I also shot the OK match (Kurts86's teammate) this past weekend and generally had many of the same observations. You might have seen me fall flat on my face and get a stage DQ, which while I was mad about it happening, it is what it is and we were there to learn and not win prizes. That said, going back and re-reading the rules I'm not sure I agree that it was worthy of anything but being told to restart the stage (we didn't even make it to the sighting pin). The rifle was attached to my pack, I fell face first and rolled slightly to the right to keep it pointed downrange and not towards anyone, no mag inserted, bolt back, safety on, chamber flag inserted, but whatever.
My biggest observations are that the match director seem to really enjoy hiding targets and combined with the first day's flat, overcast lighting conditions it made for a hell of a challenge that often resulted in running out of time or skipping targets. Our actual shooting wasn't really an issue, even with my ~9.8lb entire rifle setup that got put on a scale just as a formality.
I tend to think I/we have above average shooting and glassing abilities but the combination of the ticking clock, stationary critters and different type of pressure vs hunting was very quickly a humbling set of constraints. Show me an otter that sits still longer than 15 seconds or a sheep that doesn't give a tail or ear flick for 5.5 straight minutes.
Being able to very quickly build a shooting position in rocky and brushy terrain is also something that is hard to practice if you don't live somewhere that has ample public land or you have a suitable private range. Living in Chicagoland my choices are very limited for that and from a shooting perspective that was my biggest downfall and area for improvement. These shortcomings made themselves apparent in the stages with vital zone hits required (I'm looking at you, Tom Turkey) or where there were 4 positions and I didn't take the time to get into a good position, use whatever combination of bipod, bag, tripods were best and broke off a shot without really settling in. They were usually hit the steel, often just missing the vital plate by a very small margin.
As reflected on already, we made the mistake of not understanding the gamer aspect of this format and weren't strategic with our time usage until a few stages in when we better understood the flow of a team stage approach even despite watching a handful of YouTube videos of teams previously.
Besides tripping and falling, the only other major mistakes I made were making a dyslexic wind call and holding left instead of right or vice versa once and then getting the range and elevation correction mixed up in my head - range was like 440 yards and elevation correction was 2.5 mils but i dialed 4.5 mils likely getting the 4 from the range in my head.
As far as stage/match flow, I agree the brief could have been day 1 and you could weigh and get PF at stages. Just place a Xero randomly on 3 stages (or 3 Xeros on one stage with 4 positions) and get the average of the 3. It'd be a tiny bit of math and data recording vs 3 shots in a row but I think it'd still be more efficient (particularly for those traveling from out of the area) than having to do it the day before.
I'll definitely shoot another NRL hunter match soon if I can swing it, probably in skills, though TBD I guess.
