Hopefully, this is really the last installment in the location and view discussion. We already defined terms and discussed locations and views on shorter stages and longer stages, but there was one finer point I missed which is the “location or view” part of the rule.
Let’s revisit the relevant sentence from the definitions of short, medium, and long courses (see 1.2.1): Course design and construction must not require more than 8 scoring hits from any single location or view, nor allow a competitor to shoot all targets in the course of fire from any single location or view.
Look at the stage below. It has 8 USPSA targets where the best 2 hits on each score. There is only one location where the targets can be seen from. The wall that runs uprange-downrange creates 2 views, but the rules says no more than 8 shots from a single location OR view. This stage requires 16 shots from a single location so it violates the rule. This stage also allows competitors to engage all the targets from a single location, which is not allowed.
Honestly, competitors are going to be bored with the above stage. The whole point of practical shooting is to move around as we engage targets. If we wanted to stand and shoot, we could all go to the public gun range. Remember that this restriction to stage design is to allow low capacity divisions to have time to reload between locations. I know low capacity division competitors are becoming rare, but I think this stage design rule is what keeps our stages interesting and exciting to shoot. Can we fix this stage to make it legal? Yes!
This revised stage has the same number of targets, but now is legal because vision barriers were used to create 2 separate locations. On the left, one view with 4 targets. On the right, 2 views with 2 targets in each view. The barrel stack is there to force competitors to go to the corner to engage one of the targets on the back array. Isn’t this stage more interesting to shoot? And having multiple views from one location is allowed as long as there are not more than 8 required shots. If there are more than 8 shots, then one or more of the targets need to also be visible from another location on the stage. Having targets available form multiple locations is an easy way to allow for freestyle options on how to shoot the stage.
These stages were very simplified for teaching. But next time you are at a match, take a look at the stages in regards to locations and views. And if you want to appreciate locations or views more, use your Carry Optics or Limited Optics gear to shoot in Limited-10 (you will need more mags) and see how shooting a low cap division changes your perspective on stage design.