If you are a keen shooter who likes a bit of fun, the annual Zombies in the Heartland 3-Gun Shooting Competition is hard to beat.
Presented by Hornady at the Heartland Public Shooting Park in Grand Island, Nebraska, the 2019 event attracted 300 eager participants. They sure had a blast when tackling a series of reactive targets with a pistol, rifle and shotgun.
One of the three Hornady sponsored shooters who enjoyed the day was Jerry Miculek from Princeton, Louisiana. He holds six world records and is known as one of the fastest shooters in the world.
“It’s kind of a laid back competition for me,” explained Miculek, who finished second overall and high senior. “I came for the fun of it more than the competition, but I’m a competitor at heart so I wanted to compete well. The targets were generous and close. It’s just fun.”
The course features targets and props based off shows like ‘The Walking Dead’. In its eighth year, this popular match featured 10 competitive stages and five side-match stages. Shooters found new targets developed specifically for the match, with most of them breaking, falling over or moving.
New for 2019 was the Pistol Caliber Carbine (PCC) Division, which featured AR-15 style firearms chambered in pistol calibers including 9mm, 40 S&W and 45 ACP. To support this growing segment of action shooting sports, Hornady offered enthusiasts a chance to hone their zombie-hunting prowess in this new, two-gun division, where competitors utilized their PCC in place of handgun and rifle.
Match director Jeremy Millard has strived to make the fun shooting event bigger and better every year, with volunteers spending around 4,000 hours putting everything together for the 2019 event.
“You get people that like to shoot guns, and you get people that like zombies and you marry the two things together, and people will show up. The idea just bloomed from that,” Millard explained. “We got a great staff, and everything just flowed really smoothly.”
The overall winner was Jon Weidell, who finished with 909.9632 points, with Miculek runner up on 859.0072 and Joe Farewell third on 845.8370.
The other Hornady sponsored shooters taking part were and Sean Dexter, who was 74th, and Corinne Mosher. She was 39th overall and second lady. She was also placed 24th out of 125 shooters in Tactical Division. “The guns ran flawlessly and the weather and company were amazing,” said Corinne.