Gary Reeder
There used to be a combat club that ran matche
Sunday, March 22, 2026, 13:31

similar to what I mentioned except better and more professional than mine. They would write it up in Soldier Of Fortune magazine and in one or two of the other magazines of the day. I had 15 acres of dense Tennessee woods and set up the range on that. We had matches just about every weekend. We made the course hard but fun. Briefly here is some of what we did...
The range started at the base of a hill and we had to run up this hill before encountering a target. So we were out of breath before we got to the first target. There were 25 bad guy targets and 15 good guy targets. Our targets were the lifesize color pics of good guys and bad guys. There was a spotter behind the shooter for safety's sake. The course ran thru the woods on a path with targets on both sides of the path.We would hide the targets in the brush to make it a bit harder Actually the morning of the shoot Kase and a young friend of his would take a batch of targets that were paper targets stapled on heavy cardboard and stash them on both sides of the trail we ran on. There were some close at maybe 15 feet and some at 20 yards among the brush of the range. The target at 20 yards was a pic of a sniper taking a shot over a sandbag so any hit counted for that one. For the other bag guy targets t was 3 rounds per target, 2 in the chest area and one head shot. Some of the guys (and a lot of the shooters were law enforcement)ran the course with Colt Gvt model 45s. The course was run and not walked thru it. Some of the targets were obviously good guys like the picture of an old lady carrying a bag of groceries. So the shooter had to think before pulling the trigger. He might encounter the same target 3 or 4 targets down the course. This time the target was the same old lady but this time she had an Uzi or Mac 10 under the bag, a bag guy. The Mac 10s were very popular in those days.
Most of the targets were easy to tell good from bad but not so easy when you are running and trying to reload at the same time. One of the targets was of a young boy holding his new BB gun. He was sitting in front of a Christmas tree pointing his new BB gun at the shooter.. So that one fooled a lot of the shooters. They all said a BB gun is a gun as an excuse.

I had a friend that owned a record and music store in Clarkeville and he got a lot of standing life size cardboard promotional figures to promote a new movie or album and would give them to me when he was finished with them. One was a life size nude black lady standing in front of a fireplace. It was promoting the new Foxy Brown movie that had just come out. We slipped the standing nude black lady in among the other targets and invariably I think every shooter shot this target. Never figured out whether the shooter thought she was a good or bad target.
I had a friend at Ft. Campbell (the radio station I worked at was across the road from the base) and he would tell me about some of the military combat courses). That is where we got the ideas for the various courses.
One of the hard parts was the tree stump shotgun shoot. It was one part of the 3 part course. The shooter had to climb up onto this tree stump that was about 5 feet tall. The safety officer would check the shooter's shotgun to make it safe for the shooter and not have a round in it. The shotgun was carried on a sling with no round chambered. The safety officer would give the shooter the OK who would grab the rope that was tied off to the limb of a big walnut tree in front of him. The shooter would grab the rope and swing over a large briar patch to another shorter stump maybe 20 feet away. The shooter had the option of taking the stump shoot or not. The shooter would not fire a round in this part of the course.
One of the frustrating parts of the shotgun course was shooting 3 balloons maybe 20 feet from him with a 12 gauge shotgun. Have you ever tried that. It is extremely hard to shoot the balloon. The shotgun charge was pushing a column of air in front of it, pushing the balloon away.
Back to the handgun part of the course. Before we started the course we would all stand around in a bunch going over the rules. I pulled out a 45 and shot into the ground. I told them they were just wounded by the bad guy and this part of the course was to be run with the off hand which was left for most. I had a set of boxing gloves for this part of the course. Have you ever tried to shoot, reload and rechamber a round with your left hand and with a boxing glove on the right hand? We could use the right hand but in a boxing glove it wasn't easy.. Some of the shooters were ladies and that posed other problems. One lady I remember carried a Colt Python. She was an officer with one of the small Sheriff departments outside Nashville. I remember her as she aced every part of all 3 courses, never whining or complaining. She had a belt that carried all her speedloaders. And with 25 targets, 3 shots per target we all carried pouches of extra magazines. There were no 15 or 18 round 45s back then, no Glocks either. We all carried government model Colts or some of the other smaller brands. I carried a 7" 45 long slide. One of the better shooters used a Colt 38 Super 1911.
These are just a few of the courses we ran just about every weekend.If was all for fun and we didn't criticize a shooter for passing up one of the courses.
After we moved the shop out here to Northern Arizona I continued with my combat course about every other month. It is still a lot of fun.