NBRSA & the proposed Varmint for Score format

A

Al Nyhus

"It'll never work!"
While shooting the IBS Iowa State Two Gun Score Championship last weekend, I had the chance to talk with a long time competitor about the proposed Varmint for Score format that is being brought to the NBRSA for acceptance. He had some good thoughts and he and I spent a bit of time looking at things objectively for all sides.

Here's something to think about:

The aim of getting the NBRSA to legitimize a Score format for the Varmint class rifles is ostensibly to attract more shooters and have another discipline for current NBRSA competitors to shoot.

So...maybe a 'brand new' discipline can have a 'brand new' scoring system? Who says it would need to use the 'best edge' scoring method for this new discipline? Maybe we should consider scoring targets with one reticle. Or the 'Canadian' system of X's counting as an additional point?

This should eliminate the one big issue that many NBRSA group shooters have: that they need to have a .30 to compete in a Score format. Personally, I think if this is to have a snowballs chance in you-know-where of passing in the NBRSA, we'll need to somehow get past this issue.

For consideration..... -Al
 
I entered benchrest shooting thru the Hunter Rifle class in the 1970s at the club level and I started out shooting a Reminton Varmint barrel factory rifle as did many others..as our club was part of the Trans-Continentenal Hunter Rifle League...we soon learned that a factory rifle was not going to be competitive and many of us went to match grade barrels with tight necks and benchrest fiberglass stocks etc, etc...
When we had competitive equipment in Hunter Rifle we found that our rifles weren't much different than a Sporter or Light Varmint and it was just as easy to start out to build a SP/LV rig for a bit more money...
I think if Hunter Rifle had stayed factory we would not be trying to save it by denying VFS in the NBRSA...
I don't think new shooters will start shooting because we start shooting VFS..New shooters come into the game with a factory rifle (in most cases).
Once a shooter learns what benchrest shooting is all about, then they will improve their equipment and skills to meet their desire to compete...
I my experience a visitor at a match looking at Hunter class rifles and SP/LV rifles cant see much difference other than the scope..:rolleyes:
The way we should introduce new shooters into the sport is to use the factory class exclusively and put Hunter Rifle into the Varmint Hunter class since the differences are few...
 
Al

The Gulf Coast Region is sending our Director to the National Meeting with this agenda item. We tried to keepit as simple as possible, Varmint for Score would be shot with a legal NBRSA HV, LV, or Sporter.

Changing the scoring system, we thought, would be too much to take on. Just getting the new Discipline would be an up hill battle as it goes.

There are a lot of shooters who enjoy the score Format. We have any where from 15 to 18 shooters in our Benchrest Class at the Tomball Club Matches, and only about 1/2 compete in group. The reasoning behind our proposal is this. If there are shooters who enjoy score shooting with a Benchrest Rifle, then by all means give them a a Format, sanction it, and let them be dues paying members to the NBRSA.

Perhaps just getting current NBRSA the members to recognize Varmint for Score as an extreme accuracy discipline is the first order of business.

In the Gulf Coast Region, you can count the number of active HBR shooters on both hands, and removing one shoe. The vast majority of Group shooters have no interest what so ever in shooting HBR.

But, Varmint for Score is another matter. I enjoy shooting score. True, you can shoot a 250 25X with a .250 Rifle, but the challenge of not dropping an X is where the real game is played. It has always been my thought that both Group and Score each has it's own unique challenge that makes winning difficult.

I do like the idea of making the X an 11, at least that does give a shooter who (God Forbid), drops a point. But I figure that the first thing to do is get real live Varmint for Score instituted, and later on, if the Sanctioning body sees the need, change the scoring system.

25 X's is darned hard to do. Especially at ranges like where we shoot. A good example is our last Club Match. Ken Starr won with a 250 20 X. The first match was shot in very favorable conditions, and he wiped out all five X's. By match two, that typical Tomball condition started coming in, (five flags set, not one pointing in the same direction), and hitting that little dot wasn't quite so easy.

I have heard shooters say, "I do not wish to participate in a Discipline where perfection can be reached", ie, the 250 25X all wipeouts. Well, I invite them to sit down at the bench and do it. Untill it starts happenning on a regular basis, it would be a non issue......jackie
 
