2025 NRL Hunter

[B_Reynolds_AK]

Power Factor: while I understand the original purpose, we’ve circled back to gamers with 6.5mms and even a few .25 CAL (for non-skills division). There is a big enough body of data to suggest that larger cartridges, bullets, etc to not equal an linear increase in lethality. I’d like to see rule changes to allow folks to shoot what caliber they like (including 22 CAL, 6mm’s etc.)

100% agree. My suppressed 12 lb 22 CM recoils more than a 16 lb 6.5 CM with a brake. If the PF was designed to reduce the gaming ability, it’s not doing its job, as the majority of the guns were most certainly gamer guns that would never be carried in the backcountry to hunt with. Not to mention the lethality of a .224 Match bullet has even on moose.

Maybe a rule that if you’re shooting under current minimum power factor, that your gun needs to be under 10 or 12 lbs.

 

[9.3koolaid]

100% agree. My suppressed 12 lb 22 CM recoils more than a 16 lb 6.5 CM with a brake. If the PF was designed to reduce the gaming ability, it’s not doing its job, as the majority of the guns were most certainly gamer guns that would never be carried in the backcountry to hunt with. Not to mention the lethality of a .224 Match bullet has even on moose.

I was shooting teams so I tried to build somewhat of a gamer gun and put my 7-08 in a krg with an enclosed forend. It's still less than 13lbs with a bipod. 16lbs is nuts

 

[id_jon]

100% agree. My suppressed 12 lb 22 CM recoils more than a 16 lb 6.5 CM with a brake. If the PF was designed to reduce the gaming ability, it’s not doing its job, as the majority of the guns were most certainly gamer guns that would never be carried in the backcountry to hunt with. Not to mention the lethality of a .224 Match bullet has even on moose.

Maybe a rule that if you’re shooting under current minimum power factor, that your gun needs to be under 10 or 12 lbs.

I think instead of just power factor, we should add rifle weight to it. Make it PF x rifle weight and continue to use that for tie breakers.

 

[id_jon]

I was shooting teams so I tried to build somewhat of a gamer gun and put my 7-08 in a krg with an enclosed forend. It's still less than 13lbs with a bipod. 16lbs is nuts

A 16lb gun is so nice to shoot though
I'd be happy if it went to 13 and 10lbs

 

[9.3koolaid]

I think instead of just power factor, we should add rifle weight to it. Make it PF x rifle weight and continue to use that for tie breakers.

That could be cool, just make a minimum ftlb of recoil.

 

[wind gypsy]

Shit, mine is 15lb, 15.5 ounces

 

[Marty]

Shit, mine is 15lb, 15.5 ounces

big boned!

 

[AKarchery]

First NRL Hunter Match complete.
That was really fun and had some unexpected challenges. Tyler Freel and I squadded up, along with @AKarchery and a friend of Tyler’s from FBX. I shot Skills with my UM Tikka 22 CM w/ 80 ELD-M’s @ 3195 fps in a HNT 26.

Challenges

- Targets were hidden very well. The battleship gray steel was harder to see than I expected. I guess that’s what I get from only hunting white creatures, or atleast ones with white butts haha. I zeroed out on my first stage trying to find 4 little porcupines. Things went quite a bit better after that stage.

- Tikka bolt stop pin sheared off on stage 2 or 3, losing the stop & spring along the way. Thankfully the cheek piece kept the bolt from falling out the rest of the day. Had to run the bolt carefully. @AKarchery took apart one of his own Tikkas to give me the parts from it, as we was driving back home that night.

- Rangefinder. After a couple stages, I quickly realized that my BR4 and Swaro NL combination wasn’t going to cut it if I wanted to actually not time out on more stages than I wanted to. I called up @Marty, who was RO’ing a few stages further up the mountain. He graciously sent another RO down on his SxS to swap out his Revic BLR’s for my NL 10x32’s for the rest of the event. They made my workflow much easier. He also provided a Ckye Double pull for me to use, rather than the short Atlas Cal I have.

- Spotting Impacts
I can’t think of one target that had dirt or rocks around it to spot misses and make corrections. The sub alpine brush soaked up any misses. If you didnt see your trace, it was impossible to determine how to correct. Made it hard at times to even determine what direction the wind was blowing, as it would switch fairly often.


- Playing the game in general. Getting my mind to think carefully about the limits, placards etc.

In general, I felt pretty comfortable once I got into the flow of things. The shooting positions were straightforward for me, as I do a lot of tripod shooting. Cleaned a couple stages and got 7 points on the bison at 900+ yards that only about 5 shooters cleaned and 5 got 7 points. I ended up with 99 points overall, which in combined scores, put me at 48th out of 138 shooters. The difference in points between first and second round hits really makes a huge difference.

