervening years, many changes took place as the muzzleloader crowd drifted away or passed on to their final reward; they in turn were replaced by CAS shooters who had come in from IPSC.  About two years after I left, CAS underwent its great growth spurt and as match attendance increased dramatically the 5-second rule was adopted at that club.  I did manage to get back there a few times though, and the last time that I shot with them (early 2001) a typical match now drew around 60-70 shooters.  Clearly the 10-second miss penalty would no longer have been feasible given the number of shooters now.

[Deadeye Don]

Many of us NCOWS members are kinda chuckling at this thread.    Safe shooting and aim well.  Deadeye.

[Camille Eonich]

Many of us NCOWS members are kinda chuckling at this thread.    Safe shooting and aim well.  Deadeye.

So would you like to share with the rest of us and answer the man's query?  You do shoot both SASS and NCOWS so you probably have a different perspective that may help him out some.



One of our local clubs used to have 10 second penalties.  People still tended to finish in the same general order as they usually do there was just more spread in the final placement in the middle of the road shooters and bottom of the pack.  The top shooters will adjust themselves accordingly to any match the middle of the road shooters and the bottom of the pack shooters tend to care more about just shooting and socializing than where they finish so they tend to just carry on as usual.


At least this is what I saw in my exeperience with a 10 second penalty.

[Arcey]

As a stage writer and former match director, I never understood improving a shooter's accuracy to be my responsibility.  I understood it to be designing a safe and entertaining match.  Improving their accuracy is the shooters' responsibility.

[Camille Eonich]

As a stage writer and former match director, I never understood improving a shooter's accuracy to be my responsibility.  I understood it to be designing a safe and entertaining match.  Improving their accuracy is the shooters' responsibility.

  Then there's that. 

[RattlesnakeJack]

My local club has always used ten-second Miss penalties ... whatever else it may or may not accomplish it certainly does help avoid all those petty discussions about such things as whether an out-of-sequence shot should be classed as a "Miss" instead of a "Procedural"!   Very easy to say: "O.K., we'll call it a Miss ..."   

[Doc Shapiro]

Arcey is exactly right.  It's not the responsibility of the club to make shooters better or more accurate.  That's up to each individual.

However, if you want to place an emphasis on accuracy, you could set up alternate banks of pistol targets (for example) on one stage.  This alternate bank could be smaller targets, and farther out.  Then give shooters a 5 second bonus for shooting the farther/smaller bank of targets instead of the bigger/closer bank.

Doc

[Marshal Will Wingam]

I don't care what way the scoring is. I just like to shoot at local matches that follow SASS scoring so when I go to a regional match, it's the same thing. When our club started doing the no-miss scoring, I saw my shooting adversely affected. I stopped shooting completely for three months and found I did better at the next regional.    Remember, we deal with muscle memory to carry us through the stages. I feel it's best to have standard scoring, whatever it is.

Yeah, Deadeye, you can look down your nose and laugh, but it's the same with NCOWS. If that's 10 seconds, fine. Better to practice what you will be using.

[Arcey]

My local club has always used ten-second Miss penalties ... whatever else it may or may not accomplish it certainly does help avoid all those petty discussions about such things as whether an out-of-sequence shot should be classed as a "Miss" instead of a "Procedural"!   Very easy to say: "O.K., we'll call it a Miss ..." 

Fancy that.  Shoot a ten round sequence out of order - all misses – 100 second penalty.  Such a petty issue.

Strange.  Folks here don't have a problem distinguishing a miss from a procedural.  Must be something in the water.  We tend to call a miss a miss and a procedural a procedural.  Just imagine..............................

Think I'll shoot with Cammie, Will 'n Doc.

[Wymore Wrangler]

Hey Arcey, I hope you will add me too your list also....

[Arcey]

Hey Arcey, I hope you will add me too your list also....

Oh, Man!  How the hell'd I leave you out?  Posse up, mi amigo.

[RattlesnakeJack]

Fancy that.  Shoot a ten round sequence out of order - all misses – 100 second penalty.  Such a petty issue.

You misunderstand me ... we're definitely not that anal!         It really only works one way, actually ....

Here, if you did what you have suggested, you'd get one procedural (we also have a "rule" that you can only collect one procedural per stage, by the way)  and you'd only be given a "miss" for any target not actually hit .... which is precisely what would be done most places, I believe (except IPSC, probably ....      Reminds of the time at such a shoot when you had to kneel in the firing box and fire 12 rounds - the firing box was too small for me to kneel in and still have both the knee and toe within the box - unless I had conciously held the toe of that foot off the ground the whole time, I guess.  I'm pretty tall, and had longer legs than anyone else at the shoot ...    Never thought anything of it until I was scored 12 procedurals plus my misses ... no wonder that type of shooting fails to attract me!    )

We don't really have any difficulty distinguishing between procedurals and misses, either.  However, when there was a differential between the penalty for procedurals and misses, "gamers" would try to argue (... usually quite a stretch anyway ...) that something they were going to be given a procedural penalty for should only be classified as a miss ... or other shooters pressing for something classed as a miss to be ruled a procedural ... (We attracted a lot of IPSCey types back then ...)  With this rule, we can just grin and agree, since it doesn't make any difference to the outcome ... 

Matter of fact, we never get that sort of protest anymore  ... wonder why?      ... and we consistently have about three times as many participants at our CAS shoots than at any other types of shoots in this area ...