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I have heard

eww1350 said:
I entered benchrest shooting thru the Hunter Rifle class in the 1970s at the club level and I started out shooting a Reminton Varmint barrel factory rifle as did many others..as our club was part of the Trans-Continentenal Hunter Rifle League...we soon learned that a factory rifle was not going to be competitive and many of us went to match grade barrels with tight necks and benchrest fiberglass stocks etc, etc...
When we had competitive equipment in Hunter Rifle we found that our rifles weren't much different than a Sporter or Light Varmint and it was just as easy to start out to build a SP/LV rig for a bit more money...
I think if Hunter Rifle had stayed factory we would not be trying to save it by denying VFS in the NBRSA...
I don't think new shooters will start shooting because we start shooting VFS..New shooters come into the game with a factory rifle (in most cases).
Once a shooter learns what benchrest shooting is all about, then they will improve their equipment and skills to meet their desire to compete...
I my experience a visitor at a match looking at Hunter class rifles and SP/LV rifles cant see much difference other than the scope..:rolleyes:
The way we should introduce new shooters into the sport is to use the factory class exclusively and put Hunter Rifle into the Varmint Hunter class since the differences are few...
Click to expand...



some of the older shooters say the sanctioning bodies should have never allowed custom actions in HBR and I guess I don't disagree however, once a factory action has been trued up, it becomes as good as a custom and with a custom barrel in a Custom stock, there realy isn't much difference. I think if we went back to HBR being only mass-produced rifles, there MIGHT be more interest but, The equipment race will always be the norm no matter what the rules are, people will always push them. I guess that's normal though.I have seen some "factory rifles" shoot some respectable scores. The race would become finding the best shooting factory rifle, not unlike what we have now. It's always gonna be an equipment race as long as we have folks with expendable income and want to win. For about the cost of building a custom rifle one can buy 3 or so "Factory" rifles and cull them. That would become the norm and we would end up in the same place. Let's face it, The world and life are not fair, one just has to accept that. Humans will always try to find an edge. Nothing wrong with that either I guess.
 
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Scoring Center no edge

I have heard shooters say, "I do not wish to participate in a Discipline where perfection can be reached", ie, the 250 25X all wipeouts. Well, I invite them to sit down at the bench and do it. Untill it starts happenning on a regular basis, it would be a non issue......jackie[/QUOTE]

I do not shoot group. I shoot score in our non sanctioned club matches. We are just having 30 BR come on the scene. Now everyone (including me ) has to have one because it makes a bigger hole. ARA Rimfire scores worst edge. If score went to worst edge everone would go to 17's. If one scored center there would no advantage to bullet size. It would go back to best performing rifle. It would still be an equipment game. Just thinking out loud.

Jeffrey Tooker
 
I will mention upfront that I don't shoot score or hunter and I would never give advice related directly to those games (unlike some score shooters try to do with group) but it would seem, and I might be way out in left field here, that the whole idea of score or Hunter for score is trying to hit a mark. If you are trying to hit a mark (like a prairie dogs head or a fly on the paper) the best edge is going to make the kill. The p-dog isn't going to re-assemble itself from a million parts and then shake it's finger at you like "you just hit me with half the bullet but the other half of the bullet missed me"!:p
 
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I would encourage NBRSA to sanction score matches, they are fun and gives a lot of clubs the ability to hold matches without having to make moving backers. That is a big plus.

However, I do follow along with the need for different scoring. I've shot score for a lot of years. When we were all shooting 6PPC's, it was a big deal to shoot 20+ X's. You had to be on top of your game. Today, with the 30's, if you shoot 20 X's, you are middle to the lower end of the pack (no disrespect intended where range conditions are different than the east coast). There are many shooters now that find shooting a 100 yard match with a 30 as a trigger pulling contest, where there is no skill involved for wind doping/holding off, etc.

I would think either use a 30 reticle for all scoring, which levels the playing field, or go to worst edge scoring. Worst edge would then put all the 30's back in the safes, and pull out the 6's and 22's!

I recently shot a 100 yard match with a 6PPC, first time in a long time, and it was a walk down memory lane. When Carl Baker set the record of 25X's with 19 wipe outs years ago with a 6, THAT was some mighty fine shooting!
 
Sulphur Springs (Muncy, PA) and Fairfax (VA) are running predominately 7 min. score matches.
I do prefer to shoot 2-gun at local score matches, and while I come pre-loaded I don't enjoy to do so at 7 minute matches.
The 30 BR advantage comes at a price--that of greater recoil and resulting bag upset ...something I am having difficulty overcoming.
 
Steering gently back on course.....

:) I'm neither pro nor con any type of scoring method, other than the worst-edge. Worst-edge is as reverse discrimating to the .30's as the best-edge method is to the 22's.

But we operate under rules. And the rules for IBS....and NBRSA Hunter....are best-edge, that's how the game is played. And there's no need to change it.

That said, since the proposed NBRSA score discipline for the Varmint class guns is a new discipline.....it seems like adopting a new scoring system wouldn't be out of line if the NBRSA as a whole determined that this would be better for participation in this new class.

