Is the US Ready?

D

Doug

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Is the US ready to shoot a Standardized Target.
I have been communicating with shooters around the World with the Idea of the Rimfire Benchrest community adopting a Standard size target for competition. The need for some sort of standardization became readily apparent after 3 years of World Postals and the European and World Championships held in Milan. When I started looking into this three years ago a lot of US shooters did not want to change and some of the Top RBA & IR 50/50 shooters wanted to go to a harder standard than what we are shooting now.
With this in mind I started working with Carl from the UKBR on a design. It was thought that since a lot of people were shooting an IR50/50 target and anything smaller might discourage new shooters we out to work on Scoring Ring sizes modeled after the IR 50/50 target. Last week I sent an email to about 120 shooters outside the US who had shot in world competitions to get their opinion on a new standard and target design. After 80 people taking my Poll and over 30 emails there is no doubt what this targeted audience thinks.
With that in mind I decided to try and get some US shooters opinion.
This is for Best edge Scorings so it would be appreciated if Die Hard Worst Edge shooters take this into account if they vote in the Poll at the bottom of this page: http://worldrimfire.com/tools/target.html
Please take the time to read what I wrote for the international shooters before take the Poll at the end.
 
Is the U.S. ready?

The only disadvantage that I see to target standardization is that old records won't be able to be compared to new records. How would you address that concern/issue?
 
New target design

Doug, i think you and your partner have come up with a good design. I am interested as to what other shooters think about this design....slim
 
Votes so Far

Hi Doug, the votes so far look very positive, will keep watching.

AndyD
 
I suppose it's what you're use to. I shoot IR 50/50. Best edge. Don't hold any records and pretty sure I never will. I'd shoot either one of those targets. They both have a lot more sighters than I'm use to and not much of a stretch from my IR 50/50 target. Now, if I were a die hard ARA shooter it might be a different story.
 
One issue not addressed is that someone owns the copyright on existing targets and makes some profit on same. Those people are generally in position to determine which target we use. Soooo, it hardly matters what we shooters think especially if we are fairly happy with what we have. Only if at some point we consolidate orgs will we all have one target. I don't think there is a prayer of the orgs ever consolidating. More likely would be if shooting ranges migrate to one org because of some perceived benefit. And that will be only if the others become so poorly run that shooters leave them. I think things will pretty much stay the same. Rich
 
Hawkeye,
Interesting that you would bring up Old Records.
Let me relate what came up three years ago when myself and a couple of other US shooters proposed a new target standard. There were a couple of shooters who were vehemently against any change and I could not figure out why. One was a shooter who only shot occasionally.
A couple of months later when I was updating the records I found out why. The occasional shooter had gotten lucky one day and shot a state record. Further research found the other shooter had an old state record and a national record. I asked a shooter who knew both of these shooters if there was any chance this could be the cause of their objection rather than they target. His answer was Doug I thought you knew that!
Thus I learned that some objections were for personal reasons and maybe not practical reasons.
My thought is that the Old Records are dropping like flies so for the future of Rimfire Benchrest now might be the Ideal time to bring some standardization to the sport so we can start to shoot on an International Level to the same standards and what better way to start than with a standard size target. Hell you can put Sighters and Advertising any where you want lets just shoot at the same size rings at the same distance.
Most of the rest of the World is shooting at Meters but I am sure that is too much to ask for now. But at least our State and above matches has meters so all is not lost in that respect.

and in reply to Rich's post.
I will fight tooth and nail anyone who tries to copyright for their personal gain any of my intellectual property that I give freely. All my Scoring programs or websites are free to anyone who wants to use them. They are welcome to copy or modify any of my designs or coding for their own use.

After a couple of years on this quest I am about burned out so I leave it up to the World to decide if they want to move forward or watch this sport suffer a slow death because a few have their own personal agendas and campaign against any change. I do not have any personal agenda in this matter only the love of the sport and a hope for its future.
That’s My Two Cents,
Doug
 
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Doug,
Your playing games a bit with the wording on the question, most people think your asking about scoring ring size and voted thinking that was the question. To say people around the world want the same target is not correct. Besides you can vote more than once so it’s not really valid.
Peter
 
Doug, I was not referring to any of your material but that of existing groups. All do it, even the NRA. That is why I am migrating the best I can to Linux and use programs such as Open Office. I don't like it either but it is a fact of life. I see a financial lose for any group that uses your target. Rich
 
Here is my suggestion...
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Those who hold records with out of date targets can take some comfort in the thought that their records will never be broken.

A single target is a good idea.

Concho Bill
 
I vote

for Doug's target. Looks very good and you can tell he has put a lot of thought into it. Thanks Doug for all your hard work on this!
 
Its Not the Target its the Ring Size

My target design was only to encourage the various World Organizations to adopt a standard Scoring Ring & Box sizes. . I am not trying to establish a new target design or paper size. That is up to the various World organizations to decide. For example Carl in the UK is working on a design that uses my proposed size scoring rings but has a layout that he feels his Organization will adopt as their standard target.
A lot of Organizations support them selves with target sales. Again all I am trying to do is encourage them to adapt this Standardized Ring size in the target they sell and not circumvent their sales revenue.
Am I making any sense ?????

I will publish later on today what I have learned from my ‘somewhat slanted’ poll.
 
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