Hey guys, I know that many of you shoot in various rimfire matches all across the nation, but I thought I would share a post I wrote after shooting an Extreme Rimfire Silhouette match. There aren't any NRL or PRS type matches closer than 6 - 8 hours from me, so I was really excited to find this match an hour away. I realize some of this will be elementary compared to shooters who have more opportunities, but if it helps anyone, I'll be pleased.
I've been looking for a local range that would offer either an NRL match or something similar. In my area, Rimfire Benchrest is about the only game in town. I've got the match rifle built my Gordon Eck, with the Nightforce Competition 15-55 and the Arnold one-piece rest, but just can't get excited about it.
A couple of months ago, I learned about a match at a range an hour away called Extreme Silhoutte. Basically, it's a silhoutte match, shot from a bench with the distances doubled from traditional standing silhouette.
The chickens are shot at 80 yards, the pigs at 120 yards, the turkeys are at 177 yards and the rams are at 200. There are 10 of each target at each range with a time limit of 10 minutes.
The rules say any rimfire rifle can be used, regardless of caliber. They also allow shooters to use any rest, from a bipod and rear bag to a one piece rest, as long as it doesn't have a windage top.
There are 2 classes, Unlimited and Squirrel. Squirrel class has to be a factory rifle and the scope has to be at 9X. You can dial down to 9X, but that's it. Unlimited has no limits on rifles or optics.
I couldn't make the match in June and it didn't look like I would make it in July until Thursday afternoon. I'm that guy that Stick makes fun of for having way to much magnification on my rifles. He's totally right but I do enjoy the high magnification optics.
As you know, most of the scopes, think Nightforce Benchrest 12-42 and Leupold 6.5-20 EFR, have limited elevation. I decided to swap a couple of scopes onto a few rimfires and see how things worked out.
I pulled an NXS 5-22 and put it on my 64 MPR and a Bushy DMR 3.5-21 on my KIDD. The MPR shoots really well, and is easier to shoot from a bench than my 54.18. Normally, I would shoot Center-X for something like this, but somehow, I managed to shoot up most of my stash, so I had to fall back and try some of the other ammo.
The KIDD handles Midas as well as Center-X, so that was easy. The MPR shoots most everything well, but a while back, I picked up a few bricks of Geco Bolt Action, so I thought I'd give it a go. Since we'r shooting steel, I'm not worried about ultimate precision.
I only had about an hour to dial in scopes and get dope, otherwise, I would've found cheaper ammo for the KIDD. Since both rifles had new to them scopes, I found my 80 yard zero and reset the scopes to zero.
The KIDD / DMR / Midas had 1.9 Mils to 120, 3.6 Mils to 177 and 5.6 Mils to 200.
The MPR / NXS / Geco had 6 MOA to 120, 14 MOA to 177 and 22 MOA to 200.
Both rifles were wearing Harris 6 - 9 notched legs with swivel and a podlock.
I didn't decide which rifle to shoot first or if I would shoot each rifle until I got to the match. When I got there, the was 1 40X, several CZ's mostly 452 Super Exclusives, a 452 American and a 455 Varmint and one KIDD Supergrade. The rest were older Anschutz 54's. The optics ranged from a Nightforce Benchrest to Vortex PST's, Sightrons, Bushnell's SWFA and a couple of Leupold's.
Unlimited class was first and I decided to shoot the KIDD, mainly because there was only one other semi there, the other KIDD. The wind wasn't bad, but somehow, I managed to miss 1 chicken, 2 pigs, 2 turkeys and 2 rams, for a score of 33 out of a possible 40. The range is shooting slightly uphill, with a berm at 100 yards that creates an updraft.
For the Squirrel class, I decided to shoot the MPR. Turning the NXS down to 9x, the white silhouettes along with the brighter light, made seeing the bullet splash on the sighter steel almost impossible, especially at the turkeys and rams. By the time this match started, the winds had picked up quite a bit. I didn't shoot nearly as well, with a score of 27 out of 40.
I learned that I was tied for the win on the Unlimited class, so myself and the other shooter had a shoot off. The shoot off consists of two spray paint cans on posts at 205 yards. There was a coin flip, which I won, which meant I got to shoot first. If I hit the can, I won, if I missed, the other shooter got a chance. If he hit it, he wins and if he missed, we would go back and forth until someone connected.
I won the coin flip and decided to shoot the KIDD. I shot 5 or 6 sighter rounds and then shot a couple of rams that were standing. In retrospect, I should've shot several more rounds since the rifle had been cased for over an hour. I called my shot at the paint can and missed. The other shooter connected, and just like that, I took second. I believe this class had a total of 14 shooters.
I believe I took 3rd in the Squirrel class, but I'm not certain. This class only had 5 shooters.