The hiking was great, though a bit dusty!
It was horrible keeping my action open the whole time, letting all the dust blow in there. My KRG Midas got a little stiff one time, but my the next shot, was back to normal. We hiked 5 ish miles each day.

Used my RRS Ascend-14 with MA-30L head.
My Scythe didn’t blow apart. Success.


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Squad
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Cross Canyon Stage
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@AKarchery @bearcreekbandit & Gabe
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@AKarchery in his first Match and first time shooting past 300 yards. He used his Rokstok/RS1.2 gun.
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Me, wearing my headphones improperly haha.
I’d not be wearing them at all except for the few guys with f****ng brakes around.
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Second day we had some pretty lengthy backups on some stages, 1 hr +
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@bearcreekbandit 2nd in Open Light
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Thanks again for all the knowledge transfer!

Having never shot beyond 300 yards, it was a challenge. I learned a ton and saw simple areas to improve. The flat range is good but barely transfers to “field” shooting. I struggled a lot with sight picture as well as gear operation. I should’ve prepared better.

I also only brought stuff I would actually take hunting like a Leupold full draw 4 range finder and a aziak ridgeline tripod. The rangefinder worked great when it worked lol. Shooting the skills division I had to confirm ranges with ROs on almost every stage. On everything 600 and in I was pretty close on range. I wanted more to get in quality reps than to just lose a bunch of brass in the tundra.

Having a good set of RF Binos and a tripod to stand and shoot off of would’ve helped tremendously. The time to go from Binos to a rangefinder and re-find the target eats a ton of time. That and on top of the obvious part of shooting more in field positions on a timer and at longer distances.

The rokstock with the Maven RS1.2 performed flawlessly in my opinion and the only area on the weapon setup that could’ve been better would be to have a bigger magazine. I’m running the UM Bottom metal and I’ll just say, 4 rounds run out a lot quicker than you’d think, and trying to top feed and pull rounds out of your pocket while not losing the target is a challenge and a time eater. You could also run a couple mags but still would waste some time, every time I came off the target to reload, 5-15 seconds were wasted requiring the target.

The rifle weighed in at 9lbs


I was using factory 143 ELDX and MV was approx 2550. I did see on the PF check that across 3 shots I had an ES of 70fps. That affirmed some load dev has to happen.

Also, the first day I brought my almost 8K cubic in Barney’s pack and way to much stuff. Being an Alaskan, I was prepared for the worst of weather with full rubber rain gear and a bigger synthetic puffy. I had a descent Med kit as being around 200 people with guns makes me a little nervous. The pack weighed about 45lbs and was quite cumbersome to move around on the stage as I always found a way to put it right in my way.

I did a lot better than I thought I would but not as good as I hoped. All in all I had a ton of fun and would recommend for everyone to atleast try it. I had a ton ofhelp from the squad and really hope they do it again up here!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ruger35]

Tripods, Tac Tables, and Bags vs. Clip Ins:

• The pros know how to deploy a tripod, put a bag atop a tac table, then glass. More commonly, however, was folks trying to do what the pros do, and having the three components, tripod, bag, and binos, fall over. 15-30 seconds later, they’ve re-established their shooting smore and can begin to glass once again.
• I tested myself to find what works best for me: I’ll have my binos clipped in before the stage start. After shooting multiple 5 round groups (single shot make then break position under 20 seconds) I have found that for me, a tac table doesn’t help. I got the same general results either clipped into my tripod or with a gamechanger or smedium game changer placed atop my pic/arca ball head.

I brought my tac table and never used it. I clipped in my binos to my tricer arca adapter and thought that was the best option, even though I left it in the truck Sunday lol. About halfway through Saturday I figured out I should be clipping my binos to the adapter prior to starting the stage. You are right on saving time, that was a game changer. With an inverted tripod you could walk up and you were ready to glass in 10 seconds or less I bet.

 

[ruger35]

I was shooting teams so I tried to build somewhat of a gamer gun and put my 7-08 in a krg with an enclosed forend. It's still less than 13lbs with a bipod. 16lbs is nuts

I got some of y’all brass all the way down here on the bayou lol. Found it when cleaning and de-priming mine.

 

[Marty]

I brought my tac table and never used it. I clipped in my binos to my tricer arca adapter and thought that was the best option, even though I left it in the truck Sunday lol. About halfway through Saturday I figured out I should be clipping my binos to the adapter prior to starting the stage. You are right on saving time, that was a game changer. With an inverted tripod you could walk up and you were ready to glass in 10 seconds or less I bet.

I failed to comment on this in my original post but I found it rewarding to see individuals and teams adapt and improve from day one to day two. Figure out what works, what doesn't, and bang steel!

As an RO, my teammate and I shot all 20 stages in one day. Had to adapt real quick and have a good sense of humor when we didn't.

