Sport shooting is an interesting world I never thought I'd end up engaged in. I was never interested in firearms, nor did I like the noise they make. It is also mostly considered a masculine activity.
How I got here, I cannot say, but one of the reasons was a good friend of mine got into it and considering the danger levels of the country I live in, I figured it was a wise thing to do. Bite the bullet, just get one for peace of mind and a way to protect my life and others.
Today I partook in a small sport shooting match. Not my club, but a club a friend of mine's a member at. It's mostly older military veterans and law enforcement if memory serves me correctly. It's quite intimidating, however I find being in such situations incredibly stimulating and one learns so much.
At one point, I ran out of ammo, because I was shooting low because I was missing smaller steel targets. The one dude besides the range officer kept telling me "you're shooting low! You're shooting low!"
I perceived this not as an insult or something to make me feel incompetent, but a helpful way to remind me to correct myself.
My friend gave me some of his old reloads and lo and behold, I get a gnarly malfunction, the round had bulged and refused to get fed into my pistol's chamber. I couldn't get the slide racked, nor bash it forward. One of the older members took my gun and helped me out. Another then loaded my magazine with his "spicy army ammo" and let me do the stage again.
This time I wasn't gonna waste ammo. I ended up moving my sights up a bit and took it slower, steadier and hit the targets with 1 round to spare (I had a 12-round mag).
That moment when my last shot dropped the final steel popper, the men cheered and clapped hands and it made me feel so accepted and happy. It was just so endearing to me how these bunch of rugged, rough around the edges men didn't treat me like a woman, but part of the squad in a way.
I had so much fun, this day will be forever close to my heart.
Side note: I was thinking about why that round bulged like that. It's a reload, so the bullet might not have been properly seated in the brass. Make a mental note of this, be aware to check reloads even from people who know what they're doing. It went into the magazine just fine because the lips do not extend up to the top of the brass. I didn't notice the round slightly bulge nor had I noticed unusual difficulty getting it into the mag, sometimes loading the last round into a mag is tough for my woman hands. Thanks, Sig... It was the 9th round fired from that mag.