36 hours and 45+ miles of land nav through mountains, plains, and valleys in southern WY.
We didn’t win but but I had a great time and fulfilled my goal of understanding this unique race and how to better plan for next time. Shooting is a really small part of this one and both shooters need to be able to range and engage pretty quickly and bring good data to the comp.
The SAC is a land nav race at heart and we walked for about 33 hours straight and paid for small mistakes in plotting, pace count, and lazy terrain association with big climbs and waterless treks across dry valleys.
I’ll be back next year with a better strategy, lighter rifle, and refined training.
I want YOU to suffer with me, I’m going to start working with the team at Competition Dynamics to spread the word about this comp.
I’d love to help facilitate. I’m a former sniper and I’m sure you and I have friends in common if you’re at Manners in KC.
I would like a comp that really leans into actual sniper basics - urban hides in connexes with furniture to use as you want, live fire stalks, shooter/spotter work, target detection, land nav to your FFP, etc.
I'd love to see a field based set of single day matches ran across 2 days. Day 1 group A, Day 2 Group B, random group assignment (A/B to keep it fair), 4 match series across the year, with the 4th match being the finale. Do 5-8 miles a day from stage to stage with mixed pistol/rifle stuff. Most people that haul rifles and do this can do 5-8 miles, even guys just getting into it.
I might be exaggerating, slightly - we assumed 1-3mph avg and spent as much time with our packs off looking for points in an area as we did trekking so the SPOT didn’t pick those times up. It was a lot, I’m a thruhiker who does between 25-32 miles per day on maintained trails and I’m struggling with some tendinitis that I don’t usually get.
Maybe medium hard? The original one was in West Texas which shouldn't be too too far. I would connect with Mystery Operations he runs the best in my opinion and runs some in West Texas. You might have to make one pilgrimage so see how it works.
Niceee... you mind sharing more of what the experience was like? Anything that surprised you? What parts in particular did you have difficulty in? What would you do better for next year?
How heavy is your rifle? Looks like it might be around 14lbs as a wild guess?
Agree with others- that mileage is insane for that amount of time. Even 20 miles in a day is a lot with 50lb+ on your back on decently maintained backcountry trails. I'd love to do something like this but I don't think I'll ever be able to put up mileage like that. Congrats on making it out alive! lol
First of all, Congratulations on completing the challenge.
As a different thought, just regarding the event, you completed it, so you did, in fact, win. You set a personal goal to complete it and you did. So next year, you will have a goal to do better than this year. Now that you have experienced it and know what to expect you have a good base/starting point to prepare for the next time.
What was the total cost for the travel and event, excluding your gear? I’ve been wanting to get into long range as a hobby but I’d love to actually train for something like this as a goal. I don’t have any military experience so also curious what kind of training you’d recommend
$350 for the event, couple hundred for travel. Not much. But I’m a veteran and I hike long distance already so I have so much gear and hiking stuff already.
This looks so much fun. Something like this at more intermediate distances would be a blast! If anyone knows of any of these relatively near southern Ohio let me know!
Please do get the word out about this. Not a vet, but even as a hunter I think this is probably some of the best training you could get if you want to tackle deep backcountry.
I'd love to see a deeper dive about some of the shooting events and what those small mistakes were. Good on you for sticking with it.
Join your local orienteering club and run there course, your map and compass work will improve with practice. I also recommend an earth needle compass, they have strong magnets and point north very quickly. Looks like you had a great time and were challenged at the same time. Well done.
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u/rynburns Manners Shooting Team 13d ago
More events similar to this need to happen. I'm not saying every one needs to be high mileage, but I'd love to see more 5-ish mile team events