My money is on @rhovee"If you took the 5 top competitors from each shooting style. Pulled out a rifle and said, shoot across that canyon and hit that 12" target at 600 yards with no sighters, no wind flags, no front rest, just a bipod and a rear bag. My money would be on the PRS guys.
I respect all shooting disciplines and would never try and compare skill levels between the shooters in each. It's simply apples and oranges! To shoot at the top of any of them takes talent.
HOWEVERa 12" target at 600 yds. I'd take that bet and put my money on a top FClass FTR shooter. You said you've never shot FClass so you may not know FTR is shot with front bipod and rear bag.
Also National record in FTR at 600 yds is 200-19X. X ring is 3" at 600yds
How Accurate Are The Worlds Top PRS Shooters
- Thread starter whatsupdoc
- Start date
Have them go to a BR competition and show us how accurate they are. PRS is not as much about shooting skill as it is about finding targets in the wild of unknown distance, running, sprinting, twisting like a pretzel and firing from barricades and such while being timed!
If you want to see what the pinnacle of shooting, reloading and machining skills is go to BR.
If you want to play soldier with unlimited budget with gear no DMR or Sniper would have go to PRS. It is a cross between LARPING and CALL of DUTY.
If you want to be a real marksman I would recommend a combination of NRA High Power and High Power Silhouette.
Top F Class shooters often do poorly even national level champions in PRS. PRS is far too athletic and time oriented for most of the people that dominate F Class and BR. PRS is not about ultimate shooting skill! I am not aware of any top level BR shooters that compete in PRS. You need to have above average mastery of shooting to be competitive in PRS but you do not need world class shooting skill to win at PRS. Just like world class sprinters seldom do well in Pro Football but many world class receivers in Pro Football are high level sprinters but seldom world class!
If you want to see what the pinnacle of shooting, reloading and machining skills is go to BR.
If you want to play soldier with unlimited budget with gear no DMR or Sniper would have go to PRS. It is a cross between LARPING and CALL of DUTY.
If you want to be a real marksman I would recommend a combination of NRA High Power and High Power Silhouette.
Top F Class shooters often do poorly even national level champions in PRS. PRS is far too athletic and time oriented for most of the people that dominate F Class and BR. PRS is not about ultimate shooting skill! I am not aware of any top level BR shooters that compete in PRS. You need to have above average mastery of shooting to be competitive in PRS but you do not need world class shooting skill to win at PRS. Just like world class sprinters seldom do well in Pro Football but many world class receivers in Pro Football are high level sprinters but seldom world class!
Great post, you pretty well hit the nail on the head
xswanted
Gold $$ Contributor
Tell me you don’t know anything about PRS without telling me you don’t know anything about PRS.
xswanted
Gold $$ Contributor
My local club won’t support NRL 22.
They make up excuses as to why it won’t work and at the same time laugh about it, like it doesn’t have any merit as a legit form of competitive rifle shooting.
I feel like a lot of posters on this thread could be on the board.
I’m amazed at the level of accuracy top bench rest shooters achieve. It’s unreal actually.
I shot NRA Silhouette from 8 years old into my 30s, was good enough to compete at the national level had my family and later myself been able to afford traveling. I still enjoy it. Hardest discipline in rifle shooting IMO.
I dabbled with F Class for 5 or so years and had success with that but ultimately it became boring. I didn’t enjoy it. Great shooters in that game as well.
The last 5 years or doe I’ve been focusing on PRS/NRL shooting disciplines both centerfire and rimfire. I’ve had some success but more failures. It’s harder than most think, shooting skill, mental acuity and mental stamina play as much if not more of a roll in this game than any other discipline.
BUT…….but…..the biggest difference I’ve noticed is when I’m at a PRS/NRL event there isn’t anyone there badmouthing the other rifle disciplines that we all enjoy.
I can’t say the same when I go shoot an F Class match or Silhouette league for fun. Especially when the guys shooting know I actively shoot PRS.
Much if it is good natured fun out of respect. Plenty of it isn’t.
And THAT is the biggest problem we have in shooting sports.
They make up excuses as to why it won’t work and at the same time laugh about it, like it doesn’t have any merit as a legit form of competitive rifle shooting.
I feel like a lot of posters on this thread could be on the board.
I’m amazed at the level of accuracy top bench rest shooters achieve. It’s unreal actually.
I shot NRA Silhouette from 8 years old into my 30s, was good enough to compete at the national level had my family and later myself been able to afford traveling. I still enjoy it. Hardest discipline in rifle shooting IMO.
I dabbled with F Class for 5 or so years and had success with that but ultimately it became boring. I didn’t enjoy it. Great shooters in that game as well.
