Sgt. Jon Wiedell won the title of Duskin 3-Gun Champion for the third consecutive year, while teammate Staff Sgt. Nate Staskiewicz won the Modified/Tac Ops Division at the 10th annual Duskin 3-Gun match at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on June 6-7.
The 6-stage match challenged 222 competitors to navigate through an array of stage setups, each designed to test their speed, accuracy, and ability to transition between their pistol, rifle, and shotgun.
The memorial match that honors fallen Special Operations Soldiers is specifically named after U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Mike Duskin, who died in 2012 while deployed to the Wardak Province of Afghanistan. Duskin, who was known to use competition shooting as a way to maintain some combat skills, was often called ‘Big Mike’ due to his dominant physical presence. So, with this in mind, the Duskin 3-Gun contained not only marksmanship elements in the stages, but physical challenges as well, explained Wiedell, who is a marksmanship instructor with the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit’s Action Shooting Team out of Fort Benning, Georgia.
“The match is made to be a physically taxing match, and stages are made to be larger than other matches, because CW2 Mike Duskin was a human who was larger than life in many areas, and also known to always be improving himself whether it was his physical fitness or other areas in his life. Duskin is probably the hardest match in today’s 3-gun circuit.”
As the stages were designed to mimic various combat scenarios, they included a mix of targets, obstacles, and shooting positions. For example, in between actually shooting, the stages required competitors to run through a multi-room house, climb up and down a rope, drag a “battle buddy”, bench press 100-pound dumbbells, and flip and drag tractor tires. This made each stage around two minutes long, making it more difficult than a typical 3-gun competition, said Staskiewicz.
“It was more challenging just because of all the physical events, which cumulatively were exhausting.”
Wiedell took the overall match win with 584.7756 points and 584.72 seconds, which is a notable achievement, said Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Workman, USAMU Action Shooting Team Chief.
“He beat the next closest competitor by over six percent at a match where the winners are generally within one to two percent.”
Staskiewicz won the Modified/Tac Ops Division with 570.2208 points and 601.67 seconds, against 149 other division competitors. This solid score gave the Fort Benning Soldier his first Duskin 3-Gun division win and put him in fourth overall out of the 221 other total competitors.
Staskiewicz has competed in the Duskin 3-Gun for five years and said the most challenging part of the match is staying focused over the two long days.
“As the fatigue set in, it was important not to get lazy with stage planning and preparation.”
While Wiedell has won three of the four years he’s competed, he doesn’t take it for granted. A Duskin 3-Gun win is special because it’s a match that others specifically train for, and we are all here to make each other better, said Weidell.
“The match brings out the best in people and really makes people strive for success, both in the physical aspect and the shooting aspect. So the match win feels good, because it is making other competitors continuously strive to be better.”
Social Sharing