How is a young person ever going to compete at taday's price's. It won"t make any difference what branch of shooting he, or she may choose. Look at the turn out Camp Perry now has. Look where price's have gone even for the .22 rimfire ammunition. What avaerage person can practice at those price's?
What is the turnout (or, more illuminatingly, the trend in turnout) at Camp Perry? I've never been and have no desire, so I don't know what point you're making.
As for the average person being able to practice, it depends on the sport. As far as I can tell, there's no cheap way to practice benchrest. Some shooting sports, however, are extremely cheap to practice. If you're willing to swill the ISSF koolaid, you can achieve well over 90% of your potential as a shooter for minimal investment. An older, no-longer-competitive air pistol can be had for well under $500. Pellets are cheap and so is setting up a 10M range in your backyard. Nearly the same thing is true for air rifle.
However, like all ISSF sports, air pistol is HARD. It requires dedication from the beginning. Without a coach or mentor, the average kid today will abandon the whole idea after the first firing session when s/he can't even stay on the paper.
I'd like to see organized club matches where the clubs provide all the equipment, all of it identical, shot over courses of fire where even the lousiest kid can feel like they have some success from the beginning. This begins to get off into game theory (most shooting sports are very badly designed from the perspective of attracting new shooters then providing a clear path to championship status that's based on increased skill rather than the ability to buy the best equipment in existence) so, again, I'll stop before I get too boring.
Of course, I've just made a suggestion that plays right into and terribly aggravates my previous criticism - that the shooting sports offer so much variety that it's often easy to forget how popular they are because no one shows up at the same matches you do.
Nowadays, for every shooting match that depends on fine skill and putting bullets close to each other (say, bullseye pistol or benchrest rifle), there's probably another match happening the same day, within reasonable driving distance, where there are large numbers of shooters tossing high round counts downrange at targets that are big and close. People these days, generally, want to have fun without doing too much work. Those bang-bang-bang sports offer them that opportunity. Understand, I don't mean to denigrate the "action shooting" sports. The folks at the very top of those sports work just as hard and spend just as much money as anyone else (except, maybe, for those shotgunners who consider guns that cost as much as my house to be normal...but that's a whole 'nother dynamic).
I return to my previous statement. If you want more benchrest shooters, then you've got to find some cheap way to let unskilled, barely disciplined little punks get some enjoyment out of the sport so that they'll come back again and again over time, until they become the knowledgeable, mature adults that currently make up the majority of the benchrest shooting crowd. I don't see where that upgrade path exists.
Or you've got to find a way to reach out to already knowledgeable, mature adults and convince them to try your sport. In these economic times, that seems even more difficult.
Case in point - I retired last June. I have just enough extra nickels to rub together that I could become a benchrest shooter. The idea seemed intriguing. So I contacted Jackie Schmidt and showed up at Tomball for a match. (Two matches ago, I think. I was the fat, Santa-looking guy who hung around all day.) The people were fantastic, exactly the sort of sharp folks who can provide a challenge. They were also unfailingly friendly and courteous to the stranger in their midst. I walked downrange and got a lesson in setting up flags. I was shown several (very lovely, made me drool) rifles.
On the downside, I saw people disgusted with their own performances who had placed more bullets on paper closer to the mark than I thought possible. The consistent performers seemed to have some sort of in-flight magic at work. Yes, I know it's reading the wind, good equipment, and an orderly mindset. But to give the sport a go, I'd (realistically) need to spend several thousand dollars on a rifle and a bunch of tools that I would then need to learn to use. Even that wouldn't be an insurmountable problem if I had a place to practice, which I don't. I haven't fired a rifle in years because I don't live near a public range that will allow me to set up my chronograph and work at my own pace without interruptions and without unsafe yahoos on the line, pointing their loaded guns at everyone. Getting into a private club, for me, involves either a very long waiting list or driving at least a couple of hours.
There were just too many obstacles in the way. (Shame, too. I really liked those guys.)
Instead, I spent about $600 on a commercial pistol range membership where I can practice daily if I want (though I generally only get there 3 or 4 times a week). Add $400 for a good starter pistol in .22LR (I'll buy some multi-kilobuck, European pistol when my skills reach a certain point) and another thousand dollars on ammo and I'm good to go to increase my shooting skills far enough to start winning matches in any of several disciplines. I'll decide which to formally enter when I've gotten my skills up to a certain level, though I've already found I can shoot possibles in some disciplines in practice and do within a couple of points of that in actual matches, several of which I've entered basically on a lark.
Thus, with less than $2K out of pocket, I can shoot for fun and get better. I can't stress this enough: I HAVE A CLEAR UPGRADE PATH. If I want to spend more and devote more time, there are dozens of disciplines I can enter to meet nice people and win trophies. If I want to spend mountains of cash and every waking hour working on my shooting, I can dream of Olympic gold. (Fat, literally, chance but the theoretical possibility exists.) I can go as far
or as short a distance as I want.
Most sports, even the most horrifically expensive, recognize the need for this path to exist. Even auto racing (and, at the highest levels, that's about as expensive as you can get) has junior dragsters, kart racing, and circle-track car classes specifically designed to kill the equipment race and just get some kids out on the track so they can develop a love of the sport.
The OP wanted to see more benchresters. I think that would be a very good thing. So where is the fun-from-the-beginning, cheap and easy to start, take it as far as you want, clear upgrade path in benchrest?
