This past weekend I had the pleasure to return once again to the magnificent shooting range in Philippsburg for the 2003 Hoppner & Schumann cup level III competition. Of course, Philippsburg is a 400km drive from Eindhoven, but my good friend and match organizer Didi Noss said it would be a good match - and I took his word for it. I must say - I was not disappointed. October weather in Europe is always a gamble, but the the sun was shining all day long Sunday, and we had the perfect shooting weather. Not too hot, and not too cold. Just right for a fun day of IPSC shooting. The match was supposed to be 12 stages, but one got canceled to keep the 180 or so shooters running on schedule. That many had to shoot through all 11 stages in one day, so the organizers decided not to push their luck, and canceled on big stage early on. A pity, as the match ran so well, it seemed that we could have had enough time to finish another stage - or even 2 or 3 more. Of course, after 11 stages in one day - you feel like you've have enough shooting... The crew in Philippsburg did a great job. we started on time, at 8:30, and were done with our 11 stages before 4pm. That is a really good speed, as we all know. My hat's off to all involved in running this match. It was well done! The stages were not what I would call "difficult", so they did not offer too much frustration for the average shooter. But they were still freestyle enough to offer a challenge to the top shooters. And almost all the top shooters in Germany attended this match, so it was a tough competition from the start. Much to my enjoyment. No doubt about it - IPSC Germany has turned out a great lot of young junior shooters, and shooting against all these "kids" makes me think perhaps its time to take up Golf.. They are fit, fast and dedicated to their shooting - and as a result getting better from match to match. They certainly can keep us "old" 30+ year olds on our toes... I shot a really good match, and it was nice to be free of equipment problems and "stupid mistakes" which had come up in a few of my last matches. My gun was shooting great, super accuracy, and I made no worse mistake then a few extra shots during the stages. In fact, I shot the entire match with 3 D's, and dropped on average less than 4 points per stage. Good thing too, as Timo Kosiol was keeping up with me for times on most stages, and I was able to pull ahead on points. That really is what IPSC shooting is about - being "error free and not dumping points on any stage. The end results in Open were: 1 823,8302 100,00 153 Kirsch, Saul ISR
2 758,0177 92,01 170 Kosiol, Timo GER J
3 728,1215 88,38 149 Lindenmayer, Oliver GER J
4 708,3493 85,98 4 Wiegand, Maximilian jun. GER J
5 692,3718 84,04 121 Kummer, Patrick GER
6 686,9157 83,38 69 Eggert, Tim GER J
7 662,0769 80,37 198 Schäfer, Hans-Peter GER
8 639,4103 77,61 71 Heiman, Detlef GER
9 637,5518 77,39 156 Holden, Andy GER
10 633,7735 76,93 58 Schulte, Andreas As always, I have my sponsors to thank for their support:
Drummen Custom Guns
Competitive Edge Dynamics (CED)
Mpro-7
Arredondo accessories
Rescomp Handgun Technologies
Nobel Sport
Aimpoint
BUL Transmark Until the next time, I wish you all excellent shooting Sincerely Yours Saul Kirsch | Movies: 
Stage 1 was an El-Pres - with gun unloaded. A little scary when it's Virginia count... (1.2M) 
Stage 10 was another "gun empty" stage. There seemed to be no way to save time on that left swinger, which I had to wait for. (1.2M) 
Side fun shoot! As you can see, I am not too experienced in Shotgun shooting. but it was FUN! (2.3M) Pictures: 
The famous low windows from the last Europeans.
My girlfriend Judith was there with me for the match. Doing the filming. 
3rd place Open Team, Eli Huttner, Didi Noss and myself. |
