Bench Rest Rifle Club of St. Louis

[Snake]

There's been a lot of talk about the drop in participation in our sport. Sadly the existing silhouette competitors just don't support their sport.....well, for sure at my club. In fact the numbers are so bad BPCR and High Power are going to lose monthly match dates in 2017 with a view to ending both programs if things don't improve. We have a premier facility, a great target crew, and every amenity.....I don't get it. But F Class and 600 yard bench rest are growing..and aren't conducted with 'efficiency'. Can't anybody stand and shoot? Or are we doing something wrong?

[OldRanger]

Standing is hard. People don't like hard.

At our club the high power is always sold out (or close to it) and the charcoal burners get a much better turnout than the Smallbore/HP silhouette does. I started shooting 3 years ago and they said I was the first new shooter in years.

I'm not sure what the problem is either, but I hope we can at least keep things going, if not improve it. Do you send out reminders to your members about the matches? Do you send out stuff to all members of your club to try to get some out to silhouette?

[Snake]

Reminders? The members get a schedule of all events and match director information in January. The website has all match dates and contact information. Dates are posted on message boards. The new member orientation includes a walk through and description of All events. Dates and events and contact information are posted in the club house and handed out at the annual membership meeting. the only thing we don't do is drive by and wake the sorry bastards up. We have 1350 members yet non-members outnumber members in competitions about 4 to one. I've been shooting silhouette since 1982....and I can't recall any time where the sport has been so ignored by shooters. The so called long range stuff like F-Class and 600 yard bench rest are thriving....I suppose some prefer to shoot paper off a rest semi anonymously..rather than stand and allow your scores to be immediately seen

[dustinflint]

Bob,

Have you thought about adding a "Benchrest Silhouette" or "F-Class Silhouette" match to your HP matches? The 1000-yard Benchrest silhouette match in Ridgeway is wildly popular from what I hear. (I think it's dumb but whatever gets people out...) Your club could scale that game down and run it with your normal silhouette matches (just get the drawings of the targets they use and scale them to the normal silhouette distances).

Even better, maybe get some heavy duty 3/8 scale targets built and let the benchrest guys shoot of the bench at those targets with your normal silhouette crew with the normal silhouette timing. I would assume shooting at 3/8-scale targets at 200, 300, 385 and 500 meters off the bench would be challenging?

I know it's not getting real silhouette shooters out to the matches but it might get enough other shooters out to the matches to keep the silhouette matches viable and going.

Dustin

[Snake]

Dustin....that's a great idea. The problem are regaining the match dates that I'll lose in the interim. Once another discipline grabs my dates they are very difficult to regain. But I can start outdoor air rifle ....but I need to come up with some target stands that reset easily....I can sink the hook into air gun folks...

[dustinflint]

That reminds me that I need to get you some pictures of our airgun resettables! Glad you said something.

I cannot imagine that there is not a thriving high-power monthly club match at that beautiful range. If I were you, I would go to the board and tell them to allow you to keep your match dates for another year and tell them that you have a plan to increase participation. I think that benchrest silhouette would have to appeal to benchrest and F-class shooters. They get the best of both worlds, shooting from a bench to make it easy and steel reactive targets to shoot at.

Dustin

[Thesnackbar]

I recently started shooting this game and have brought my whole family into it. I was told over and over that we were the newest people to show up in years. The game has alot of PERCEIVED upfront costs that I believe scare people away. I used to shoot alot of PRS and had never even heard of silhouette shooting before I took it up. I keep hearing that the game is dying, its only a matter of time, the final nail is nearing. This bothers me,and that attitude bothers me. I just found this sport and am really enjoying shooting it with my family. So how do we fix this issue and get our numbers back up? From a new to the silhouette sport outsider looking in, I see some challenges but also opportunity.

Competing shooting sports- Cowboy,three gun, PRS you name it they have it- there is no shortage of shooting sports. In my opinion F-Class and 600 benchrest are growing because of the tactical rifle momentum, these guys already have precision rifles that weigh 12-20 pounds with the best glass there is on top, when there is not a PRS match they want to hone their skills so they go to a long range match and some transition over permanently to F-Class or benchrest. Alot of guys don't really realize the physical fitness component needed to compete in PRS, they are in love with the concept and idea of playing Bob lee Swagger. Once that doesn't pan out they stay with F-Class since they have 6,000 dollar rigs. Look around and every major manufacture is tooled up for the PRS, 3Gun game.

A big component to shooting PRS and 3Gun is that you don't always get a get a solid rest or a rest at all to shoot from, we can encourage these shooters to come out to our matches to learn trigger technique and offhand shooting to improve their game-Tubb rocked in across the course/3P because he could shoot offhand when others couldn't and their scores would suffer. If we can recruit people from these disciplines we might just turn a few into repeat customers.

LOTS OF NEW SHOOTERS!!! If i didn't know silhouette existed and I was an existing shooter, they probably don't either! PRS,3Gun and F-class also gets substantially more advertising space then we do so they don't have to work to promote their sport. I have been talking about silhouette to everyone of my shooting friends, I have recruited 4 family's from our boy scout troop, and hope to get a few more as word spreads. Point is, we have to promote our sport. If your at the range talk to people. Talk to your friends, your co-workers who hunt or shoot, and especially those with young kids. If a kid can get a parent to buy them a 350 dollar baseball bat every year they can get a parent to take them to a monthly match. This game inst anymore expensive than baseball or football.


Not alot of time to recruit or go out and talk to people about the game? I work full time and my kids play baseball and boy scouts and soccer and all the other stuff. We interact with people, during most conversations people ask about what other sports we are involved in, I always mention competitive shooting and tell them why, again most didn't even know it existed.


Our websites need work, trying to find out about matches can be difficult and challenging. If the people already shooting hadn't have been in the loop already there would be no way in hell I would have found out about all the matches in a timely fashion.

Internet presence- google silhouette shooting and look for Youtube videos. What do you find? very little right? Google PRS or three gun, what do you find?

I don't have all the answers or resources to fix everything. But I am willing to help. Ideas? Start a committee and make a youtube channel ? make videos? Put flyers of matches at local ranges(private and public)?. Someway, somehow we need to get our sport out there.



Suggestions? Thoughts? Ideas?

[Snake]

I agree that there are a bunch of shooters who don't know silhouette in any of its iterations exists....or exists where they can participate. Our Cowboy Lever gun has just started to develop because of a lot of word of mouth ...I tout it as a 'de minimus' game. All you need is a lever gun, Wal Mart ammo and a pair of binoculars for your spotter...even so its been a slow growth.
I agree that F-Class and 600 yard appeal to the tactical guys but silhouette has the bonus feature of clanging steel and falling targets...not just holes in paper scored out of sight. I repeatedly point out the hunting rifle category and just tell the prospect to bring their deer rifle and ammo......but regretfully only a couple have actually shown up (but now they're hooked). So perhaps the loose talk about the sport dying is becoming a self fulfilling prophecy.......As an anecdotal observation.....at our new member orientation ( we have added 120 new members this year) only 5% say they are interested in competition ...any competition....and we are by our bylaws a competition club. Most of the new folks have so called long range guns! So for starters I'm going to propose that every new member MUST engage in at least one competitive event to confirm membership......perhaps I can stem the tide of shy shooters.
A Youtube video highlighting some of our young men and ladies will help....oddly the photos from the Mexican silhouette ranges show dozens of competitors with their families....where is that demonstrated in the Land of the Free?