I have never shot an NRA rifle silhouette round because I have never been near a range hosting matches. Pistol, BPCR, and vintage military silhouette matches are all that are available around here.

To my point, how well does shooting smallbore (SB) compare to preparing one for highpower (HP) silhouette? Are the scores in one comparable to the other? I have a CZ452 Silhouette I play with on SB and enjoy it.

If SB does not help with HP, what is different in the two other than wind?

If your smallbore form is good, your usual smallbore hold consists of pulling the rifle into your shoulder slightly with your trigger hand, and the recoil doesn't get to you (either well-chosen loads or you just not caring) then smallbore prepares you very well for highpower. I've shot smallbore for three years now and just started highpower this year. I usually shoot high AAA or low master scores in smallbore. I started into highpower shooting low to mid-AAA scores, I think. I haven't had a lot more trouble with wind in highpower than I do in smallbore. The ballistic coefficients of the highpower bullets are so much higher than the 22lr rounds that drift from a "minutes of angle" point of view seem to be about the same.

Highpower is a lot more expensive and time-consuming, though. For smallbore, I just pull out my $6/50 round box of Eley Club EPS and blaze away, knowing that I'll probably never wear the barrel out. For highpower, there are brass, bullets ($30-40 per 100), primers, powder that are ongoing costs on top of all of the reloading equipment like press, competition dies, brass prep tools, powder scale, powder dispenser, etc. I usually spend about 4 hours of prep for highpower for every hour that I spend shooting, and have to drive 3 hours (gas $$$) each way to get to the only place in the state that holds the matches. I'm also spending a bit in the next few months to replace the stock on my highpower rifle to make it more like my smallbore rifle. After several thousand rounds, I'll be paying to replace the worn out barrel. If my wife knew how much highpower silhouette really costs, she'd probably use the highpower rifle on me.

Now, with all of that said, highpower silhouette is absolutely the most fun shooting sport that I've ever competed in. I've done everything from shotguns to archery to benchrest rifle matches, and there's nothing like knocking those 500 meter rams down offhand! To feel the satisfaction of hitting a highpower turkey, especially a few in a row, is enough to get me too excited to shoot the next bank. If you ever see a highpower ram up close and see how heavy it is and think about how you hit them with enough force to knock them off the rail from 500 meters away (again, offhand!), it's just too cool. If you do get to go to a match and have the chance to go out to the ram line, by all means do it. Looking back from the ram line to the firing line to see the tiny little people will give you great perspective on just how far away those targets really are.

Even if you don't have the perfect setup for a highpower silhouette, go try one out. I bet you'll be hooked.

Everyone's mileage will vari but I feel the following. SB helps you with your off hand hold, sight picture, muscle memory, etc or simply your basic skills. In HP you need all those skills for the follow through needed with the increased recoil and distances your shooting at.

Now for for the fun factor I tried HP once and was hooked

I myself am like Jason, been shooting smallbore for 3 years and am a master in both classes. I've been shooting highpower for a year and am a AA in hunter and AAA in standard. So yes the scores will not be as high in smallbore but dont let that be a discouraging factor. Bob is right, I was hooked after the first animal fell. I asked a fellow shooter if I might be able to try his rifle out at the next match and it was no problem, even let me shoot some of his loads so I didnt have to bring or worry about anything. On the way home we stoped by a local shop that had a consingment rifle on the shelf that was silhoutte specific and bought it that day. Smallbore helps with highpower like Jason has stated(stance, hold, etc,) and is also more expensive as the forum states but 10x more fun. I know guys that would rather shoot more highpower matches than smallbore, me included. Olympian when you get to wherever you get to and find a smallbore range that hopefully hosts highpower ask your fellow shooters if you might be able to shoot there gun at the next match. Thats the best thing about silhouette, everybody is generally friendly and wont mind letting somebody get hooked on what they themselves love to do.

Looks like we might be bringing yet another over to the dark side

just wait until your HP scores are higher than your smallbore most of the time... im not sure how i pull that off....
but ya, HP is alot more expensive, but alot more fun, difference between a Pinto and a camaro...

Ah High power.....One of my favorite things...3 hr drive hell I should be so lucky..I have to drive to other states to shoot and not even a near state at that ! clear accross the country..I have to wait usally for Nationals to be able to shoot my high power...Barrel life for me is long usally years since I dont shoot it...I wear them out practacing on reduced smallbore targets on a 100 yard range...not much fun. Most times the only time I touch my hi-power is to scoot it aside to get to my smallbore gun....can you feel my pain !!! Oh well maybe the gods of silhouette will smile on me some day before I retire and leave this hot place with no high power silhouette and some range will host them here in Florida....

I would love to give HP a try but the thought of another addiction to add to the 3 airgun classes and smallbore I already shoot makes my wallet shiver in fear.