The last 5 years or doe I’ve been focusing on PRS/NRL shooting disciplines both centerfire and rimfire. I’ve had some success but more failures. It’s harder than most think, shooting skill, mental acuity and mental stamina play as much if not more of a roll in this game than any other discipline.
BUT…….but…..the biggest difference I’ve noticed is when I’m at a PRS/NRL event there isn’t anyone there badmouthing the other rifle disciplines that we all enjoy.
I can’t say the same when I go shoot an F Class match or Silhouette league for fun. Especially when the guys shooting know I actively shoot PRS.
Much if it is good natured fun out of respect. Plenty of it isn’t.
And THAT is the biggest problem we have in shooting sports.
jackieschmidt
Gold $$ Contributor
I do not downgrade any competitive shooting Discipline. Each has it’s own unique “quirk” that enhances the difficulty factor.
Alex Wheeler
Site $$ Sponsor
Rhovee is ok. He did come shoot with us. He came to the 2k once too. He would not try the pine squirrel stew but thats ok. I get what hes saying but no game applies to actual field use. All the games have rules and we exploit them to the max. So a 20 pound 6mm with a brake with a bunch of sand bags does not really relate to anything we do in the field just like a 17 pound Br rifle doesnt. If we had a real hunter class, like 10 pounds, bipod, and 300 win mag minimum. Id be all about it. I love playing with true sporter rifles.
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butchlambert
Site $$ Sponsor
I've never been to a competition that any of the shooters badmouthed another discipline. It never comes up.
ISS
Gold $$ Contributor
IMHO, the best shooters/competitors in the shooting world are the Schuetzen shooters. First thing they need to learn is how to make several hundred cast bullets in a row that are nearly identical. In my case, a 215gr semi-spitzer that varies less that .2gr; that's less than two-tenths of a grain.
Then he/she competes in a four part match at 200 yards. Iron sight offhand. Iron sight from the bench. Then Scope sight offhand. Scope from the bench.
Oh, yeah, the matches are all ten-shot.
Any of you care to shoot a couple ten-shot groups at 200 yards with your competition rifle and post them for us? Make sure at least two of them are from the offhand position.
ISS
Then he/she competes in a four part match at 200 yards. Iron sight offhand. Iron sight from the bench. Then Scope sight offhand. Scope from the bench.
Oh, yeah, the matches are all ten-shot.
Any of you care to shoot a couple ten-shot groups at 200 yards with your competition rifle and post them for us? Make sure at least two of them are from the offhand position.
ISS
xswanted
Gold $$ Contributor
That’s good, the way it should be!
Alex Wheeler
Site $$ Sponsor
You have me confused with Wheeler Engineering.That's cool, I didn't know that about you. I was once doing research to understand if any of the native American tribes had been blacksmiths and ran across information on a guy named Ned Christie. He was a blacksmith and gunsmith, both. The interesting thing about Native Americans is that fire was a type of spiritual 'thang and many didn't want to play with fire, for lack of a better analogy. There are very few blacksmiths or gunsmiths that were in the native tribes. Most all of the knives and arrow heads were made of stone. I think the only reason we didn't see more native American gunsmiths is that they seem to have traded for most of them. They seem to have had their own Fast and Furious in their day.
I own property in Lake County, CA. This was home to the Pomo tribe. This tribe mostly specialized on weaving baskets. The reason is there's a lot of tules around the lake. One island has some praying pits for pregnancy women. Oh yeah, they also made canoes out of the tules.I'm not an native Ameircan by decent, but have always felt more like one than a cowboy. I've never been able to wear boots long enough to get them entirely broken in.
Alex,
I like to make tools and have at least 5 or 6 or your tools, if not more. I have pondered tools for another industry, as 2A tools seems hard to break into. But I was curious, what was your first tool that you started with? Good for you, this is a good time for your tools.
I found that statement on the 600 yards funny also, he said he was using iron sights!
Indeed I did, my bad.
xswanted
Gold $$ Contributor
Shoot NRL Hunter with a factory or open light rifle, it’s not too far off from your rule set. Other than the magnum…….that just sounds like it would hurt!
linebaugh
Silver $$ Contributor
You had me right up to the off hand part. lol.
I'd love to hear about you casting and cast loading techniques. I have cast for handgun for more years than I can remember but now I am trying to get moa or better accuracy out of cast in a rifle and getting my butt kicked.
If you want to post about it I would read it. Heck if you want to write about how to get cast rifle accuracy and dont want to post just send it to my PM. I will read it repeatedly.
BTW I also like your ten shot groups. Rimfire the last few years has tought me that I need to shoot 10 shots to get a real feel for accuracy so I can appreciate that.
If I wanted to pick the most demanding shooting sport it would have to be center fire Silhouette. Offhand at 547 yds with a 10 lb rifle is impressive. At least it seems that way to me.