 

[walk2112]

I'm not sure if you're the guy in the blue shirt, but Sunday he sure did some showing off to us flatlanders when he ran down the hill and back up with a smile on his face lol. It was our first match and first time ever shooting with my partner, definitely took some getting used to the format. The only other competition I had shot was a couple weeks prior at NF and it's a totally different shooting rotation than NRL Hunter.

--Spotting misses
I can only think of one or two stages that had something to show misses. We mis-ranged a couple of targets and luckily I was confident in my dope and and rifle system that I was able to score impacts by holding in the reticle when I couldn't see the impacts. I also learned quickly even if it's one target to write my dope down. Costed me on the caribou stage, should have been at 3.9 but didn't write down the dope and thought I remembered 5.9. I couldn't spot the misses on the bison, asked the RO after the stage and he told me that I had actually made a good wind call but was right under it every shot.

If anyone is interested my shooting partner who sponsored some discounted action certificates and owns Roaming Shot Precision & Outdoors actually put out a podcast last night about our experience in Alaska. Should be a funny listen to hear some out of shape Louisiana rookie's perspectives.

You and your shooting partner were awesome to hang out with and shoot the breeze with in between stages, appreciate all the laughs and rifle nerd gear chatting!

 

[ruger35]

You and your shooting partner were awesome to hang out with and shoot the breeze with in between stages, appreciate all the laughs and rifle nerd gear chatting!

All the hunting talk hyped me enough I came home and did my research, called UM and am in the queue for a Vesper 7PRC. Now the only hunting I can do the rest of the year is in the parking lot for change lol.

 

[wind gypsy]

I'm shooting a PRS match this weekend so was messing around with a different gun to get ready. Makes me want to just do a one gun solution for PRS and NRL and shoot sportsmans division in PRS.. Primary down side is a 13# 6.5 creed for sportsmans that shooting suppressed would be a serious disadvantage vs a brake since spotting impacts/trace is more important in that game than NRL. A 20#+ rifle in same or milder chambering can make up some of the recoil mitigation shortcoming of a can.

 

[ID_Matt]

I'm shooting a PRS match this weekend so was messing around with a different gun to get ready. Makes me want to just do a one gun solution for PRS and NRL and shoot sportsmans division in PRS.. Primary down side is a 13# 6.5 creed for sportsmans is that shooting suppressed would be a serious disadvantage vs a brake since spotting impacts/trace is more important in that game than NRL. A 20#+ rifle in same or milder chambering can make up some of the recoil mitigation shortcoming of a can.

13# suppressed creed is pretty spicy for 10 rounds a minute. I sort of wish they would have bumped that to 16# - manageable weight for 10 shots but not insanely heavy and impractical like a 22 lb 6 dasher.

 

[wind gypsy]

13# suppressed creed is pretty spicy for 10 rounds a minute. I sort of wish they would have bumped that to 16# - manageable weight for 10 shots but not insanely heavy and impractical like a 22 lb 6 dasher.

Yeah, I was going to lend my buddy my NRL gun for this match and was thinking that CTR tube is going to get HOT. Non scythe approved firing rate.

Had my mind running down ways to game the recoil aspect.. 124 seneca solids over 39ish gr varget was one idea.

 

[ID_Matt]

Yeah, I was going to lend my buddy my NRL gun for this match and was thinking that CTR tube is going to get HOT. Non scythe approved firing rate.

Had my mind running down ways to game the recoil aspect.. 124 seneca solids over 39ish gr varget was one idea.

Not a bad idea. Or some of the lighter ELDM's. Braked suppressor would help too - recoil X or a Tbac RR

 

[joshs]

I'm shooting a PRS match this weekend so was messing around with a different gun to get ready. Makes me want to just do a one gun solution for PRS and NRL and shoot sportsmans division in PRS.. Primary down side is a 13# 6.5 creed for sportsmans is that shooting suppressed would be a serious disadvantage vs a brake since spotting impacts/trace is more important in that game than NRL. A 20#+ rifle in same or milder chambering can make up some of the recoil mitigation shortcoming of a can.

I shoot a lighter rifle by PRS standards and still find it more diffiult to spot impacts with a can than a brake, but I hate the rest of the shooting expierence of brakes compared to a can. I have very little expierence with the compeition oriented suppresor brakes (Maverick, RecoilX, and the new TB and Abel cans with larger brake attachments), but they seem like a good compromise.

 

[wind gypsy]

My NRL gun wears a nomad XC with recoilx brake. I just got a recoil X for my scythe but i'm afraid to use the scythe for 6.5x47 with PRS firing rates. Going to shoot with a brake tomorrow. Might change that up in the future.

 

[Juan_ID]

I just got a recoil X for my scythe but i'm afraid to use the scythe for 6.5x47 with PRS firing rates.