Rifle Only Matches

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perdurabo93

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IMNSHO, there ought to be a competitive shooting sport somewhere between the rifle part of 3-Gun and CMP/NRA High Power. Take 3-Gun, strip out all the pistoley and shotgunny parts where you run around knocking over short range poppers or putting holes in cardboard targets with either pistols and jazz hands painted on them. Boil it down to just the 50m-500m reactive rifle targets.

I guess a little foot work is fine since most people think "getting off the x" is, like, totally a thing you ought to be doing all the time, but honestly most of the movement should be moving between and getting into various field positions more or less ala HP. It ought to be less dynamic than the CQB/HSLD close range carbine shooting you do in 3-gun, but not as stationary as a sniper/benchrest/HP match. From the HP end, strip out all the fancy gear such as shooting jackets/gloves/scopes/carts/mats. Street clothes or BDUs only. Add in the option of modern optics, but nix the match space rifle crap. It's got to be a rifle you could reasonably and practically expect to use in a field situation off the range. Find some way of rewarding good accuracy above basic time plus scoring. I suppose this would end up looking a lot like modern US Army rifle qualification, but that would probabaly require very expensive electronic/pneumatic popup targets such as those made by SUIS. Ideally, you could score points based not merely hitting the target at all, but on WHERE on the target you hit (ala USPSA/IDPA) but instead of a static cardboard target, you could get a moving and reactive silhouette. There are such reactive targets at some public ranges (like the RWVA home range in Ramseur, NC) but there aren't that many others that I know of. Still, you'd think you could find a way to emulate this somehow with cheaper electronic/acoustic steel target scoring systems.

I've seen some rifle only 3gun style matches out there but it seems to be more like either a CQB HSLD tacticool carbine competition or a slightly sped up sniper course. An I off base here? Anyone else see a demand for such a shooting discipline/competition?
 
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We do just that at Pueblo West's tactical rifle matches. I don't think there's a 'standardized' version of what we do but it's your obligatory timed stages with misses and targets not engaged adding penalties to your time. Lowest time with the most hits wins. 3 classes, 'irons' , 'tactical', (single optic) and 'open' (optics + laser + bipod, etc.) We use open terrain targets out to about 425 yards and 'obstacles' like rooftops, barrels, barricades, v-tac walls and such. We try to get three stages in per match.

While we don't have 'moving' targets we have re-setting poppers, swinging steel, and key hole targets where you must shoot a small 'flash' target inside a larger steel to get a hit.
 
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A club here offers "precision rifle" shoots which is about as close as I know of to your wishes, although you might dismiss it as "sped up sniper course."

If you think there is a crying need for such a match, you are the logical Match Director.
Talk to your range management and get a date, put out a notice.
 
You might contact moderators Justin or Hoser to have our rules more thoroughly explained.
 
I'd be interested in looking over the rules if you have a formal, written version available.

Could use some inspiration. :)

Had some guys at the range asking me to run a "tactical" match this year in addition to the normal NRA High Power / Smallbore matches.
 
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