GreyDog wrote:They shoot the metal sihouette 22lr's benchrest at the local club; so it's not difficult to post possibles if you have a decent rifle and a bit of target shooting experience. The club appears open to trying new competitions, shooting 3-gun cowboys, black powder on a short 50m range, pistols and introducing an open sights comp. for the 22 rifles. I'd like to see them introduce paper targets (ring target shooting) for the 22's to add some extra challenge/competition. I've no thoughts of being any good at offhand shooting in my age, and prone doesn't appeal if I can take an easy benchrest option; so all credit to you for tackling it your way.
Cool, that's mostly how I shoot them, prone with open sights or scopes. Are they still standard Rimfire fifth-scale (ram about 150mm long) at 40m to 100m? They're very easy off a bench or prone with a scope but fairly challenging with iron sights. With the scoped rifles I usually just shoot them all from 100m. Tenth-scale air-rifle silhouettes (75mm ram) would be more challenging for scoped rifles.
Rose and myself are getting interested in Cowboy, though we have to travel an hour to do it. Our local club only does ISSF - 10m air-pistol and 25m rimfire, with an occasional centrefire shoot. ISSF is okay for practicing the fundamentals but a very boring experience three times a week. Cowboy is only twice a month but is so much more fun. I could go to another club twice a month for another two Cowboy shoots, the cowboys there are fun too.
Have you discussed Lever-Action Metallic Silhouette with the club? That is my favourite for Silhouette shooting - offhand, iron sights, half-scale silhouettes (ram about 400mm long, not the fifth-scale Rimfire ones). It is quite an expense for a club just starting out though as you need a lot of targets, twenty for each shooter. But you could take in one of each to get people used to the idea. The Cowboys shoot at 400m-square plates from 3m to about 7m, but occasionally put one back about 30m for heavy rifle in the Pat Garrett. I've been practicing on 120mm circular gongs from 15m to 45m but have started putting them much closer, about 8-10m, and practicing running 15rd tubes back and forth across them. Single-taps are easy, double-taps are still difficult and slow. But I want to get to Surdex tomorrow to get some more 200mm square plates, they should be big enough to push my speed up I think. Last week I did 397rds of .22LR in the Henry, BSA Sportsman 5, and the Ruger Precision, 30rds of .38 in the Uberti, 17rds of 12ga. in the Dickinson straight-pull gun, and five rounds of .357 in my mate's Chiappa.
As for tackling it my way, I just wanted something fun to greatly improve my offhand shooting, and lever-action silhouette fits the bill nicely.
). But for now the 22's keep me entertained.
