When I was in high school, I joined JROTC. I spent time on the Raiders team, drill team, and rifle team. I’ve always enjoyed shooting, but maybe that’s just a byproduct of growing up in Florida. I had some guns growing up, and my dad would take me to the range to shoot. It was always something he and I enjoyed doing together.
Of course, in the months leading up to leaving for school in New York, the guns had to be sold. I couldn’t bring those with me. Fast forward ten years or so to when I moved from New York to rural Pennsylvania. In my search for interesting things to do, I discovered there was a shooting range less than ten minutes from my house. So naturally, I started taking up some shooting again.
Long-range precision shooting is all about controlling the variables. If the rifle you are shooting is capable, then the primary variable you need to control is the human, a.k.a. yourself. There’s nothing more frustrating than knowing you controlled for those variables but still missed.
One who finds himself at that point may end up going down the rabbit hole of reloading, which I myself did. After acquiring a laundry list of things—powders, a scale, a press, etc.—I began my journey. A few months later, I quickly discovered that I had potentially outgrown my local range, which at its furthest distance is only 100 yards.
My spouse likes to joke with me that when I’m going to the range, I’m pissing dollars to the wind. I like to counter with, “Only if I’m missing the target.” However, I discovered that I was not 100% correct. Putting five to ten rounds through the same hole on a paper target at 100 yards has about the same cost as missing all ten rounds.
“What do I do?” I thought. Well, I needed to find a longer-distance range to shoot at. After some online research, I discovered a facility roughly two hours north of me where they have long-range precision competitions. I signed up for one of the intro non-PRS matches and, having no idea what I was getting myself into, rolled the dice and went.
I learned a heck of a lot that day. When you’re only shooting 100 yards, you never have to dial, assuming you were zeroed at that distance. That day, I was shooting distances that required me to dial more than a full rev of elevation. I learned very quickly that the calculations one makes for shots at those distances are critical. I also learned that having a five-round magazine for a ten-round stage is a bit of a disadvantage. Ha ha.
I’ve been shooting Precision Rifle Series matches for over a year now, and I’m still trying not to suck. At least all of the people at the competitions are very friendly and more than willing to help out the new guys, which was me for a while. Even though you are scored against other people at these competitions, you are mainly competing against yourself for the most part. Perhaps it’s similar to golf, in a way, in that your competitors' performance doesn’t impact yours per se.
It really just comes down to managing the variables.