Things I learned and will work on going forward:
1. The KIDD was a real benefit, specifically for taking advantage of favorable wind conditions. Being able to go from target to target without breaking cheek weld or even working the bolt, made for a fast work. In fact, on a few strings, from the first target shot until the last was less than 30 seconds.
2. The fact that I could shoot fast doesn't necessarily mean I should've shot fast. A few of my misses were completely from me getting in too big of a hurry.
3. The Harris bipod was invaluable. I believe I'm the only shooter using the notched legs with swivel and podlock and it made a huge difference, being able to level the rifle. A few shooters used Caldwell or other Harris knockoffs and possibly some standard Harris. Several experienced issues with a couple of broken Caldwells. There was a lot of wobble with these as well.
4. The night before, I loaded all of my magazines. I did this to try to keep from getting the lube all over my hands during the match. This was a huge benefit since I didn't have to worry about it during the match. It doesn't hurt if you have 12 extra 10/22 mags!
5. Have plenty of magazines! Unless you're going to single load, which most shooters did, it's a pain to load magazines in the middle of a relay. I managed to leave a few of my Anschutz magazines at home, so I only had one 5 round and one 10 round magazine to work with.
6. The magazine release on the MPR sucks! I knew it wasn't the easiest to manipulate, but doing it in match conditions made it more difficult than it should be. It's also way to cumbersome to do change these mags after loading them, because no matter how hard you try, you can't wipe all of the lube off your hands.
7. Have a decent rear bag. I started off with the KIDD and a generic Winchester rear bag. I changed to an Edgewood that I use for Benchrest. The Edgewood really helped, especially at the extended ranges.
8. Know your DOPE! Luckily, I had a pretty good idea what I needed before I went to the range to sight in the scopes. Several shooters were trying to figure out their DOPE during the match. I'm sure this made the match more difficult for them.
9. Pick an ammo and stick with it. I think most people know this, but rimfire ammo is so inconsistent from manufacturer to manufacturer and lot to lot. I saw some shooters who were switching ammo from relay to relay and in one case, during a relay.
10. This one isn't a necessity, but something I've learned from watching Benchrest shooters is to have a comfortable seat. If you can't adjust your seat to the bench it's tough to get comfortable and even tougher to shoot well. I bought a Roc-N-Soc drummer's throne last year, and it's one of the best investments I've made for bench shooting.
I'm fairly pleased for my first match like this, and can't wait until the next one. I'd still prefer an NRL22 match or one like the 22 Marksmen's Challenge, but until we get something like that closer than a 6 - 8 hour drive, this one will do.
I've been looking for a local range that would offer either an NRL match or something similar. In my area, Rimfire Benchrest is about the only game in town. I've got the match rifle built my Gordon Eck, with the Nightforce Competition 15-55 and the Arnold one-piece rest, but just can't get excited about it.
A couple of months ago, I learned about a match at a range an hour away called Extreme Silhoutte. Basically, it's a silhoutte match, shot from a bench with the distances doubled from traditional standing silhouette.
The chickens are shot at 80 yards, the pigs at 120 yards, the turkeys are at 177 yards and the rams are at 200. There are 10 of each target at each range with a time limit of 10 minutes.
The rules say any rimfire rifle can be used, regardless of caliber. They also allow shooters to use any rest, from a bipod and rear bag to a one piece rest, as long as it doesn't have a windage top.
There are 2 classes, Unlimited and Squirrel. Squirrel class has to be a factory rifle and the scope has to be at 9X. You can dial down to 9X, but that's it. Unlimited has no limits on rifles or optics.
I couldn't make the match in June and it didn't look like I would make it in July until Thursday afternoon. I'm that guy that Stick makes fun of for having way to much magnification on my rifles. He's totally right but I do enjoy the high magnification optics.
As you know, most of the scopes, think Nightforce Benchrest 12-42 and Leupold 6.5-20 EFR, have limited elevation. I decided to swap a couple of scopes onto a few rimfires and see how things worked out.
I pulled an NXS 5-22 and put it on my 64 MPR and a Bushy DMR 3.5-21 on my KIDD. The MPR shoots really well, and is easier to shoot from a bench than my 54.18. Normally, I would shoot Center-X for something like this, but somehow, I managed to shoot up most of my stash, so I had to fall back and try some of the other ammo.
The KIDD handles Midas as well as Center-X, so that was easy. The MPR shoots most everything well, but a while back, I picked up a few bricks of Geco Bolt Action, so I thought I'd give it a go. Since we'r shooting steel, I'm not worried about ultimate precision.
I only had about an hour to dial in scopes and get dope, otherwise, I would've found cheaper ammo for the KIDD. Since both rifles had new to them scopes, I found my 80 yard zero and reset the scopes to zero.
