Moonshine Brutality 2025
27 May 2025 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dime_novel_hero
I first came across Brutality matches through a YouTube video from Forgotten Weapons. Finnish Brutality was entertaining and interesting but not something I could ever do. Watching more of the GunTube space, I learned that InRangeTV was doing Brutality here in the states. Still, it was way above my level. But then, Karl introduced the Dead Eye division and I started looking at the whole thing seriously. Dead Eye was using the guns that I already had for Cowboy Action Shooting and, in so doing, also brought the ranges and challenges down. It went from a hard no for me to a maybe. Last fall, I attended Moonshine Brutality as a spectator and got to see exactly how it played out and decided, yes, this was something I could do. I might not be able to do it well, certainly wouldn’t be competitive, but it was something I could accomplish (with some preparation so that I didn’t die).
But it was the people that really grabbed my interest.
Cowboy Action Shooting, and American gun culture in general, is dominated by conservatism. And not just right leaning but more than its fair share of all the toxicity that the man-o-sphere has to offer. Literally. Studies have shown that gun ownership is actually represented almost evenly across the political spectrum. There are roughly equal numbers of liberal, moderate, and conservative gun owners, but the right wing has more of the guns per capita and has always dominated the public space. In the Single Action Shooting Society, a recent vote banning trans women from women categories (even though I can pretty much guarantee that there are exactly zero trans women in CAS) established that over 90% of the members are in that right wing.
And even for my having shot with them for a decade, they are not my people.
At Brutality last fall, I found the culture to be the polar opposite. Blue hair, rainbows, pronoun patches, cosplay, comradery, support, encouragement, community, and joy. It was refreshing and downright uplifting. So, as soon as the match registration opened for 2025, I was smashing that button.
In the intervening months, I had been practicing, though not as much cardio as I should have liked because I have an office job and a long commute so, at the end of the day, running around with a rifle is not a thing I want to do. And weekends are filled with all the things that must be done for a household for which there isn’t enough time for during the week. Nevertheless, I did get my rifle better sighted in, practiced my musketry and reloads, and felt that I wouldn’t completely embarrass myself.
A week before the event and I went out to the garage to collect up my camping gear only to discover it was all mostly ruined. Unused for too many years in storage it had gotten mildewed. The sleeping bag liner was all cotton and salvageable with a soak in hydrogen peroxide and a good washing, the neoprene covers on the Jet Boil and pot weren’t too bad, the freeze dried food was only half way through its shelf life, but two tents, two back packs, a sleeping pad, and a sleeping bag were a total loss.
I would have to settle for buying a new sleeping pad, borrowing a sleeping bag, and sleeping in my car.
Three hours drive from Pittsburgh to way back in the middle of no cell reception.
Last week from A Better Way 2A, I ordered a replica of the flag of Sherman’s 23rd Corps, you know, they guys who made Georgia howl. It immediately was hung on my porch. The Union forever, hurrah boys, hurrah! The next day I received a second flag, having apparently double clicked on my phone and ordered two. Arriving on site, I saw that Better Way 2A had a snack station set up so I went down and talked to them about returning their second flag for a refund. They were ready to give me a refund AND let me keep the flag to give to someone else. Very generous, but I insisted on returning it to them anyway. If they want to give it away, that’s on them, but I would rather they have the money of them doing a capitalism.
Setting up my “camp” consisted of a folding chair, a folding table, and heating up water in my Jet Boil to rehydrate some Teriyaki Chicken and Rice.
Got a chance for some socializing. Talked some politics. Listened to people geeking out on guns and gear, far nerdier than I am. Watched some of the final stages of Woodland Brutality.
As I thought about turning in for the night, I realized that I had forgotten about Woodland After Dark, the last stages of Woodland Brutality that had been going on all weekend. This is where the shooters pull out their flashlights and/or night vision gear and shoot at targets in the dark.
Till 1:00 in the morning.
I had a refreshing three or four hours of sleep.
There was getting breakfast, getting dressed, preparing my range bag (a vintage doctors case to carry tools and ammo), and pulling the jumper battery out to power the curling iron for my mustache. A neighbor said that was surprisingly well together for it being so early in the morning after sleeping in the back of the car.
There was the drive all the way up the hill for the welcome and safety briefing and then the drive all the way back down to where I started for the first stage.
Team 407 started at stage 7 (because that’s how numbers work), and that stage was called CASEVAC. It began on a swinging platform shooting at two targets (Dead Eye gets to shoot at two targets, modern guns have 4 targets). Then extricate from the platform and close the distance to a barricade. Shoot around and over the barricade, then run to another barricade and do the same. Then drag a body (the casualty evacuation for which the stage is named) back to the platform and finish on the swinging platform.
The Range Officer was the only other person shooting Dead Eye so it was agreed upon that he and I would shoot first and the rest of the modern gun shooters would shoot. I wouldn’t get a chance to see a bunch of other shooters run the stage to establish it in my head before I had to do it but, from my experience spectating last fall, witnessing one run would be enough.