The local SB match group is talking about get a set of scaled animals to shoot HP on the next range over from our smallbore range since we have use of the whole place that day.

The longest range we have is 300 yards and we were thinking of having all 4 animals smalled for this distance to keep them right infront of the berm. Problem is I really don't want to get into the whole reloading process and buying a rifle just for this as the only other match is the annual state match which I plan to shoot next year for the 1st time. I was thinking that I might be able to get away with something more generic/available for shooting out to 300 yards locally but then I wouldn't likely have a rifle that could handle the full scale range when I did manage to get to a match.

Guess I will give the local match a chance to get into my blood, that should take all of 10 seconds. Then make up my mind. It would just be nice to be able to get factory loads that performed well enough for this sport as reloading is not a hobby in my future.

Think a .223 or .243 would be plenty for 300 yard scaled animals. If I could shoot it with a .223 that would keep the costs down.


Dee

There is a local group near here that shoots a 200 yd. scaled down silhouette match. Apparently, all you need is one sight setting to play. I never attended their match because it conflicts with another match I typically attend, but I should check into it sometime just to experience it. They have SB and scaled HP on the same day; iron sight shooters are welcome, too.

Mini Kitty shot her .243 with 85 grain bullets across the course at Zwolle with no "rang" animals except Rams, she "rang" 10 of them...We knew the 85 graiin bullet would be marginal at best on Rams, but we were more interested in having some success and controlling recoil so she would have the desire to continue to shoot highpower...So, at the risk of fueling the great 6mm debate I would say that the .243 would work across the course on a reduced (1/2) scale course. Dunno about the .223....the little buggers have been known to burrow right through a steel target....And, for the record, Mini Kitty's .243 was a box stock Remington 700 youth model, the one with the plastic stock. Only thing we did to prep it was to break in the barrel rather aggressivley, using a polishing compound to polish the bore before using the shoot/clean/shoot/clean etc method of breaking in the barrel. The load we developed was mild, used an 85 grain Game King bullet and shot fist sized groups at the turkeys (385 meters). Wa the same load she used to take her deer this year.

Kitty

Dee, I've been told the .223 is disallowed because it damages targets.

In my experience, the .223 does not damage chickens/ 200m targets when using 75+gr bullets and loaded to reasonable velocities. With 50-55gr. bullets, damage generally occurs at 200.

Olympian...you wont have to get special targets made//you can shoot the pistol half scale ones...I thought we could do it here but the guns would have to be scaled down or the targets would have to be thicker.....

6mm is minimum bore size for NRA. Most clubs, even if they aren't running NRA sanctioned matches, dont like .223 because some fool will show up with military surpluss M855 or the like.

Single distance events seem easier if only for the set it and forget it method of tracking zero's. I shot my first HP match in 11 years last summer, a 200 reduced course, and shot a 35. Tracking zero's and wind effects across all 4 distances would add another variable.

My SB scores (formerly a Master shooter) are no where near being back to that level.

I'd say they correlate pretty well, except for recoil and ringing rams, bith of which aren't generally a SB problem.

Bob259 wrote:Everyone's mileage will vari but I feel the following. SB helps you with your off hand hold, sight picture, muscle memory, etc or simply your basic skills. In HP you need all those skills for the follow through needed with the increased recoil and distances your shooting at.

Now for for the fun factor I tried HP once and was hooked

Exactly, Bob.

Wayne Leek invented SB as practice for high power because of the distance to a range to shoot high power.

There is frequently more going on between you and the target in high power and you need to control the rifle more, but that is exactly correct. You can build your form in SB without all the work (and expense) of loading & so on so that you can actually spend the time practicing.

I have noticed that there are a lot more edge shots that take the animal in SB. If you were to scale the bullet up along with the target size to compare it to a high power course of fire, the bullet would be a bit over an inch in diameter!

Now, if the wind would just blow a little bit less this coming year.

jneihouse wrote:Mini Kitty shot her .243 with 85 grain bullets across the course at Zwolle with no "rang" animals except Rams, she "rang" 10 of them...We knew the 85 graiin bullet would be marginal at best on Rams, but we were more interested in having some success and controlling recoil so she would have the desire to continue to shoot highpower...So, at the risk of fueling the great 6mm debate I would say that the .243 would work across the course on a reduced (1/2) scale course. Dunno about the .223....the little buggers have been known to burrow right through a steel target....And, for the record, Mini Kitty's .243 was a box stock Remington 700 youth model, the one with the plastic stock. Only thing we did to prep it was to break in the barrel rather aggressivley, using a polishing compound to polish the bore before using the shoot/clean/shoot/clean etc method of breaking in the barrel. The load we developed was mild, used an 85 grain Game King bullet and shot fist sized groups at the turkeys (385 meters). Wa the same load she used to take her deer this year.

Kitty

The young lady did very, very well.