The Sport

Silhouette competition shooting is a very exciting and challenging sport with a great history and the best part is there is very little expense associated with silhouette shooting. Small bore rifle is simply a miniature of the high power rifle game. Small bore rifle allows you to develop and hone your skills at a reduced cost without losing any of the fun.

The object of the game is to knock as many silhouettes as possible off their pedestals, shooting one round at each silhouette. It is a very simple competition, with very simple scoring: You get a 1 for knocking an animal off its stand, a 0 for anything else. Although silhouette is an easy game to learn, it is not an easy game to master. The animals are rather small and the distances are rather large; you must shoot offhand (standing); a moderate breeze can move a bullet or a pellet the width of an animal; your concentration becomes more difficult to hold as you knock down five in a row, six, .... These factors make silhouette an endless challenge.

Silhouette shooting originated in Mexico in the 1940s. It is now shot all over the world with everything from air pistols to black powder rifles. Silhouette sizes and distances vary according to the kind of rifle or pistol, but everything else is the same. For example, high-power rifle silhouettes are life-size, but they are shot at much longer distances than the scaled-down smallbore or air rifle silhouettes. Commands to load, fire, and cease fire are often given in Spanish, in part to honor the sport's heritage, and in part to distinguish the silhouette shooters' commands from those directed at other shooters sharing the range. (Non-Spanish speakers, don't worry; there are only three commands!) Silhouette's roots are in hunting, and becoming a better silhouette shooter can make you shoot better in the field as well.

A match consists of 40, 60, or 80 shots at the same number of animals. In a 60-shot match, you shoot 15 rounds at 15 chickens, 15 rounds at 15 pigs, and the same for turkeys and rams. For smallbore the animals distances are 40 (Chickens), 60 (Pigs), 77 (Turkeys), and 100 (Rams) yards. You shoot at the silhouettes in sets (banks) of five; you get 2-1/2 minutes per bank, which is usually plenty of time even for single-shot rifles. In a 60-shot match, there are three banks per animal (3x5=15, 15x4=60); 40- and 80-shot matches have two and four banks per animal, respectively. In a 60-shot match, a few shooters will score in the 20s, most will shoot in the 30s and 40s, and a few will break 50. Perfect scores are very rare. Shooters are classified into handicap groups based on past performance so they can compete with others of similar ability. But it's not just the score that counts. Toppling a silhouette is a satisfying experience that you want to do again and again. Silhouette shooters are usually a great bunch of people to shoot and talk and laugh with.