Adam Riser and Adam Maxwell returned to St. George for the PCSL 2-Gun Nationals exactly one year after recording their very first podcast episodes at the same venue. Both had unfinished business from last year’s disappointing performances. Whether they got their redemption—well, that’s complicated.
Here’s the thing about coming back to a match where you had a rough time: you either get closure or you get more material for therapy. Riser and Maxwell got a little of both.
Maxwell set out to establish consistency. No low lows. Execute the stage plans. Prove he could shoot clean. Mission accomplished—he walked away feeling vindicated even if he didn’t land on the podium.
Riser? His match started with a bang. Literally one bang. Then a click. The gas key on his rifle broke on the very first shot of the entire match, turning what was supposed to be a redemption run into a survival exercise.
Riser stepped up to stage one already battling the flu he’d caught over Thanksgiving. His back was spasming from being curled up on a couch for a week. His make ready routine included popping a cough drop in the hole and spitting it out before loading his gun so he wouldn’t cough during the stage.
Stand by. Beep. Bang. Click.
The rifle that had served him since 2017—somewhere around 25,000 rounds through it—chose that exact moment to catastrophically fail. One of the bolts holding the gas key down had sheared, creating just enough of a gas leak that there wasn’t enough pressure to cycle the bolt.
They troubleshot for an hour with guys from the shop on speakerphone, swapped bolt carriers, and limped through the rest of the match. The first stage? A 32% finish, throwing away 120 points right out of the gate.
For most shooters, that kind of start would live rent-free in their head for the rest of the weekend. Riser was already so sick and beaten down that when it went bang-click, his reaction was essentially “oh, this is the match we’re having.” Sometimes being too miserable to care is its own form of mental game.
Despite the rough start, both hosts agreed: this venue is where PCSL belongs. The bays are sized right for the format. You can get out to 180 yards, which is plenty when the rules cap targets at 200 anyway. The town has good amenities. Vegas is an easy flight away. You can drive from the airport faster than you can fly in with layovers.
And the timing works. End of the year feels like a culmination. Early December in the Utah desert means temperatures hovering just above freezing in the morning, climbing into the 50s by afternoon. Cool enough that nobody’s stroking out, warm enough that Californians complaining about the cold just sounds like background noise.
The range got rearranged since the Hard As Hell days, so everything’s in different places now. Riser described it like walking into a house you grew up in but all the furniture’s been moved. Same but different. Still feels like home.
The range orientation creates a specific challenge: the sun peaks up over the back berm and creeps along the top throughout the day during fall and winter months. If you’re shooting in the second or third slot of the morning, you’re staring directly into it.
This isn’t a minor inconvenience. Riser walked up to one position during the walkthrough—no gun, just looking—and literally could not see the target. A double-stack with a no-shoot in the middle, and the sun was so barely over the berm that the target was invisible.
Red dots bloom. Scopes wash out. The problem compounds when you’re running occluded—your right eye sees the dot, your left eye sees the target, and your brain combines them. But lean hard around a solid object where your left eye can’t see the target? You’re shooting into darkness.
Maxwell committed to running occluded for the entire match after a rough experience on the first two stages. Riser went the opposite direction—dealt with the blooming and shot some targets with a big red fuzzy thing where his dot should have been.
Different optics handled it differently. Enclosed dots behave differently than open emitters. There’s no free lunch in how manufacturers address the issue. If they optimized for staring into the sun, something else would suffer.
The dust made it worse. Super arid environment, shoot the berms, kick up dust that hangs in the air and catches sunlight. Smart shooters planned their engagement order around which targets would create dust clouds that obscured other targets. Hosing something close right off the rip and then trying to shoot long range through the smoke screen you just made? Not ideal.
This was the first year with the redesigned PCSL targets. The A-zone shrunk to roughly two-thirds the size of a USPSA A-zone. The K-zone (kill zone) became the T-zone—a name change that matters for growth, because a sport with a “kill box” has a ceiling on how mainstream it can go.
The T-zone is much smaller now, and the area around it scores as a Charlie instead of Alpha. Previously, if you shot near the throat on the humanoid target, you were getting two alpha. Easy layup. Not anymore.
The result? Hit factors are way lower than what three-gun shooters are used to. Breaking a 5 hit factor on a stage almost guaranteed a stage win. Lots of mid-pack shooters were posting 2s and 3s. There are no 10 hit factor hoser stages here. Six is as hosy as it gets.
Riser shot 86% of available points and felt terrible about it. That aggressive three-gun mentality doesn’t translate directly. Maxwell deliberately dialed back his aggression to prioritize points, planning to incrementally bring the speed back up over the off-season.
You really need to understand the assignment. Spray and pray doesn’t work when every gun transition naturally slows your hit factor and the scoring zones punish slop.
The stages offered genuine options—not the paralysis-by-analysis kind where you have no idea where to start, but chess-match options where you weigh second and third-order consequences of each choice.
Riser and Maxwell had different stage plans on roughly half the stages. Not because one was clearly better, but because their strengths led them different directions. Maxwell’s left-handed, so some sequences make more sense mirrored. Riser was willing to send it harder on movement. Maxwell was nursing a back injury and hedged toward positions where he could snipe instead of sprint.
On one stage with three shooting areas, the classic “stand back and snipe or run up and fly by” decision, they watched Brian Nelson crush the run-up option for a stage win. So clearly it wasn’t a trap. Riser ran it. Maxwell stayed back. Riser’s time was faster by about four seconds. Both had similar points—a mic each on different targets. The difference was pure execution ability and willingness to move.
