Bad Boys in the Outhouse

Here's an interesting and controversial IPSC stage for you, from the February 10, 2007, ARPC Club Match.

The shooter starts out sitting in an outhouse. Literally. (See the video) Gun is placed on a barrel three feet in front of the outhouse door.

Right at the outhouse door is a foot trap: a ground-mounted device which initiates a moving target when you step on it. Plastic barrels on both sides of the foot trap direct the competitor right over it.

The thing is, when the foot trap is tripped, it starts a bobber mechanism which waves a no-shoot target in front of two (maybe 3) of the 10 IPSC shoot targets downrange. The thing is, this no-shoot is suppose to be waving into your sight picture while you're trying to shoot.

Why would you want that?

You wouldn't. And it presents some interesting Range Officer quandries, in that if you put a hole in the bobbing no-shoot you shouldn't be awarded the score for the hit on the backing shoot target.

The trouble is, obviously, that it's really difficult to determine which 'hit' went thru the notatively impermeable no-shoot target.

The competitors didn't want to deal with the shooting problem.

The Range Officers didn't want to deal with the scoring problem.

So when someone pointed out that the published stage procedures didn't REQUIRE that the no-shoot bobber target be activated at any specific time, it seemed like a self-resolving problem.

Just ... step over the foot trap and move on. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain who wrote at the bottom of the Stage Procedures:

INTENT: ACTIVATE THE MOVING TARGET BEFORE SHOOTING

The word 'Intent' is sort of a feel-good weasel word in this context. At least this is the opinion passed on from the "Bad Boys" squad which preceded us on this stage. They didn't activate the bobber, so we didn't either.

We figured, the MD's options were:

1. throw out the stage
2. make everybody who shot it without activating the bobber reshoot
3. ignore it.

It was a long rainy day, we didn't think the MD wanted to drag it out any longer.

Other than that one little technical failure-to-communicate thingie, it was too interesting a stage to arbitrarily throw out.

Ultimately, the MD chose to ignore it. I'm sure it irritated the few people who actually activated the bobber and had to contend with the irritating white flash in front of their targets. Well, they had as much opportunity as every one else at the match to make strategic decisions about how they chose to shoot the stage.

So what do YOU think?

Were those who activated the bobber no-shoot on the side of the angels?

Or were those who stepped over it justified in assuming that it was a 'logic trap' inserted by the stage designer to test our ability to fit the stage procedures into the context of the existing rules?

You be the judge.

I hope someone uses the phrase "GAMER" in the discussion. No, not The Hobo Brasser or Whitefish. We already know that they're Bad Boys.




(You can view all videos from this match here, or you can download the original 13MB vidoe of this stage here.)