Where I come from its not unheard of for a boy to get his first BB gun for his fifth birthday. Thats when I got mine. Shortly after that I graduated to a more powerful pellet rifle. Then a CO2 pistol. Then my first shotgun, a tiny, old .410 single shot. Then a 20ga. pump and a .22 rifle. When I was about 10 my parents enrolled my in a junior rifle program at our local range. Apparently I was good enough to require the purchase of my own target rifle and begin competition after about a year. I shot in the state games and the junior Olympics in 3 position smallbore. At one point I was the state champion in metric prone for my age group. Then I had a snowboarding accident that injured both of my knees. I was unable to shoot the kneeling portion in the 3 position event so I “retired” from the shooting sports for a while.

In August of 2007 I heard about a charity shoot for our local 4-H chapter and dusted off the gear, did a little dry firing and had a go at it. At some point I had lost my sling so I shot prone and kneeling without it. Of the three positions, standing (my worst position ever) was my highest score. I had fun and was bitten by the competitive shooting bug again.

A few weeks after the 4-H event our range had a smallbore silhouette match. I was there with a fresh batch of ammo and a new scope sighted and ready. I shot two rounds scoring a 27 offhand and 40+9 from prone. The +9 on the prone score were tiebreakers. The tiebreakers are shot using NRA chickens placed at the 100yd ram line. I got 9 of 15. I was beat by a guy with a 40+15.

The next weekend was our range’s first ever big bore pistol silhouette. Our wonderful group of guys (and a gal) let me fire a selection of their guns and answered any questions I could come up with. I came back for the next match and fired a different selection of fine firearms. So now I’m debating on what to get: a Thompson/Center Contender with barrels for .22LR and 6.5mmTCU or find a Remington XP-100 7mm TCU. Either way I have the option to hunt critters large and small but the T/C gives me the option of buying barrels for almost any caliber I can imagine.

So now I’m hooked on shooting, with an emphasis in silhouette. I’ve made my schedule for the year based around our local matches and the ones at the Green River Gun Club.

In 2008 I plan to start shooting NRA sanctioned rifle matches (at Green River), acquire my own big bore pistol for IHMSA matches and shoot in the smallbore benchrest group at my home range.

2008 Silhouette Scores
04-20-08: Round 1 – 21/40 (full scale targets)
04-20-08: Round 2 – 29/40 (full scale targets)
05-18-08: Round 1 – 36/40 (prone, bad ammo caused the four missed)
05-18-08: Round 2 – 32/40 (offhand, new high score!)

2008 Smallbore Benchrest Scores
05/07/08: 3130-8x (out of 7500-75x. Not good but I know where I stand)
05/14/08: 2770-5x (if possible I shot better, but scored lower. More consistent)