Cardio.
Damn, but I need to do a hell of a lot more cardio to prepare for these things (and to just be more healthy in general). Dragging the body is what really did me in. Well, I wasn’t exactly done in as I was able to compose myself to get back on the platform for the finish, but that was an effort and it took a while for my breathing and heart rate to come back down.
Stage 8 was a bonus stage. It didn’t count for anything except that participation gets you entered in a drawing for a ticket to an upcoming Brutality event. Otherwise, it was completely optional, and most of the squad decided to opt out. I decided to go for the full experience and give it a go. Plus, winning a ticket for next year would be nice.
The Kasarda Drill is classic brutality. Shoot prone. Throw a heavy kettle bell (35 pounds, I think). Move up to where it lands. Shoot prone again. Repeat as often as you can in four minutes or reach the last marker.
My first throw was crap, and another shooter told me as much after the stage. Throwing from the side the way that I did is a good way to throw out my shoulder or tear my rotator cuff. I realized that sort of thing immediately on having done what I did and adapted on the next throw to the between-the-legs technique which is apparently the standard.
I was not as winded as with the first stage. The exertion was more punctuated, less sustained than hauling a body.
My recorded score was DNF. Did not finish. I’m not sure that’s how the scoring goes, though. I was under the impression that for each barrier passed, there would be a time bonus. Even if I didn’t get to the end, I should have some sort of score, right? Or do you only get anything at all by getting to the last marker before par? Did everyone reach the end except me?
Well, it didn’t count for anything. No harm no foul. I never expected to be competitive in ANY of the stages, anyway. This was for the experience.
After that, it was drive back up to the top of the hill for Stage 1 - Defend the High Ground. This was a varied but straightforward setup, I thought. Start prone, shoot a near target. Get up and move and shoot a pair of 100 yard targets. Move and hit a medium distance target. Move again and haul a kettle bell up a hill with a rope. Hit a pair of targets (one a popup that you need to hit in the head and then in the chest, or vice versa). Move and hit that last pair again.
I figured if I had any issues at all it would be with the most distant targets. One was a standard man-sized target but the second was smaller.
I ran out of time at the very end because of that 100 yard target that I was sure would be the thing to give me problems. It wasn’t that much smaller than the torso, I thought, but I still couldn’t dial it in after 18 rounds. Spending all that time meant that I didn’t have enough time to finish before par. Should have just skipped it and taken the penalty when the option was offered instead of wasting a few more rounds but, then again, any one of them could have hit and saved me the penalty.
For the future, I should do the math and figure out how much time I take to miss a target at 100 yards and compare it to the penalty for skipping a target to figure out how many misses I can swallow before I should move on.
Right next door to that was Stage 2 - Enemy Base Infiltration. This had a lot of stuff, a lot of shooting, but I though it was fairly straight forward. Start by crawling through a tube then to the first bay. Hit a Swinging-Y and hit one of its plates. Hit a knockdown. Hit the second Y on the swinger. Another knockdown. Hit a plate on a Texas Star. Knockdown. Star. Knockdown. Etc. There was a move to the second bay, more shooting, then a move to a third bay and more shooting but, as you will see, none of that matters.
What was it with the knockdowns? The Swinging-Y and Star I expected to be difficult because of the small plates, but I emptied my gun several times missing those knockdowns. They were a little narrower than a standard torso target but they weren’t that narrow and I though I had resolved most of my windage problem weeks before by taking a hammer to my rear dovetail sight.
I was 58th out of 60 on this stage so there were two others who actually did worse than I did but one of them Match DQd and I know the other had mechanical issues so I really sucked badly for no reason I can think of.
Pittsburgh is Americas largest small town. You can travel all over the country, all over the world, and somehow run into someone else from Pittsburgh more often that you think you should. It was about this time that I realized that half of the other shooters in the squad were from Pittsburgh as well. Two of them from my neighborhood. One lived only a few blocks away. They already knew each other and squadded together. I’m guessing that the match organizers saw that I was from Pittsburgh as well and threw me on their squad.
Stage 3 - Drone Defense was the trench. The trench is the coolest of the setups on site and, thankfully, it hadn’t been raining and so was not filled with mud. It’s also pretty straightforward, I think. Shotgun a couple of targets, then start hitting targets with your own gun. The first is a man sized plate down the hill but the rest at that first station more knockdown plates, smaller at first, but larger a little later on. Then, run to the next station where there are two spinners. Modern gun shooters need to spin both spinners but Dead Eye only needed to hit each plate twice. The next station, however, is a plate that everyone needs to spin. Finally, run to another station and score a hit on another man sized target.
The first targets (after the shotgun plates) were pretty small but not too far off so I figured I could get those without too much trouble. Same with the non-spin spinners. The spinner would be the challenge, though. To be honest, I don’t think I remember ever shooting a spinner before. I watched a lot of runs before mine and understood how it should be done, and I was pretty confidant that the heavy 45 bullets I was throwing could spin pretty quickly, IF I could hit the plates. If I emptied my gun before pushing it over, the time it took me to reload and try again would have set me back to square one though.