That’s how it should work. The fast aggressive plan should be faster if you can cash the check. The conservative plan should be viable for people who can’t or won’t. Nobody should get catastrophically punished just for choosing wrong.
Every PCSL match has some version of a pallet tunnel. Usually they’re linear—start at the back, work to the front. This one was a maze. Choose your own adventure. Right ways and wrong ways to navigate it.
Liberal amounts of camo netting. Soft cover targets where you could see the suggestion of where the target was but couldn’t call a shot on it. You start with your rifle hung on hooks on the wall (a video game reference, probably Doom), grab it, and go.
The whole thing had a snow-blind effect because everything looked the same. If you didn’t have a clear mental map, you could skip targets or show up to positions with the wrong gun. There were two ports stage right through the wall—one with two pistol targets, one with a rifle and pistol target. Easy to mix up if you lost your bearings.
Best pallet tunnel either host has ever shot. Not close.
The belt stage featured a swinging suspension bridge and falling plate targets that spell “BELT”—2-inch thick letters that are big but porous. Not much actual steel to hit. Plus Targets USA C-zone and A-zone steel that rings distinctively enough that ROs didn’t need to call hits.
A two-bay stage done correctly: shoot down with rifle, sling it, draw pistol, shoot back, exit the bay, run 15-20 yards (enough to get heart rate up but not enough to punish slower shooters), reload the slung rifle, and shoot more rifle into the next bay. Multiple spots where you’d shoot rifle, sling it, shoot pistol, dump it, and return to the rifle. Interesting back-and-forth between platforms.
A car stage where you shoot out of the passenger window, then the driver’s side, then dance around the car twice. Decisions about whether to kick the door open while shooting to make it easier on the next lap.
Stages with really tight positions where nailing the exact spot from a dead sprint set you up perfectly for the next array, but being slightly off made everything a weird lean. Good footwork paid dividends. Being able to blend positions—leaving on the last couple shots, coming in on a couple shots while settling—mattered a lot.
The match ran behind schedule all three days. Limited daylight in December means when the sun goes down, you have about 15 minutes before it’s pitch black.
Some well-intentioned staff members decided pre-loading rifles and pistols would save time. It didn’t. Putting bullets in the gun is the part that takes the least amount of time. Pre-loading adds complexity without actually saving anything. You need another body managing the pre-load process. Shooters get nervous about moving with loaded guns. Everyone’s worried about getting DQ’d.
Pre-loading shotguns makes sense because individually loading tubes and restocking caddies takes real time. Pre-loading rifles and pistols is just adding complexity that doesn’t pay off.
If you think pre-loading two-gun saves time, you’re the Gary of the Day.
This deserves its own section because arbitration is often treated as taboo, and Maxwell wants shooters to understand it’s a legitimate part of the game.
On the all-rifle stage, a close alpha-Charlie call went Charlie. Maxwell asked for an overlay. Before he got one, the target got pasted. They went back, peeled pasters off, decided the hole was a Charlie. But peeling pasters off isn’t how you evaluate scoring at a national championship—the hole is altered, grease ring removed, it’s different.
Maxwell’s actual motivation wasn’t even that one point. He had ‘mikes’ (misses) downrange and saw an opening for a reshoot based on the pre-taped target rules. Small opening, but an opening.
The range master said the score stands. Maxwell said he’d arbitrate. No drama, just professionals having a professional conversation. He prepared a statement citing three rules, emailed it at 9:15 PM, and a five-person committee deliberated for an hour and a half.
The decision came back at 10:05 PM: score stands, no reshoot, with full reasoning and rule citations. Everyone signed it. Maxwell got the paperwork the next morning.
He didn’t win. He’s fine with it. The process worked. His voice was heard. A jury of peers evaluated it fairly. It’s done.
The point isn’t that he was wronged. The point is that if you feel strongly about something, use the process. Don’t be the guy who complains about getting screwed for the next ten years but never actually filed the paperwork. Have your say, let them decide, and move on.
In practical division, Pavle Zengar took the win, with Max Leograndis at 98% (though he pulled himself from official rankings as match director). Mason Lane third, Brian Nelson fourth, and Amadeusz Szyszka fifth.
In competition division, AJ Anthony continued his reign of terror with a perfect 100%. Varick Beise second at 98%, Kyle Litzie third at 94%, Tony Mazza fourth, Alec Henderson fifth.
The Williams sisters swept high lady honors—Jalise in competition, Justine in practical.
What’s remarkable is how tight the scores were all the way down. In competition, 80% was 24th place. No massive gaps between the top shooters and the field. The temperature of the room has gone way up. Something like eight medal-holding world champions from various IPSC disciplines were competing. Nearly 400 shooters finished the match.
As for our hosts? Maxwell beat Riser by 6% in combined—but Riser still beat the spread they’d set between themselves. Small victories.
Riser finished 30th in competition division. The worst match finish of his career, in anything, ever. But after flushing the first stage and shooting with the flu while his back was giving out, he’s at peace with it.
Maxwell established the baseline he wanted. No catastrophic lows. Clean execution. Now he’s got three months to incrementally bring the aggression back up.
PCSL continues to crush the two-gun format. The best two-gun match either host has shot all year, despite missing a third of the guns. The 2026 season is already starting to fill up—some matches are already waitlisted. Time to reset, regroup, and re-engage.
Listen to the full episode on On The Perf. Adam Riser and Adam Maxwell cover gear, techniques, and tactics for 3-Gun, USPSA, PCSL, and other action shooting sports.