It's hard for some to accept, but when I see PRS I am like "meh....." It simply doesn't interest me. Just like when I shot Highpower. I didn't stick with it because it didn't interest me. That has nothing to do with the difficulty and skill required to be competitive in either.
I get excited about shooting small groups and high scores at 1000 yds. Others find that boring. That's okay.
There is no wrong answer, until someone says "X" takes more skill than "Y". BR seems to take the brunt of that, but there are lots of guys who give it a try and then quit when they realize how difficult it is to be competitive.
Like I posted earlier, if you hand someone a good LRBR rifle that tracks well and give them a finely tuned load, they will shoot well in good conditions. But that isn't a proper comparison. Give someone a rifle, the rests, then brass, bullets, powder, and primers. Then have them go shoot a match in varying conditions. That might be a fair comparison to a BR shooter showing up for their first PRS match.
It's like putting a newbie behind your carefully tuned and doped long range hunting rifle, telling them what to dial for drop and wind, then having them shoot an animal at 800 yds. In this scenario it isn't the trigger puller who is the long range marksman.
In my case, it took me a year before I stopped always being at the bottom when I started LRBR. When I came back after a 11 yr gap my path was similar. Now with the two matches where I shot NRA Highpower--with about three times the shooters that were shooting at the LRBR matches in that area--I finished mid-pack both times.
Then again, I didn't grow up shooting from a bench. I grew up shooting offhand and from field positions. Whether it's with a shotgun, handgun, bow, or rifle; I tend to shoot decently even when I am not in practice. I'll bet there are a LOT of folks here like that.
However, to be competitive with any of those aforementioned shooting disciplines takes a lot of "deliberate practice." Just being decent when we are out of practice isn't an indicator of the level of effort required to be competitive.
There is only one shooting sport (LRBR) where I have tried to compete at a high level, and to go to the next level I need about triple the deliberate practice that I am doing now.
Now I like and respect @rhovee a great deal. However I will never agree that PRS is more demanding than LRBR. It just different.
Sorry for such a long winded reply......
It's hard for some to accept, but when I see PRS I am like "meh....." It simply doesn't interest me. Just like when I shot Highpower. I didn't stick with it because it didn't interest me. That has nothing to do with the difficulty and skill required to be competitive in either.
I get excited about shooting small groups and high scores at 1000 yds. Others find that boring. That's okay.
There is no wrong answer, until someone says "X" takes more skill than "Y". BR seems to take the brunt of that, but there are lots of guys who give it a try and then quit when they realize how difficult it is to be competitive.
Like I posted earlier, if you hand someone a good LRBR rifle that tracks well and give them a finely tuned load, they will shoot well in good conditions. But that isn't a proper comparison. Give someone a rifle, the rests, then brass, bullets, powder, and primers. Then have them go shoot a match in varying conditions. That might be a fair comparison to a BR shooter showing up for their first PRS match.
It's like putting a newbie behind your carefully tuned and doped long range hunting rifle, telling them what to dial for drop and wind, then having them shoot an animal at 800 yds. In this scenario it isn't the trigger puller who is the long range marksman.
In my case, it took me a year before I stopped always being at the bottom when I started LRBR. When I came back after a 11 yr gap my path was similar. Now with the two matches where I shot NRA Highpower--with about three times the shooters that were shooting at the LRBR matches in that area--I finished mid-pack both times.
Then again, I didn't grow up shooting from a bench. I grew up shooting offhand and from field positions. Whether it's with a shotgun, handgun, bow, or rifle; I tend to shoot decently even when I am not in practice. I'll bet there are a LOT of folks here like that.
However, to be competitive with any of those aforementioned shooting disciplines takes a lot of "deliberate practice." Just being decent when we are out of practice isn't an indicator of the level of effort required to be competitive.
There is only one shooting sport (LRBR) where I have tried to compete at a high level, and to go to the next level I need about triple the deliberate practice that I am doing now.
Now I like and respect @rhovee a great deal. However I will never agree that PRS is more demanding than LRBR. It just different.
Sorry for such a long winded reply......
ballisticdaddy
Silver $$ Contributor
This is an interesting thread, curious how many that have chimed in have ever tried to balance a 20 pound centerfire rifle off a barricade or tank trap and keep the reticle steady and be able to spot their impacts? With my f-class setup I must admit even a new shooter could score well on a calm day, do not think I could say the same in regards to any PRS setup. And how practical is shooting a benchrest or f-class rifle off a mechanical rest and heavy bag? I, like most others, very much underestimated the skill level it takes to be able to engage a target with one round...no sighters...no wind flags!
We are fortunate to have so many options for the format we enjoy competing in. It will be interesting to see what Fclass and Prs look like in 20 years. My opinion, they both have provided substantial growth of rifle shooting and new products to the market since they started. Will that level of growth continue or will something else take their place?
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