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Shooting USA - USPSA Handgun Nationals - Les Baer Accuracy
 It’s Production, Limited, and Revolver Titles on the line at the 2012 Handgun Nationals outside Las Vegas. It’s a multi-day match with widely different challenges for shooters using high capacity magazines, 10 round magazines, and 6 shot cylinders. Then the inside story of Les Baer Custom and the remarkable accuracy guarantee. We’re finding out how it’s done, and how it proves up on the range.
The USPSA Handgun Nationals brings the best Limited, Revolver and Production Division shooters out to compete for national titles. The venue is the Desert Sportsman Team Ranges and the courses of fire are designed to challenge the best in the world.
 The Limited Division allows highly evolved, high capacity, semi-autos that are usually based on the 1911 design. Limited guns may not use an optic or a compensator to help control recoil. Most often, Limited guns are chambered in .40 S&W.
Revolver Division competitors are limited to 6 rounds, most often in full moon clips of .45 ACP.
Production Division shooters, with off-the-shelf factory guns, compete with a lower power factor. 9mm is the preferred caliber and magazine capacity is limited to ten rounds. It’s the Production Division Pro Shooters who are the closest to the NASCAR tradition – “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday.” The pressure is on to score a national title for the manufacturer in the biggest event of the USPSA competition year.
 USPSA President Phil Strader says it’s a challenge for stage designers: ”Mixing Limited, Production and Revolver does present certain stage challenges. It forces the stage designers and the guys on the ground building the stages to ensure that a revolver shooter is not going to be completely frustrated with six rounds whereas the limited guys can hold 22 or 23 rounds in their gun depending on what kind of gun they are shooting.”
John Scoutten and Mike Irvine call the stage-by-stage action, wirh analysis of who brought their game to Las Vegas to take the national titles.
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Pro Tip – USAMU SGT Shane Coley on the Fundamentals
 You’ve seen him in competition. Now, SGT Coley shows you what’s behind his champion level shooting. The answer is the Fundamentals. He’ll take you through the basics in Stance, Grip, Sight Alignment and Trigger Control.
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Les Baer Custom and the Accuracy Guarantee
 Thirty years ago, Les Baer was a competitive shooter and custom gun maker, doing one 1911 at a time. Those guns were highly accurate, but they were expensive. Thirty years later, Les guns are in high demand, but they are now affordable, because Les has trained a crew of remarkably skilled gun builders, fitting 1911s and AR Rifles for high accuracy in LeClaire, Iowa.
 Les on the 1911 guarantee, ” We can guarantee an inch and a half at 50 yards with match grade ammunition. And what that entails is all the extra hours involved in the slide to frame fit, the barrel fit, the bushing fit. Everything comes into play. The slide stop fits the way it locks up on the barrel. So there is no room for error what so ever.”
And the Les Baer Custom Rifle Guarantee is even tighter, on half inch 5 shot groups at 100 yards with match grade ammo. We’re testing that guarantee at the range.
Then an update on Les’ car collection, his restored muscle cars are his retirement investments, but now he’s got a new one he can drive, a 1970 Hemi Cuda, licensed as an “Antique”.
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Hunting Tip – Wade Bourne on Ranging Distance to that Turkey
 The goal of every turkey hunter every time is to make a good clean kill every time he takes a shot. One shot, one gobbler on the ground. To do this you need to know two things. One, the capability of your shotgun, what your effective range is. How far you can shoot it, with a pattern dense enough to hit that bird cleanly every time, and the second thing you need to know is distance. How far the turkey is, is he inside your effective range?
 So I’m setup on the back of my farm. I’ve got an old barn I use as a backstop. I want to demonstrate what I do. I take my shotgun, with the load I’m going to hunt with. I’m going to put my test pattern up on that barn and shoot it at 40 yards and check for pellet saturation. To see if my pattern is dense enough at that range to take that bird cleanly every time.
The main thing is to learn how far you can shoot and still be effective with every shot, to have a dense enough pattern at that range to kill that bird cleanly.
 The second thing is to be able to judge the distance that the turkey is from me. Two ways you can do this. Number one, in the off-season, I have a Bushnell range finder here it’s a Sportsman 600 and I’ll practice with it. I get out in the backyard and I’ll say that tree looks like it’s 36 yards. Well, it’s 39. Pretty close. I will just practice taking ranges, taking distances, to hone my skills at being able to judge distance.
Then when I’m actually turkey hunting I sit in the woods, and I’m calling a gobbler, if I can get away with it you know he’s still far enough away from me to get away with a little movement. I’ll actually take my range finder out, I keep it in my vest, and I will range trees. That tree 36 yards. That tree is 43 yards. That tree is 37 yards and these are my markers. And I know if a gobbler walks inside that 43 yard tree he’s inside my effective range.
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