I've been called that a lot within the past couple of days; along with: "Sniper", "Rambo", and "Hero"; with probably some other variations out there some where. There's a pretty simple reason for this, and I'm sure you've already figured it out by now, but I'll just give you the facts first and let you decide how you feel about things.

Day Shooting Qualification: 37/40

Shooting from three different positions: 20 shots from the "Prone Supported", 10 from the "Prone Unsupported", and another 10 from the "Kneeling". This was supposed to be done on a range with Pop-up Targets, but due to Technical Difficulties we had to go to another range and shoot at a paper target. This target would be placed 25 meters away from us, but the individual black silhouettes on the target would represent differing ranges: 300 meters (1); 250 meters (1); 200 meters (3); 150 meters (2); 100 meters (2); and 50 meters (1). Shooting from the Prone Supported, we were supposed to put two shots in each silhouette, and one shot each from the other two positions. If it was touching the black, then it counted as a point. The minimum to qualify was 26. Expert on paper was 38, and 35 for pop-up, even though I hear the paper was actually harder than the pop-up.

NBC Qualification: 20/20

Whatever NBC (if that's even correct) stands for, it was basically shooting at two 50 meter pop-up targets (alternating) while kneeling and wearing your gas mask. Minimum to qualify was 11.

Night Qualification: 30/30

I don't really like to count this one, because even though it says night, Ft. Dix considers "Night" as a specific time (6:30 p.m.) So even though I wanted to wait until actual darkness to try this out, I was unfortunate to go on the second night, and there wasn't enough people needing to qualify to wait until Night actually fell. Shooting from the two different Prone positions, we fired ten rounds each at the same 50 meter pop-up target. The only cool thing about this shooting was that we had "tracers" which are certain bullets that actually burn as they are fired, and cause a bright red light to travel hundreds of meters into the air and into the woods beyond. Pretty wicked, especially at night.

(If we had shot at night, which some did the first day, we would be shooting at a target with very limited-no visibility and our only way of seeing the target was a dim blinking strobe on the target in front of us. Very few people qualified with the minimum of 7 shots we needed once darkness fell, so they shut us down and that's why I came back the next day. I believe this would've been offset if the moon was actually out so we could at least see our sights, but that never happened.)

So there you have it. We still have shooting to do, but I don't think any of them contribute towards qualification purposes. I turned out to be a pretty good shot, but I blame it on my 4 attempts at trying to "Zero" my weapon. (Zeroing is the process of getting your two individual sights aligned by adjusting the knobs on your weapon. This is specific to each shooter, and if it wasn't correct then you would aim at one place, and your gun would shoot at another.)

It took me 4 attempts because I was using the "Limited Visibility" sight, which is a larger aperture and supposed to be used with...well...you guessed it: Limited Visibility.

So I had plenty of practice with my gun beforehand...or at least enough practice for me. BTW, all those qualifications above was done on the first try...I needed no second attempts.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.