I started shooting silhouettes in March this year and I've been picking it up fairly well. Reached AA in both rifles in the late summer and picked up a half dozen 5-pins or so. A couple weeks ago I decided to set my sights on my first 10-pin as a reasonable goal for 2013, but this past weekend at the local match I nabbed my first one on the pigs in what turned out to be a pretty fortunate circumstance (the director didn't realize I was still shooting and he called an early cease fire right before I broke the trigger on the 10th pig). Fortunately the pig dropped and I was elated. It was a fluke shot because once I brought my scope onto the 10th pig, my reticle was bouncing so badly from my blood pressure spike that I could barely have hit a ram at that distance. I just broke the trigger as I strafed the target and my wish came true.

I was figuring on starting to shop around at a good quality vest sometime next year (I currently just shoot in regular clothes). As I've been really hooked on the sport and am seeing good progress, I am thinking of maybe doing the vest upgrade a bit sooner than planned, that way I'll have been able to hopefully practice a few matches in it before the British Columbia provincial championships in May.

I'm almost certainly going to be going with a Hardscrabble Mountain vest, but I wanted to tap into the steelchickens knowledge base and ask you kind folks for any non-obvious advise/pointers you might offer.

Is there any benefit to a top grain leather over the suede or is it just looks? Is the top grain much more durable?

Are there any little gotchas or "ah-ha"s, that any of you encountered AFTER ordering your vests that made you say "If I order another vest again, I'd chance this..." I mean things like pocket locations or orientations, placement of other accessories, etc.

Thanks for any feedback!

My advice is to call Chris Winstead at Hardscrabble and chat with him about what you want. You wont find a more knowledgable person when it comes to silhouette shooting and he does a GREAT job getting you what you want/need.

My opinion is that the all-suede vest is the best shooter and the top-grain leather is mostly for looks and ease of cleaning.

Call Chris, he'll get you set up.

Congrats on your 10 pigs!

Dustin

My lessons learned the hard way...

• Get the piece of suede that the butt of your rifle touches in a dark color, not a bright/light color. Bright/light colors show dirt more and suede is a pain to clean.
• Get pockets for three 22lr magazines, not two.
• I've never seen anyone with loops on their vest for highpower rounds actually use them.
• Go ahead and get any designs/lettering you might want on the back/chest of the vest when it's originally being made. I saw a composite design with all of the animals layered over each other that I loved but didn't get it because I was trying to save money initially when I ordered. I regretted it before I even got my vest delivered and have regretted it since. Adding things later is possible, but doesn't look as good as having them there from the start, not to mention the headache/extra expense of shipping, etc.

As has been said, call Chris and talk to him. He really helped me a lot and is great to deal with. I think the choice of top grain leather or suede is mostly a personal cosmetic choice, except for the two spots where grip matters. Those are the shoulder where the butt of the rifle touches and the ribs/hip where the forward arm touches. They need to be suede. I happen to like the look of suede better than top grain leather so mine is all suede. As I noted above, though, suede is a pain to clean.

....post withdrawn.

Thanks, Jason, that's the kind of stuff I was hoping to glean. I will definitely be looking at suede for the contact areas.

And that marketplace vest is way too big for me, but I'd probably prefer a customized design anyhow.

I'll probably get in touch with Chris shortly into the new year when I have finished with all the seasonal spending.

Seasonal spending? Silhouette shooting is a full time year round spending sport

I tried using the HP loops on my Sanchez vest and it worked great for the soft point bullets of the .250 Savage loaner rifle I was using at that time. Then I got my own HP rifle and tried them again only to find the points on Lapua 6.5 Scenars to be a bit sharper and just started to use the ammo box all the time.

The little pockets inside the pockets for magazines is nice and I wish I had them in both pockets.

A vest is a great investment and will help you a lot. I went with a shotgun style vest at first but it wasn't enough in the shoulder. That 10th pig would have been moving a little slower if you had a vest on but not much. Congrats on your 1st 10 in a row they are harder to come by than one would think. Great confidence builder too for the next opportunity.

Dee