The short and sweet of it is this: many NBRSA members have expressed their desire to shoot a Score format with their Varmint guns. But they have resevations about having to shoot a .30 to be competitive. They don't want the recoil and gun handling issues. And their 6PPC's and 22's are certainly competitive from an accuracy standpoint. They don't want to buy new barrels/dies, etc. to convert their guns to a .30. And their perception
is that if they don't shoot a .30, they don't have a chance to win. Without getting into 'perception vs. reality' thing...this is what people are thinking. So the 'reality' is that this needs to be addressed for a Score format to even have a sniff at being adopted.

As a .30 cal. shooter, I would have z-e-r-o concerns about shooting my 30BR's against the PPC's in a 'one reticle' scoring scenario. If I have my gun tuned up to the same accuracy levels as anything else on the line, the shooter executing the best shot will still win.

Not advocating anything...just looking for some more thoughtful discussion on this topic.

Thanks! :) -Al
 
I was not going to get into this discussion but some things have to be cleared up. The 11 point system is that!! We use it in “this” part of Canada but that’s it. We had an organization here that was run by the shooters, for the shooters and we had meetings at the end of every match. At our score matches, which were the 10-X system, we were not getting the new shooters out, oh they would show for one or two matches then they were gone. So we would average 10 or 12 of the same shooters. Two people came up with the idea and presented it to me and when I saw the merits of it I pushed it through by the usual methods, brow beating, bullying, pounding the desk with my shoe, and last but not least alcohol. We had our people who screamed and hollered that this was not necessary and it was unethical and all of the other stuff, but it went through. It took about 3 or 4 matches but the attendance started to climb and now we were getting 20 to 30 shooters at our matches and the people who did the most screaming came up to me in private and said, hey this is the way to go. At WWCCA the attendance was in the 12 to 15 shooters because the person at that time would chase you down to come to the matches. We tried the 11 point system at my suggestion and our attendance went up to 15 to 20 shooters, again it took a few matches and through all of this we had the travelers, shooters from Ohio and Canada. A few years ago it was reversed, and I will not get into that, and the matches went back to 5 to 8 shooters, all of whom lived within 15mins of the range.
Is it the way to go, the 11 point system, I don’t know, the 10-X system has been the standby of score shooting for years. I think what you have to decide, do you want shooters or not. Is there something else that can be done to attract more shooters? again I don’t know. There are countless arguments pro and con, but you know, and this is “FACT” all of our matches are won or lost on the last target and more often then not, on the very last shot.
Dan Hackett was a strong supporter of the 11 point system, and one of the statements presented to him was that all of the matches would be won at a 100yds. Well I spent time going through all of the results of the last 20 matches and 8 were won at a 100yds and 8 were won at 200yds and 4 were won by shooters who did not win a yardage.
All this document is meant to do is just clarify some misconceptions, and to present some facts. Have fun!!!
 
Scoring method

Its always diffycult to come up with changes that are fair and liked by everyone.

Shooting 250-25X is VERY hard to do, so finding the winner using this score method is not often a problem. Shooting at 100 meters instead of yards is 10% more diffycult still, so a score of 250 22-23X could be a perfect score at 100 yards. Given that the .30BR is as accurate as a 6PPC (which I dont quite belive) perfect score is eacyer to reach with .30 than a 6MM. However turning to the worst edge system would penalize and make obsolete all the fine new .30 cal rifles which would not benefit anyone.

So my thought is why not use the worst out edge system and score all targets with the same diameter as not to penalize or give edge to any one cal ? Just a thought.

It would make much more divergence in winning scores with out penalizing one cal ower the other.
 
Worst edge scoring...

Anyone that knows me knows I have been a proponent of "worst edge" scoring for YEARS! It seems simple to me. Use the same kind of caliber rule that we use in Sporter Class to make it different from Light Varmint that says the caliber has to be .23 or larger. Only in VFS or VH, or Htr, let the rule be 6.5mm or larger. Eliminates the 17's, 22's, & 6PPC's that everyone seem worried about. It would encourage 6.5 and 7mm bullets and cartridges, and I don't see that as a "Bad" thing. In 3-5 years there might be some 7mm bullets as good as the 6's and 30's that we have now. Again, I don't see that as a bad thing.
Put some "Fun" back into shooting at those targets, and you might see a great interest develop, who knows. We have scored Hunter targets "worst edge" for the fun-of-it, and I encourage some of you to do the same. We all have a few sets that scored 250, with anywhere from 19 to 25 x's laying on a shelf. Take a few of your best scores, and score them worst edge...you might be surprised that a 235-238 is an excellent score. (There will be a lot of 9-x's for sure).
We almost stopped shooting Hunter class in St. Louis for lack of attendance a few years back, so what have you got to loose? If you 250-25x guys have a fear of shooting 238-25x, I don't know what to tell you other than "Keep e'm in the middle" if you want a 250! (Even a "wipe-out" can be a 9x if it's not wellcentered.)
Food for thought...
 