The KIDD / DMR / Midas had 1.9 Mils to 120, 3.6 Mils to 177 and 5.6 Mils to 200.
The MPR / NXS / Geco had 6 MOA to 120, 14 MOA to 177 and 22 MOA to 200.
Both rifles were wearing Harris 6 - 9 notched legs with swivel and a podlock.
I didn't decide which rifle to shoot first or if I would shoot each rifle until I got to the match. When I got there, the was 1 40X, several CZ's mostly 452 Super Exclusives, a 452 American and a 455 Varmint and one KIDD Supergrade. The rest were older Anschutz 54's. The optics ranged from a Nightforce Benchrest to Vortex PST's, Sightrons, Bushnell's SWFA and a couple of Leupold's.
Unlimited class was first and I decided to shoot the KIDD, mainly because there was only one other semi there, the other KIDD. The wind wasn't bad, but somehow, I managed to miss 1 chicken, 2 pigs, 2 turkeys and 2 rams, for a score of 33 out of a possible 40. The range is shooting slightly uphill, with a berm at 100 yards that creates an updraft.
For the Squirrel class, I decided to shoot the MPR. Turning the NXS down to 9x, the white silhouettes along with the brighter light, made seeing the bullet splash on the sighter steel almost impossible, especially at the turkeys and rams. By the time this match started, the winds had picked up quite a bit. I didn't shoot nearly as well, with a score of 27 out of 40.
I learned that I was tied for the win on the Unlimited class, so myself and the other shooter had a shoot off. The shoot off consists of two spray paint cans on posts at 205 yards. There was a coin flip, which I won, which meant I got to shoot first. If I hit the can, I won, if I missed, the other shooter got a chance. If he hit it, he wins and if he missed, we would go back and forth until someone connected.
I won the coin flip and decided to shoot the KIDD. I shot 5 or 6 sighter rounds and then shot a couple of rams that were standing. In retrospect, I should've shot several more rounds since the rifle had been cased for over an hour. I called my shot at the paint can and missed. The other shooter connected, and just like that, I took second. I believe this class had a total of 14 shooters.
I believe I took 3rd in the Squirrel class, but I'm not certain. This class only had 5 shooters.
Things I learned and will work on going forward:
1. The KIDD was a real benefit, specifically for taking advantage of favorable wind conditions. Being able to go from target to target without breaking cheek weld or even working the bolt, made for a fast work. In fact, on a few strings, from the first target shot until the last was less than 30 seconds.
2. The fact that I could shoot fast doesn't necessarily mean I should've shot fast. A few of my misses were completely from me getting in too big of a hurry.
3. The Harris bipod was invaluable. I believe I'm the only shooter using the notched legs with swivel and podlock and it made a huge difference, being able to level the rifle. A few shooters used Caldwell or other Harris knockoffs and possibly some standard Harris. Several experienced issues with a couple of broken Caldwells. There was a lot of wobble with these as well.
4. The night before, I loaded all of my magazines. I did this to try to keep from getting the lube all over my hands during the match. This was a huge benefit since I didn't have to worry about it during the match. It doesn't hurt if you have 12 extra 10/22 mags!
5. Have plenty of magazines! Unless you're going to single load, which most shooters did, it's a pain to load magazines in the middle of a relay. I managed to leave a few of my Anschutz magazines at home, so I only had one 5 round and one 10 round magazine to work with.
6. The magazine release on the MPR sucks! I knew it wasn't the easiest to manipulate, but doing it in match conditions made it more difficult than it should be. It's also way to cumbersome to do change these mags after loading them, because no matter how hard you try, you can't wipe all of the lube off your hands.
7. Have a decent rear bag. I started off with the KIDD and a generic Winchester rear bag. I changed to an Edgewood that I use for Benchrest. The Edgewood really helped, especially at the extended ranges.
8. Know your DOPE! Luckily, I had a pretty good idea what I needed before I went to the range to sight in the scopes. Several shooters were trying to figure out their DOPE during the match. I'm sure this made the match more difficult for them.
9. Pick an ammo and stick with it. I think most people know this, but rimfire ammo is so inconsistent from manufacturer to manufacturer and lot to lot. I saw some shooters who were switching ammo from relay to relay and in one case, during a relay.
10. This one isn't a necessity, but something I've learned from watching Benchrest shooters is to have a comfortable seat. If you can't adjust your seat to the bench it's tough to get comfortable and even tougher to shoot well. I bought a Roc-N-Soc drummer's throne last year, and it's one of the best investments I've made for bench shooting.
I'm fairly pleased for my first match like this, and can't wait until the next one. I'd still prefer an NRL22 match or one like the 22 Marksmen's Challenge, but until we get something like that closer than a 6 - 8 hour drive, this one will do.
