Brutality Match
A multigun test of toughness
There are not many places you can test your abilities with a firearm against the stress of time pressure, physical duress and fatigue, and the consequences of failure. But Custer Brutality does!
I have swam, ran, heaved kettle bells, climbed over Conex boxes, crawled through mud filled trenches and under electrified fence, carried trees on the clock with the whole squad (and a lot more) at these matches. Getting dirty, bloody, and bone tired when you drag yourself into work on Monday is the baseline, but once you get hooked on the adrenaline and adventure you’ll come back for more. With 5 minute par times for completion of each course of fire videos were simply impractical to post, but what follows is an account of the match, supported by pictures where possible, and my thoughts on what it means to me to compete in this type of challenge.
The first stage entailed shooting your rifle to hit each of 4 targets at 50 yards, then putting the rifle in the dump box and wriggling through 4 pieces of drainage pipe that were partially recessed into the ground while pushing a medicine ball in front of you. (The hills on both sides of the tubes created the mechanics for this wonderful phenomenon where, if you didn’t shove the medicine ball just right, it would roll back down in hit you in the face.) At the end you had to grab your pistol from another dump box and swing a hostage taker steel target twice. Then you and the medicine ball returned to the rifle through the pipes for 4 more hits, then one more trip with the medicine ball through the pipes to the pistol to swing the steel a second time. You then carried the medicine ball back to the rifle, thankfully on foot this time, to fire the rifle for 4 hits a third time and end the stage. So you shot the rifle at 50 yard poppers 3 times, crawled through the tubes with the medicine ball 3 times, and shot the hostage take target with your pistol twice.
Stage 2 had a pattern similar to the first stage, however with a terrible new contraption. On the start signal, the shooter shoots 12” plates at 100 yards to earn 1 hit on the three plates. Then the shooter tows a tire with a plywood bottom to make it a sled which has been filled with cinder blocks downrange past a line approximately 30 yards down, then retrieves their pistol and flips all 6 of the plates on a tree. After towing the sled back uprange, 3 hits with the rifle again, tow it downrange again to shoot pistol, and once again back uprange to reset the stage and shoot the rifle for 3 hits the 3rd and last time. A couple people on my squad timed out (the 5 minute par time for all stages) on this one, and I think in some cases it was poor mechanics. Many people walked backwards towing the sled which was unnatural, burned out the quads, and didn’t effectively recruit the hamstrings.
Stage 3 was simple, shoot a steel plate with your rifle, then throw a 30 lb sand bag over the wall, crawl under the wall, retrieve your pistol and swing both plates of a double hostage taker target. Then repeat, throwing the sandbag over and crawling under the wall each time you switch weapons, and shooting each weapon 5 times.
The 4th stage was a 270 degree bay, so pictures were impossible. But it entailed a blanket rule that only 1 hand could touch your pistol or rifle at a time, and you had to drag a duffle bag containing 50 lbs of sand with you through a dark house with ports where you shot steel plates at 50 yards. The shooter then raced across to the right side of the bay and into the shoot house where they engaged steel targets from the left side of the house with their rifle before switching to their pistol to come back along the right side of the house while engaging numerous plates from the ports, all with the floppy duffle bag (with all 50 lbs of sand in on side) with you at all times. The barricades within the shoot house forced the shooter to negotiate a winding narrow path with their weapon aimed safely, and the bag swinging obnoxiously and catching your shins.
THIS IS BRUTALITY
The final stage was equally hard to photograph, but was impactful in a different way.
On paper this was the least brutal stage of the match, from 50 yards you shot a Know Your Limits (KYL) target in any order you want, but switching between prone and standing between each shot, then sprinting about 100 meters to a different bay to do some one handed shooting with your pistol. I started standing, and easily hit the largest plate, went prone and hit the smallest plate, standing again I hit the second largest plate and the hits were coming quick. This had all the makings of a good stage. Then it was as if the cumulative weight of all the days exertion overwhelmed me. The trigger broke on sight pictures that would clearly not produce a hit, fine motor control began to require extreme concentration. As I switched position over and over after 6 misses in a row on a target I know I am capable of hitting I cursed myself and only became more infuriated as my body seemed to refuse to cooperate with the fundamentals of shooting. Finally I forced myself to calm down and execute, and the last shots all rang steel. I was able to complete the stage. I was not alone. Everyone on my squad felt they underperformed on that final stage, and statements beginning with “I can’t believe I couldn’t” were widely used.
It’s easy to focus on the mud, heavy items, physical exertion, and sheer insanity of your tasks in a match like this. However while Brutality is played with burning lungs, aching shoulders and quads on fire it is in fact the matter in between your ears that is really the greatest stage prop ever contrived.
When I completed each crawl through the tunnels or drag of the tire it was a mental challenge to force my breathing and heartbeat down from their screaming pace and make those hits in the 5-10 seconds I could muster before physiology took over and I went back to gasping for air. When on the last stage of the day the weight of mental and physical fatigue overcame me, it was again a mental victory to face that failure and prove myself tough enough to get through the task. And this is really what brings me back. The satisfaction of having met the challenge and been tough enough mentally and physically to prevail, and the near addictive power of that tiny seed of self doubt that asks, almost as soon as you finish, “but could you do it again?”.