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Before my back injury I used to shoot AAA in Hunter's Pistol Silhouette but after 7 years of recovery and two surgeries I decided I needed to start with less recoil. I got involved in the local clubs Smallbore rifle silhouette shooting. This is the first shooting I have done in eight years and I started out with a miserable score of 7 / 40. In just four months I am shooting 26 / 40 and mostly because it is a very informal group of very nice folks I have improved my shooting at every match. I spend a lot of time with dry fire practice at home and shoot 40 -50 rounds twice a month at the range on paper (a one inch dot). I do reasonably well at the chickens and pigs but My fine motor muscle control betrays me on the turkeys and rams. It is fun shooting and I am only competing against myself but I do have a desire to be the first to get a perfect 40 / 40 score. Is anyone else involved in this kind of shooting? Do you have any help for a 63 year old shooter? Speer, Sierra, Lyman, Hornady, Hodgdon have reliable reloading data. You won't find it on so and so's web page. | ||
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Sounds like your doing great.Turkeys are just tuff .. I consider them a bonus ...lol. Rams are easy to over shoot , we have to play the wind at our range not unusual to get 3 inch drift at our range . I shoot out of Tulsa Red Castle gun club ,we also have a good group of shooters , just wish there were a few more of us ... | |||
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We have a lot of wind at our range too. It usually blows down range but we get crosswinds too. The winds are rarely constant tending more toward gusty winds that are a lot harder to read. Turkeys are the "smallest" optical targets but I am having almost as much trouble with the rams. It is just me getting used to holding a rifle again and training the muscles for fine motor control. It is just going to take a lot of practice (dry fire at home) to get back into being able to hold steady on small targets. Speer, Sierra, Lyman, Hornady, Hodgdon have reliable reloading data. You won't find it on so and so's web page. | |||
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I shot some silhouettes when we lived in North Carolina, good fun. I brought a 513T to one match; the organizers wanted to ban it on the spot but I volunteered to take the telescope off and use the peep sights. They acquiesced, and I won anyhow. Are slings allowed at your matches? TomP Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right, when wrong to be put right. Carl Schurz (1829 - 1906) | |||
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No, no slings or resting your arms on your body to add support. No shooting vests or harnesses. This is all completely "off hand" shooting and as such would only be used in this competition. I always find a steady rest when hunting but it is good for my recovery in that it exercises the fine motor skills that I have no other way to work. Speer, Sierra, Lyman, Hornady, Hodgdon have reliable reloading data. You won't find it on so and so's web page. | |||
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Great fun ! I started a match at my club. We use the 1/2 size targets and allow scopes ( even through these are "cowboy lever action targets") It's a very informal match and it's just for fun, I do offer 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place pins. The juniors ( under 12 ) shoot for free and we allow them to use "buffalo sticks", 12 and up you have to shoot off hand, no slings. To date the only 40/40 we've had was a 9 year old girl ( of course we made a BIG deal out of it ) I'm getting about 16-20 shooters per match, about 6-8 of them are juniors, and everybody has a good time. The only scores that are saved are the ones you take home. I award pins for the juniors and they love it !!  Shovel ready..... but hangin' on | |||
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That sounds like a fun shoot and a great way to promote it. We use the very small regulation targets and they are difficult to hit but it is still a load of fun. The club is considering putting up targets that are hinged so they don't get lost in the ground cover and can be reset with a cord from the firing line. I doubt that will happen any time soon but maybe a few years down the road. Speer, Sierra, Lyman, Hornady, Hodgdon have reliable reloading data. You won't find it on so and so's web page. | |||
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Have fun! It is addictive. Our club hosted the NRA Nationals a while ago and we were really into it. You will find to get into the high AAA class you will need an Anshutz and a high magnification scope such as the Leupold targets. We all used dot reticles the same diameter your gun would group at 100 meters. The two stage trigger in an Anshutz really helped me. For a while some of the best shooters were from Washington. When I quit a lot of ladies were dominating. Most were collegiate small bore or air gun All-Americans. | |||
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Well I am not into getting a gun specifically for silhouette competition so my old Remington 581 is going to have to work. I do need to do a trigger job on it but that will have to wait until I get my shop built. As for scopes I have a Bushnell 3-9 x 32 on it that I will keep. If that limits my ability to get into the AAA or Master's category of shooters then I will be disappointed. I was a AAA shooter in Hunter's Pistol with a Ruger Security-Six with no mods other than a simple trigger job that I did to it. I was tied with one other guy for the club record of 40/40 and he was using a custom 32 mag in a Contender with a Burris custom long eye relief scope. He had more in his gun and scope than I would have spent for four of my revolvers. It isn't always a matter of tools - the shooter is the most important part of the accuracy equation. Speer, Sierra, Lyman, Hornady, Hodgdon have reliable reloading data. You won't find it on so and so's web page. | |||
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I would suggest you shoot in the light rifle class with what you are going to use. You will be more competitive. | |||
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Well, we don't have a formal enough shoot or enough shooters to break it down into different rifle classes. I am shooting against mostly custom 10/22 with heavy barrels and beaver-tail stocks. So far I am out shooting them by a fair margin - probably more a lack of practice than gun problems. I have introduced a brother and my son to the sport and I may have competition from them if they put some practice time into it. For most of the guys its just a fun shoot but for me it is helping my recovery from the back and neck surgeries. I compete against myself trying to do better each time out - so far so good. Speer, Sierra, Lyman, Hornady, Hodgdon have reliable reloading data. You won't find it on so and so's web page. | |||
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I really hope your group continues using everyday guns. Our group started that way and pretty soon it became an equipment race. I saw the same thing with big bore silhouettes as well. For what its worth I watched a pretty fair shot named Lones Wiggers shoot a 36 and lose to two female collegiate small bore shooters. If my memory is correct we had one 38 over the course of the shoot. One young gal got hot on turkeys cleaning them all. She then went on to try to set the record of turkeys in a row. I believe she missed her 38th turkey. We had the 37th target made into a nice trophy for her. | |||
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It is my hope that we continue to be a bunch of guys (and girls) shooting for the fun of it. I shot Hunter's Pistol and it became a political crap shoot and a technology race. It started out fun with everything from 9mm autos to 44 magnums on the line and we were all happy. (the rule was "any straight wall case up to and including 44 magnum") When the told me that I couldn't use my 357 load "because it damaged the targets" I walked away. That was right after the guy I tied the club record with became the president. The "damage" that my bullets did to the targets was a perfect imprint of my hollow point nose in the chickens. There was no bending or breaking of the targets at all. I just assumed that this was going to be another "good old boys" club and left. This is a different range and a different group so I am hoping that it will remain a shoot for fun event without the political BS and techno-race that happened then. So far it has been a very good group. Speer, Sierra, Lyman, Hornady, Hodgdon have reliable reloading data. You won't find it on so and so's web page. | |||
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