I started shooting long range rifle competitions(not Fclass or service rifle) in 2007. Way before PRS existed. I shot Jhuskey's rifleman's challenge, the Benning Sniper Comp, and helped design the first USASOC sniper comp. We live in a way better world than what competitive, practical, long range, action shooting existed in 2007. After a couple of straight, back to back years overseas, I was able to start competing again in 2016. One thing I always appreciate is the opportunity of competitive shooting competitions locally. When you can shoot a match each day of the weekend, 4 weekends of the month, that's nice to have.
PRS did frustrate me a lot when I came back to the states. It was pretty ignorant. And what I mean is it's like a farm boy in Nebraska bought a Savage and started shooting off a fence post in a corner field. Random , nonsensical, and without grounding or reality. And that's what most PRS stages are modeled from. Having been a professional instructor there is a sequence of fundamentals and skills that can be taught/ learned. The guys that ran PRS by 2016 clearly had no background in that. Most of the people that attended matches had little to no professional instruction, couldn't speak intelligently about rifle marksmanship fundamentals, and didn't know the why behind a lot of facets of long range shooting. So much OJT going on. People just learning as they went and making things up. It kind of fascinated me and rubbed me the wrong way all at the same time.
I come from a background where instruction of an advanced skill is dissected through didactics. We take an individual task and break into parts. Isolation drills. We isolate the parts and teach, from the fundamentals, how to master each part and then assemble them all back into the total individual task. Culmination drill. It is a way to teach to an industrial level. To create a baseline capability in a large group of people, barring the bottom 25'ish % and the top 5'ish %. We use it to teach freefall parachuting, skiing, marksmanship with a pistol, carbine, and long gun. PRS has none of this. No pedigree. It is a mutt that was abandoned along the highway and learned to thrive. I used to debate with some of the top shooters in my area. The PRS Barricade skills stage. I asked them, what exactly are the skills this stage tests. The answer was shooting fast and hitting targets from a wobbly position. Classic PRS answer.
@lash the shooting offhand is a great example. There are situations where shooting offhand is imminent, ubiquitous, required, and practical. And there are guns that are built and suited to do that. Shooting a 66% IPSC at 300yds with a 18lb rifle built for 1200yd precision isn't practical, imminent, or ubiquitous. It's ignorant, luck/ trick shooting. I remember trying to teach a team of guys sling supported shooting and they had suppressed MK13's. I had them shooting slung, sitting and they were struggling. It's one thing to sling up a 10lb, unsuppressed, 24" barreled rifle. It's not real practical to sling up a 26" barreled, suppressed 300WM. And that's the some of the problem with PRS. The contrived-ness. Let's shoot standing offhand with a 20lb gun built for shooting prone on a distant target at the edge of practical small arms range, that demonstrate zero need for a straight up standing tall, immediate snap shot from low ready. It's just turkey-shoot type of crap. Trick shooting where in reality luck shots rules the day.
There have been some advancements via PRS tho. Evolution begins with accidental mutations that are advantageous. PRS has pushed practical, action shooting of long range rifles more than anything else has. And it has made what was once the domain of military snipers pretty much public knowledge. But the best advancements and learning of what we used to call "alternate positions" have come from PRS. Absolutely blew it up. It is amazing what we do now in PRS competition compared to 2007. If you gloss over small details like target sizes) distance, round counts per stage, and stage times we've been doing the same stuff for the last 15 years but in truth the complexity, speed, and target sizes are way more difficult. The hardest match I've ever shot in my life was a rimfire match this last year. We shot 15rd stages with 4 position changes, on multiple targets (to include a mover on one stage) in 90 seconds. I felt like I was flying a fighter jet adjusting parallax, dope, leads, wind, and positions.
At the end of the day, I don't hold the owners of PRS or a lot of MDs in high regard but I do think overall it's positive and a net gain for long-range, practical, action shooting. I absolutely enjoy "renegade" matches and field matches more. I think unknown distance/ blind stage matches are the next advancement and PRS's Achilles heel. Matches like the steel safari where it's at. While I prefer a ribeye, sometimes a cheeseburger from Drifters hits the spot so I still shoot local PRS matches because I work too much and prioritize my marriage and job to travel around the country snobbishly cherry picking my favorite flavor of matches. Just happy I can shoot 3gun, USPSA, PRS, and AR matches every weekend. When I retire like
@Lowlight I'll travel to more matches and get more judgemental.