Welcome to the community, thanks for joining. It’s great to have more experienced and unique voices that want to share on the platform. Last spring I took it upon myself to become more proficient with a rifle (I turned down a decent mule deer because I wasn’t comfortable with a 300 yd shot). That goal led me down a wormhole of YouTube videos and eventually found NRL. I bought a “dialable” scope and a few weeks later I jumped into a local NRL match. Its incredibly eye opening to run through so many shooting opportunities in a condensed amount of time in a relatively stressful environment. I went from 2nd to last place in my first match to upper 30% in my 3rd match for the season. What would you say are your 3 top tips for people just starting, and 3 tips for those working to go from a mid pack shooter to competitive? I’m certainly not competitive but I’ve been analyzing these past matches to help my development as a rifleman, I think I’d distill it as these points below and would be interested to know yours.
Beginners:
1. Have a reliable / bomb proof set up - be able to trust your misses and not thing your scope got bumped all day (I did my own drop test prior to my first match and have had lasting confidence in my set up since)
2. Do skills - my first match I bought a slot off a guy who wouldn’t make it and was in open light struggled mightily, I should have asked the MD to drop to skills so I could at least have some success to start. Also with skills try the first half of the stages with targets pointed out to you and try to second half “cold” and only ask questions when you’re really stumped
3. Have fun, take everything 1 shot at a time - your won’t find every target, get to every position, etc and if you focus on that you’re probably rushing and doing poorly. Try to have a little success instead of a lot of failure
Intermediate / Advanced:
1. Keep a match book and record every stage - I kept a little book and wrote down stage info, ranges, positions, hits and misses, how many targets found, wind calls, etc and will review during the match and after. Quantify your performance so you can improve (I’ve found this invaluable to be able to look back and understand what I need to work on, what conditions or positions I suck at, “max effective range” as in I can make 1st round impacts from X range in any wind condition or position)
2. USE MILs - for both quick drop and easy wind calls (my first match was in Wyoming and it was an absolute trial by fire since I’d never shot in more than 10 mph wind before... I carried a notebook and wrote out my wind solutions on the clock so I wasn’t just hoping for a hit. When I slowed down and made a correct wind call I magically hit targets, when I rushed and didn’t I missed badly. I think someone once said Jesus loves base 10 units of measure…)
3. Spot your own impacts - recoil management is imperative to success and having a solid enough position to see your hits AND being able to trust the shots were good in order to make a correction is The hardest and most important part I think. “Believe the bullet” as a pretty smart guy likes to say
