Recently my club has had to suspend its CMP matches for lack of participants. I suspect the reason for this is that ammunition has gotten so expensive that a lot of folks simply can’t afford to shoot large bore rifle matches, much less practice. This has made me consider that maybe, in the spirit of Mr. Completely’s e-postal matches, we might be able to do something for rifle shooters like the e-postal series has done for handgun shooters.
I’m wondering how much interest there might be in a gun blog rifle leauge. Rules would be roughtly in line with CMP, except you could participate with any centerfire rifle capible of rapid fire. I’d like to keep classes limited to open sights and optics. I’d be willing to consider a small bore category if enough people were interested. This is something that would be open to blogger as well as readers.
Obviously, the rifle league would require a 100 yard range to shoot. Because ammo is so expensive these days, I think we’d all go broke doing a once a month match, so I’m thinking about doing one match per season, with fall, winter, spring, and summer matches. If I were to organize and coordinate such a thing, how much interest would there be? Rules would be spelled out, and you’d basically just scan or photograph a target and submit it, just like with the e-postal series. The idea, basically, is to have a way to compete against each other, without having to burn $4 dollar a gallon gas to travel to matches, and without having to do monthly matches people might not be able to afford.  We’d be saving the planet, one bullet at a time.
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My club offers both rifle and pistol matches. The pistol matches out draw rifle matches by at least a 10:1 margin. (A typical Tuesday fun match will draw 140-180 participants, while the last NMC rifle match I shot drew 13. The Silhouette match drew ~15)
I suspect the time factor has a lot to do with the disparity. A 50-60 round rifle match can easily take 5-6 hours while a 100 round pistol match is two hours or less.
Part of the delay is the relay splits… my club runs 3 or 4 relays where only one or two are actually doing anything. I talked to another club that only runs 2 relays and gets through the matches a lot faster. (they also run two “matches” to allow additional shooters. FWIW, both runs typically are full.)
Wanna make rifle matches more appealing? Work out a match that involves less sitting around time. I don’t care that’s not how it’s been done, or how the national matches are run. If you want to attract participants, make it fast and fun!
$.02
I shoot .22 Benchrest at my club every month (Feb-Oct). I don’t see why you couldn’t run it monthly.
Question – I don’t have a 100 yard range immediately handy, but I do have a 50 yard range. Could people shoot the match on a 50 yarder using a reduced target?
My closest (50 yard) range is about $8 in gas from my house. The next closest is an indoor (100 yard) range which is usually overcrowded and about $15 in gas from my house. The nearest outdoor range is about $20 in gas from my house.
I don’t know what sucks more, the current high cost of gas, or the current high cost of ammo. I don’t have a problem practicing with surplus or cheapo-range-reload ammo, but for competition quality/quantity it starts getting expensive.
Plus, whats more expensive for me these days than gas or ammo is time…
Man, I’d love to participate in something like this though, I just can’t see it happening real soon.
I want a rifle, dangit!
I’m with Ahab. Offer me a 50 yard option and I’m in.
Smallbore would be better if cost is an issue. It’s possible to shoot fun competition smallbore without high costs. Match grade .22 is horribly expensive compared to factory bulk box but positively cheap compared to any factory centerfire load. Nevermind match-grade factory ammo (unless you reload and have a perfect load already figured out).
50 yards for smallbore is ideal. Centerfire is possible on reduced targets. After all, the US Army does it at 25 meters.
My 50 yard range is a few dollars in gas. To get to 100 yards or better gets expensive. Next closest for me is Quantico and then points west for additional public ranges that I can walk onto and shoot. Otherwise, I’m looking at joining a league and that’s 300 dollars just to say hello. Doable but not ideal.
I’d be interested. Especially in any military surplus category. I’ve shot a couple of postal matches through surplusrifle.com just for the fun of it. Didn’t place last so I’m happy.
I’d like to see it be monthly. Nobody says you have to participate every month. If one month you don’t have the time/money you just just skip that month.
Keep the shot count fairly low and cost becomes much less of an issue.
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If I have to drive 70 miles to reach the nearest outdoor range, I want to shoot as much of the inventory as I can.
I’ve been shooting (modified) High Power matches with my K-31 lately, and I bought a .22LR to practice with in order to keep costs down. I would participate once a season in a CMP type match, but I would compete monthly in a small-bore setup, as it’s no biggie to drop $0.02 a round, but $0.50 a round (for the 7.5×55) is puching my budget as it is.
Iron sights only, right? Does a red-dot make it an F-class rifle? My club’s range is 200-yards and we shoot scaled-down targets for 300 and 600 yards – how do I translate them to 100-yard targets? :-)
I’d be interested in something that would give me some sort of incentive to get in practice time with my boomershoot rifle. So, count me as a vote for a 100-yard single-shot centerfire category. Or longer. (My range goes up to 300 yards but not everyone has that distance available).
I keep meaning to shoot some of Mr. Completely’s handgun matches with that rifle at significant range just to see what the results look like…
I’d need a lot more information on how the competition works…
I have a 100yd range on my property and several capable firearms. I’m in for either option.
Being able to shoot a Service Rifle match with one of my No4 Enfields would be epically cool, for starters.
Use the 25 yard (meter) AQT targets, or, use regular 8-inch bulls for 100 yards, and 4 inch ones at the same distance to simulate 200 yards. For extra credit, use two 4-inch bulls in a figure 8 to utilize the ballistic trajectory, ie, aim at the bottom one to score on the top one when the rear sight is set for 200 yards.
I’d love to participate, smallbore and centerfire. I’m only about 25 miles from open desert, can range out farther than I can accurately shoot, and handload the .308 so I’m good for either monthly or quarterly. Great idea!
I’d be all for it. I’d probably compete mostly in smallbore, but could do centerfire without too much wallet pain. I have an indoor 100yd range not far from me, so thats no big deal. Only problem is that I don’t really have any CMP service rifle type rifles. Oh teh noes, I would have to buy another gun…
I was just reading about this subject in a article on nextguns.com.