That was the pressure point. Do or die.
On a previous run, a shooter using a shotgun had hit the third spinner pretty hard. When it was re-set, it was unstable so that my single shot knocked it over. That “neutralization” bonused me 10 or 15 seconds at a minimum, and that’s assuming I could have hit well enough to spin the thing at all. That gift put me at the bottom of the middle third of the rankings for the stage instead of pretty much at the bottom where I had otherwise been all day.
Then it was driving all the way back to the bottom of the hill for Stage 4 – Pathfinder.
I looked at this one and thought it would be easy, for a given value. It was shoot at a distance. Duck under a wire and move up. Shoot. Under a wire. Shoot. Each time getting closer and closer to the target. Easier and easier.
Score : 86.12 seconds and my best run. I loved this run because the design made it progressively easier, boosting confidence. I missed a few at the beginning because of the range but nailed the rest.
Overall, I was 21st of 60 and 4th of 7 in the Dead Eye division. I honestly don’t understand how I was able to do so well compared to everyone else. If I thought it was relatively easy, it should have been even easier for other more experience shooters. I didn’t see anyone in my squad having issues.
Next, was to the field for Stage 5 – Hold the Line. This had torso targets at 25, 50, 75, and 100 yards (or there abouts), five shooting positions. Pretty straightforward.
Ran out of time on the last 100 yard target. I can’t imagine the Brutality categories from earlier in the weekend that had that target out at 400 yards. I’m not sure I could even identify the target out that far, let alone hit it.
The last bay for the day, Stage 6 – Panic at the Chow Hall, has the shooter starting seated at a picnic bench. He shoots two targets. One at about 25 yards and another at 100 yards. He runs and picks up a tire, brings it back to the table, and shoots the two targets again. Take the tire to the other side, pick up an ammo can. Back to the table to shoot. Ammo can, back with another tire. Lather. Rinse Repeat. Three tires and three ammo cans need to switch sides. Par time four minutes.
Did you hear the excitement at the end? 239.94 seconds. I beat the par time clock by six-hundredths of a second. Let me assure you, it was even better from my side. I pulled the trigger. Bang. Heard the beep of the par timer. And then heard the ding of 200 grains of lead hitting the steel plate at 100 yards. Distinct. Singular. Epic.
That moment. . . that feeling. . . was the absolute high point cap on a fantastic day. I could not have asked for a finer finish.
Members of squad 407, Brutality Staff, and esteemed colleagues, I want to thank you all for making this shoot an exceptional experience.
My original plan was to stay the night and drive home in the morning but the idea of sleeping poorly and uncomfortably in my car and then driving home when my own, comfy bed was just three hours away convinced me to leave immediately after the last stage. It seems that a lot of other participants were thinking the same as the place was looking pretty empty as I was leaving.
Writing this the next day, that was the right decision. I hurt so much. Sitting in a car for three hours after all that activity, so many of my muscles cramped up. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, they cramped up even more for the following morning. I hobbled around all day like an old man.
Well, technically middle-aged but entitled to one of those senior discounts.
I tell myself that, even for all that, it’s probably much less painful than if I tried to sleep in my car another night.
Numbers wise, my overall ranking for the day was 55th out of 60 shooters, but there is such a broad range of skill sets represented, I think there is no valuable information to be gained from this. Even saying I was 6th out of 7 in Dead Eye doesn’t say much to me.
Here are the things that do speak to me in my performance compared to others:
Overall, almost a third of competitors had penalties assessed. In Dead Eye, it was a little over 40%. I had zero penalties.
My score was better or at least comparable to others shooters with a lot more experience in Brutality than I had. My good ranking in Stage 3 was entirely luck when the spinner fell over.
My ranking in Stage 4 was inexplicable.
At 100 yards, it’s even odds as to whether I will hit or not. 50/50. Except for that Stage 1 target that I could not hit to save my life. The one right beside it was a full man-sized torso and that was to expectations but the second was a little bit smaller and what I think happened was that, for the full torsos at that range, my aim point was the bottom edge. But, the other target was just a little bit smaller, putting my aim point in some estimated place below the target. Without an actual point to focus on, my coin toss chances dropped precipitously.
Next time, Gadget. Next time.
And there will definitely be a next time. I’ve got the bug and will be doing what I can do do more of this. As I have already decided that the Single Action Shooting Society will never get another dime from me, I can put that dues money somewhere else. Maybe move to a different local shooting club that has more action shooting facilities. I need to get electrical power to my garage so I can set up my reloader and bring down my ammo costs. Plus, there are those other shooters in my neighborhood. Shooting sports can be community building. Communities drive engagement. Engagement promotes improvement. Improvement means I’m not missing the target half the time at 100 yards.
And a tent. I will have a tent.
