Welcome back to another edition of The Rimfire Report! Many of you may be familiar with some of the more popular gun competitions: Steel Challenge, IDPA, USPSA, and the 3 Gun style competitions. All these competitions offer recreational shooters a chance to hone their skills and test them in a competitive environment. The big problem for most of these shooting sports is the upfront cost to compete. The Precision Rimfire Competition aims to dispel the harsh costs of other competitions and bring shooters of all ages and skill levels into the competitive world.

Big Comp Matches with Small Rifle Costs

Precision Rimfire competition offers the thrills of long-range shooting similar to PRS, but with the cost-effectiveness of rimfire ammo. This seems to be the biggest driving factor of the rapidly increasing popularity of the sport. The best part is that rimfire technology has advanced far enough and become accessible enough to make it a widely available sport. .22 LR is comparatively inexpensive and shoots soft enough that even children can become competitors.

A common precision rifle set up will run you at least $750 for the rifle. The glass will be an entirely different story. Good precision rifle glass can cost upwards of $1,500 and this is before doing any professional modifications to the trigger and aftermarket parts to make the rifle competitive. Things like a bipod and an adjustable stock can make life a lot easier for advanced shooters.

Meanwhile, a good starting Precision rifle setup can be as cheap as $1,200 out the door. Right now the Ruger Precision Rimfire costs just $529. Since the .22LR round doesn’t deliver much force to its accessories or shooter, good glass can be bought for as little as $500. But realistically you can expect to spend about $1,500 on a Precision Rimfire setup but you’ll more than make up for that cost with the savings in the ammo department.

Precision Rimfire Competition is fun for everyone

Let’s face it. Shooting .22LR is fun. Shooting .22LR in a competition is even more fun because you’re not constantly thinking about each shot costing nearly a quarter. Better yet, your children can even enjoy the precision rimfire competition.

A recent series of matches in the North East United states had several child competitors who are heavily into the sport. The recent MARS (Mid-Atlantic Rifle Series) competition was open to competitors of all ages. However, despite competitions usually catering to adults, this beginner-friendly rifle series saw a good number of children attend the competitions with their precision rimfire rigs.

Courses of fire usually consist of multiple targets at various ranges often extending out to 200 yards. Some courses may require the shooter to move and change position, adding to the fun.

Precision Rimfire Competition Pros and Cons

Whether you’re a seasoned shooter or a beginner, you’re more than likely to know that .22LR rimfire isn’t the most reliable round. In fact, compared to most other rounds it’s quite unreliable.

Shooters must come prepared for anything, including ammunition failures. For seasoned shooters, these failures can be a nuisance. For beginner shooters, these failures can be looked at as a good teaching tool. All shooters must come prepared to compete hard with their platform and to learn to memorize the course of fire for optimum efficiency.

Stop Reading Go Try it!

Personally, I think any sort of competitive sport shooting is a net benefit for the firearms community. We may not all compete at the Grand Master level or run a handgun like Taran Butler. But at the very least we can all improve our skills as shooters and pass that knowledge and experience along to our younger shooters.

With firearms being a cultural staple in the United States, events like the Precision Rimfire Competition can be a good way for us to bring our children into the competitive world. On top of that, we are teaching them safe and effective firearms handling techniques.

In the future, I plan on investing in a precision rimfire rig to compete with. One day hopefully I’ll have my children compete alongside me. However, as always I’d like to know your thoughts. What do you think of the precision rimfire competition? Does it serve a practical purpose? Will you be competing or are you currently a competitor? I’d love to hear your thoughts down in the comments. As always, thank you for reading and we’ll see you next week in the next edition of The Rimfire Report.

I’d like to pass on a huge thanks to mac guns for all the photos that were featured in this article. Macguns is a photography website run by Mark Anderson. Go and follow him on Instagram and check out his website for some great gun competition photos.