FORT BENNING, Ga., (Sept. 2, 2015) -- The Army's Action Shooting Team won the Four-Man Team Event for the second straight year and several individual first-place titles during the 2015 Rocky Mountain 3-Gun Championship at the NRA Whittington Center near Raton, New Mexico, Aug. 13-16.
"This type of match plays to our strengths with more difficult shots, a more difficult environment," said Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Horner, Army Marksmanship Unit, who competed in his sixth year at the Championship. "It went exactly as it was supposed to go - we won the team match and individual matches."
Competitors shot three stages per day in the first three days of the four-day Championship. Day 4 consisted of shoot-offs for individual divisions and the team event.
Horner, Staff Sgt. Joel Turner, Sgt. Tyler Payne and Sgt. John Browning, all from USAMU, and eight other teams fired pistols, shotguns and rifles during the initial team match on Day 2, conducted down range where only the team firing was allowed to see their own performance. However, in individual events, all marksmen watched their competition perform.
"It was kind of a hidden stage," Turner said. "We drove there, and they literally only gave you five minutes to walk through."
He said everyone had to figure what they were going to do while firing the weapon assigned to them.
"(We) were kind of on our own; we pulled together and came in second," said Turner of Belton, South Carolina.
Their second-place standing after a team event on Day 2 and rankings in individual stages from Days 1-3 landed the Army Team in the shoot-of, against three other top teams on the final day.
The shoot-off consisted of a relay with team members alternating after firing six shots each. Each team had 24 targets to hit cleanly, and each missed shot resulted in a penalty. In individual competition during the Championship, some stages included all three weapons, some two and others only one.
Horner, from Suffolk, Virginia, also won first place in the Tactical Optics (Military) Division. In this division, competitors can use mid- to high-powered scopes on their rifle while their shotguns and pistols have limited or factory-installed sights.
Horner became a Soldier nine years ago, and he said the Army has been his life since he joined after completing high school.
"It is pretty much all I know," said Horner, who has been the 3Gun Nation National Champion three times, among other national titles. "The Army has helped me in a ton of different ways, as far as education, experiencing new things and traveling the world. It has helped me in almost every aspect of my life."
He said all of the stages of the Rocky Mountain 3-Gun Championship have something to offer, but the last stage, which was all-pistol and had shooters moving down a rocky ravine at break-neck speed, was his favorite.
"The long gully run with the pistol with 56 rounds and an almost 200-meter run - that was my favorite stage - because it was really complex, trying to remember everything and find the targets," Horner said.
Browning agreed that the all-pistol stage showed competitors how well they can shoot on the move.
"The targets come up really fast, and you have to put your body in the right place," said Browning, a Jackson, Georgia, native. "It's pretty hard to execute perfectly."
Another member of the USAMU's Action Shooting Team, Pfc. Katie Harris, who won first place in the Lady Division, also said she really liked the all-pistol stage. However, she had a slight mishap during her run.
"I actually fell and still shot while I was sitting down and then continued to go," she said.
After falling, Harris landed sitting down but kept her weapon pointed in a safe direction. Despite the trip, she hit her targets, recovered her footing and completed the stage successfully.
Another fan of the all-pistol stage, Payne of Princeton, Minnesota, said that although all the stages were set up well, the all-pistol stage was not only his favorite, but one where he had the fastest time in the group.
"It was a really long stage, and you had to remember where all the targets were, and it was really, really difficult not to blow past the target," he said.
Horner said these types of stages give marksmen a chance to think on-the-fly while combining continuous movement in the New Mexican landscape of mountains and desert terrain, making it essential for the competitors to employ alternate or hastily made positions.
"A lot of other matches are in sterile environments, and the targets and obstacles are set up by the match officials," he said. "This is a little bit different with the natural terrain and being able to go out in the mountains, run down the gullies and run around trees. So, it's a much more physically challenging match, and there's a lot more to finding and identifying the proper targets."
"It boils down to practice, but you have to have your mind right," said Browning, a rookie on the Action Shooting Team, but a pro at the Rocky Mountain 3-Gun Championship, having competed in it four times. "(The Rocky Mountain 3-Gun Championship) is pretty demanding-it's a lot of marksmanship mixed with knowing where to move and how to move and executing everything smoothly.
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