I did some interviews at SMM3G last week with other competitors.

3 Gun History

Eric and Kurt Miller have been shooting 3 Gun for 20 years, including the original SOF matches that started it all. In this interview we discuss how the sport has evolved over time. Unfortunately I was too young at the time to have competed in SOF 3 Gun, and I feel like I missed out.

I do wonder how popular a match where all the stages were semi-surprise format would be today? The few events I have been to that have had blind stages I scored disproportionately higher on those stages than I did on others at the same match. I agree with them that the surprise stage format really levels the playing field.

Shotgun Reloading

We can argue about the real world practicality of shotguns and these techniques, but for the purposes of the game it is a large part of it and necessary to be competitive in most divisions.

Kurt Miller is one of the elder statesmen of 3-Gun. In this video we discuss how 3-Gun reloading techniques have evolved and why he reloads the way he does.

Jay Carillo is relatively new to the 3 Gun world, but he has a passion for it and has moved up the ranks fairly quickly. He explains how he loads 4 shells at a time in this interview:

Notice they both agree that the load 2 or load 4 system is easier for novices to master in less time. Either way if you’re using a tube fed it would make sense to have both the shell caddies and load 2 or 4 systems available depending on the match. At a match like SMM3G there are few liabilities for the newer systems. At a match like Hard as Hell crawling through tunnels, well the floor of the tunnel was littered with broken shell carriers.