This is a great post, specifically this part:
"Also as a shooter and former action guy I can tell when an MD has put real thought into targetry, stage design and really appropriate an honest effort to make it practical. "
This is the biggest hangup for me and is what Frank is getting at by addressing the same simpleton, contrived stages, over and over. I think for mil guys it's hard to shoot stages that are seemingly random. Just made up. "..a popper at 323yds from the fence, then 2 on the coyote at 623..".etc. Many stages aren't built to test a skill bc no skills in this community have been dissected, quantified & defined, and then used as a basis to design a stage in order to test said skill. There's just a lot of monkey-see, monkey-do. "We saw this at the Heatstroke last year so we're going to shoot it at club matches to prepare", or "...why are we shooting off this stump where the green spray paint is?, ...because it is there... and it's hard., .... Oh, okay, cool". ooohhh! Tank traps are cool! Not because we are testing "multiple target-indexing", or "first round off a barricade kneeling position on 2 moa target at short range (350yds)", or some other skill that is universal reality that any shooter will need to meet success shooting a long gun. If you as a shooter understood what the match directer was asking of you skill wise and you understood the 4 individual skills involved in the one action that is "PRS Skills stage #____" then you'd be much better with it and not tempted to game it.
I've spoken about this to a few PRS shooters but it never goes over well. It's like explaining sex to a virgin. "I don't understand what you're saying so I'm going to take it as an insult!" They always insist that everyone shoots differently so you can't define individual skills. I think this is a symptom of the random nature that people learn in this sport. There is no common thread of foundational learning in which terms are doctrinalized so that words mean something. Can we all agree on what is timed fire vs. rapid fire? What is a neutral load vs. Free recoil? There is also the difference between those that can do and those that understand what they're doing. That difference is usually highlighted when you ask a good shooter to teach. If he can't explain the individual parts of the action in a succinct, transparent way using commonly understood terms but he can do it, chances are he just performs the action but doesn't understand what the key points of performance are; he doesn't understand the why. I know Frank will roll his eyes and say, this is what I've been saying all along!
I think that this sport is starting to get there. not in all the right places. We now have a commonly understood term for a target array: a troop line. Doesn't do us that much good having an established term for this formation of targets but we have that. We have been boxing in Free recoil earlier in this thread. I think some experienced shooters and good MD's intuitively understand how to build stages that demand the use of currently, un-codified skills and most shooters understand when they get tested and are missing that tool in their mental-rucksack. There's just not widely-accepted formula for building, shaping, and moderating average-joe's learning curve so they discover all the right fundamentals and skills at all the right time in their development, so you get guys asking about FR on a you tube post when perhaps they don't truly understand the concept of NPOA and recoil management. But you can't blame PRS for that. I think LR precision rifle shooting is in a renaissance. A boon. Never before have so many people had access to so many tools, equipment, rifles, and information soecific to LR PR shooting. It's out there everywhere. It's just not organized bc it's the age of social media, digital data, industry personalities vying for subscribers, sponsers, followers. It is just a function of the random chaos that is nature and reality.
I would agree with Frank that if a governing body provided the structure, there would be more parity within the sport. Imagine if you were shooting skills stages that had performance standards that matched or discerned shooter classes. You shot it in X seconds with X rounds or X misses. That is a B class shooter. You cleaned it - A class. You cleaned it with 30 secs to spare - master. And best of all, you get to compare yourself to the "Pros" without having to shoot the match with them. Yes, environmental conditions will make that a challenge but those same challenges are surmounted in IPSC and Highpower. You get classified in skill level at a task or action that is actually relevant and does translate to hunting, or zombie-apocalypses. You would relate to this and it would not be contrived.
But I realize this will probably never happen. Too many folks will hate the concept of forced structure. There is no center of gravity that can impose direction and purpose. And there's no common thread of shared understanding of fundamentals, tasks, and actions bc everyone is learning differently, at different paces, from different tribes. Which is why I say you have to accept PRS for what it is. If you don't like it, you have two choices. scream into the internet until your ears bleed, or move on.
