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Even though my flashlight was announcing my presence, I couldn't be seen directly by anyone hidden there.

Anyway, my heart started really pounding when the moment of truth came and I had to step around the last corner and confront whatever might be trapped in that space. I kept the pistol and light raised at the ready and tried to keep a decent sight picture, but I confess that I was plenty scared for a moment, and I don't know how steady my sight picture was.

Thanks to The Annoyed Man for sharing another personal experience that is remarkably similar to Mark F's. It's also remarkably similar to lots of these that happen with lots of different folks every week.

I think it's worthwhile to use each and every one of these as an opportunity for after action review to tune up everyone's understanding, planning, and ultimately, performance when the chips are down, which fortunately they weren't in either of these cases.

Once again, I wasn't there and it isn't my intent to criticize any individual person for action taken or not taken, but I think there are a few questions that are worth considering without beating the subject to death. They're not aimed at the member who generously shared his experience with us, warts and all, so we can learn, and they're just as useful for folks who weren't there that night but might be faced with noises in the night and similar decisions tonight or the night after:

1. Remember that BG's often work in pairs or teams. When you went out, did you lock the door? If you did, you closed off your potential escape route if you needed one. If you didn't, you left your family potentially vulnerable to an intruder who now had an easy, nonforcible, quiet and extremely quick way to enter your now unsecured home. If that had happened, how would your wife have managed it? How would you have known it had happened? What would have happened when you got back inside?

2. You were aware that your flashlight gave away your presence. That's a bad thing. He doesn't have to see you directly once he knows you're there. If he wants to take you out, since he knows you're approaching, all he has to do is conceal himself and wait until you enter his kill zone. Not survival friendly for the the good guy.

3. When you came around the corner, were you right up against the wall like most folks do it on TV? If so, all an unarmed BG would have had to do is wait just around the corner on the other side and wrestle you for your gun when you came around. That's why the tactical guys stay away from the corners.

4. You mention you kept the pistol raised and at the ready and tried to maintain a decent sight picture. What target was the focus of that picture? Was your finger on the trigger? (See the implications of the reflexive startle response my first post below.) Where would a projectile have gone if the weapon had gone off in that adrenaline charged moment?

5. What communications provisions did you take with you so you could contact either your wife or the police if you needed help? How long would it have taken help to arrive if it hadn't been called already? Are you comfortable if the answer is in minutes and the need is in seconds?

6. If you had come around the corner and found a bad guy crouching in the bushes, would you have remembered to look for the second or third BG's? What was your plan for dealing with him / them? Do you advance / retreat / challenge / shoot? (The "now that I've got the tiger by the tail, what do I do with it" question.) If he decided to open the action by shooting at you, were you behind anything solid enough to that it might have given you a fighting chance and a second or to to react?

7. If there was a prowler in the neighborhood and another neighbor had called the PD, what would have happened when / if they saw you outside with gun and flashlight in hand and no prior notification you were out there?

8. If there was no prowler, but your neighbor heard the same noise and took the same course of action, how would that have turned out if you each caught a glimpse of each other?

9. Last but not least, what could you possibly have accomplished by going outside that wouldn't have been taken care of much more safely for both you and your family by asking the PD to investigate? They do that with shotguns, rifles, and radios, in groups that use tactics they've trained together with, and they're really good at it. That's why most of them bring in lots of bad guys and live to collect retirements.

As you may have guessed, IMHO, going outside to investigate noises in the night is not generally a good idea. In areas with reasonable police response times, if you stay inside and call the LEO's and let them do their work, an intruder would have to come to you, working against the defender's very strong advantages on his own turf, to do you any harm. There's a lot to be said for that, and it's very survivable even when there really is a bad guy with a fairly simple "secure your family behind cover in the safe room with your defensive tools, stay in contact with the LEO's, and make the BG come through the fatal funnel to get to you" plan. The risk picture in the outside option isn't nearly as sunny.

I silently went out the back door with my 44 Magnum cocked and my flashlight ready to illuminate. I hear MORE gate noise (and I'm pretty scared about now) but I'm ready to face this perpetrator. I instantly turned the corner facing my gate while firing up my Streamlight and aiming 44 Magnum at the top of my gate. My adrenalin is high and my finger on the trigger.

I'm sorry to hear that your vehicles were burglarized. That almost always causes a profound sense of violation that is much more traumatic than the dollar value of the loss itself..

I wasn't there when this happened, and there are a lot of relevant details that aren't included in your brief post. I'm therefore not in a position to criticize anything you did or didn't do, and it's not my intention to do so. However, I think it's worthwile to point out that you reported doing a few things that have ended up badly for others. I would most certainly not want to see those same things happen to you. Because of your generosity in sharing the details, we all have some pretty good food for thought and an opportunity to reevaluate, and perhaps modify, our own plans for the time when it looks like the wolf is approaching our door. In that spirit I'd like to suggest an "after action review" of how things went during the uninvited 'possum's visit. It's always a good exercise that can be used after any significant event to improve our threat handling over time, and there are several points that merit a closer look:

1. Give thought to how good an idea it is for you to exit the relative safety of a home with an intact perimeter and potentially expose yourself to a burglar who could have already made it over the fence and could have been way too close for comfort by the time you got outside the door. (Yes, I understand you had a large, powerful weapon, but up real close that can be neutralized with astonishing ease by a streetfighter who's less than 5 feet away. There are a quite a few deceased and injured LEO's who can corroborate that). Would an unexpected attack that left you incapacitated outside have left your wife and family vulnerable to a predator?

2. Reconsider the wisdom of walking around with a cocked revolver and placing a finger on the trigger (which has about a 2.5 lb letoff at that point) without an identified target or a decision to fire, thus violating at least gun safety rules 3 and 4, with questions about rule 2 as well. Be aware that if you are startled by, say, a loud noise or the sudden appearance of someone you didn't expect, there is an excellent chance that the startle response will cause your gun hand to contract with about 50 pounds of pressure (average for an adult male under these circumstances.) Think about a 50 lb. hand contraction applied to a cocked 2.5 lb. trigger, do the math, and consider what the consequences of negligent discharge would be under these circumstances. You're fortunate it didn't happen this time, but, according to your post, I suspect you were a lot closer than you may have realized. To prevent ND's, even SWAT officers on a high risk warrant entry or combat troops in an active threat zone keep their fingers off the trigger until they've got sights on an identified target. (Don't believe me? Look for this in news photos and video clips from law enforcement operations in the US, and military ones in Iraq and Afghanistan- it's one of the really basic trademarks of a gunhandling professional.)

3. When you pointed the cocked weapon and flashlight at something that had not yet been identified as a target you had decided to shoot, what was the backstop to the opossum at the gate? Where would a miss or an overpenetration have ended up when the projectile's energy was spent? If the answer is the window of the neighbor's kid's bedroom or something along that line, that's worth giving some thought to also.

4. Might calling 911 and assessing the situation from inside the closed windows of your home been a better and less risky tactic? (Before 25 people pile on this question with chest pounding roars about the legality using deadly force to defend property at night in Texas, I'd like to point out that just because you can do something doesn't mean it's necessarily the smartest thing to do at a given time.) Consider what's really important: Protecting your home and your family from inside the home during a possible criminal incident that could proceed to a breach of the home's perimeter, and having an excellent chance of living to see the sun rise, or sacrificing the ability to do that to expose yourself in a 360 degree threat environment with questionable or no cover (this detail wasn't addressed) to investigate a possible burglary to a vehicle. Set your priorities accordingly.

I sincerely hope these remarks are taken in the spirit in which they are offered, and serve as a jumping off point for productive and gentlemanly discussion.