I really should keep my opinions to myself, as I usually get involved in a firestorm.

That said, as a "card carrying" member of both NBRSA and IBS, I can tell you what changing the scoring method is likely to do. It is likely to keep the current score shooters in IBS, and the NBRSA group shooters who want to try score, in NBRSA.

If this is the intent of the new class, great. If not, then use a "Two Gun" system, as NBRSA currently does for group. Make the HVFS an unrestricted caliber class, and the LVFS an under 30 cal class (or an under 6.5mm class if you like).

This would allow the 6's or 22's to compete among themselves if they preferred, and the 30's would have a class as well. No new rifle would be required,and both classes could be shot together, as the IBS currently allows (but with the caliber concession to the 6 and 22 shooters). Scoring could be separate for the two classes, or there could be a Two Gun if preferred.

Having shot a LVFS and HVFS in the same match, I can say that it does work if you want more shooting per match, but in reality most shooters just shoot one class.

Jim
 
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Well I have heard enough....

We won't do it unless worst edge scoring is instituted, We won't do it unless we use a center reticle scoring system, we won't do it unless the X becomes an 11, we won't do it unless...there is cold beer and naked women for second or third place....WHAT ELSE..!!!!:confused:
If the NBRSA members don't see VFS as a viable shooting discipline then..let it DIE....the clubs that continue to shoot VFS unregistered will draw more shooters and provide a niche that is growing....

Let the NBRSA go the way of the IHRA..."just barely surviving"

Compare the NBRSA website withe the IBS website...the IBS has current results of matches held and photos of events, etc...the effort to share info and results is what increases their membership just like showing a sporting event on television...someone that has never done it gets an opportunity to experience it thru the information system "INTERNET"...excellent work and pride in their organization...

Now go to the NBRSA website...:eek:
Maybe some occasional match results from the far corners of the continential US...
No photos of any events except maybe a national/world team qualifer...
Yep you can really see the pride and enthusiasm there...
mostly just match dates...kinda like looking at the TV guide but you can't see the movie or even read about it...
I'd say it just like a cancer working towards a slow death...
I'm too busy...It ain't my job...all the people that shot the event knows what happened why tell everyone else...WOW the NBRSA just doesn't get it..:(
 
Gentlemen ...

Shooting VFS with a 6mm Beggs or 6PPC is FUN, and for no other reason that's why it should be adopted. Having said that, I think the idea of trying to shoot 25 Xs is what really keeps me coming back. I like the challenge. We do it locally in Austin with only a handful of shooters but numbers don't really matter because my real competition is 250 25X. :)
 
That's correct!

eww1350 said:
WOW the NBRSA just doesn't get it..:(
Click to expand...

In terms of quality communication the NBRSA has always failed. It's not that the NBRSA does not recognize the issue ("get it") as hours have been consumed in discussion. Deal is, nobody ever does anything long term.

I think the reason that nobody does anything is simply one of motivation. The folks that we "expect" to do something have everything they need. Typically, the "expected ones" are long time shooters/members and all they need personally to be content is a match schedule and a rifle.
 
Why not just order three different sized targets to keep things in line with the nice “fair for everyone” way that groups are measured?
If you plan on bumping membership by attracting factory varmint shooters, you should probably order a few 20-cal targets too, just incase you haven’t noticed how popular that caliber has become in the “varmint” fields.

I’m not saying I’m for or against NBRSA VFS because unless there’s a moving backer involved, I’m not driving very far or paying very much, to shoot a score match. Plenty of them close to home, they just aren’t registered so they don’t cost as much to shoot…..
I think it will take some doing to convince club members they should join an organization with yearly dues, and pay more to shoot the same target at their club. Just look at the club Jackie shoots at, a couple of years ago tuners were the holdup, but they still aren’t registered.
 
scoring method

Jackie has stated here before and I just want to reiterate. The proposal from the Gulf Coast region is to include VFS as an NBRSA event. No changing of scoring or anything. We just want to get it recognized as a valid NBRSA event. Nobody here can win an event unless it is shot; and it's not happening today.
Joe
 
present scoring is keeping people away

I sort of agree that changing the scoring system is just window dressing. I also shoot some longer range stuff and I hear the same rational there. "We keep getting beat by the same guys at 400 yards so lets shoot at 500 yards." I think the same folks would still be winning because their equipment and skills are better.

As far as VFS is concerned, the wish is much more basic here on the Gulf Coast. We just wish to be able to shoot it. :)
Joe
 
FBecigneul said:
Tell me what a moving backer is used for behind a score target where each shot is fired at a different bull.
A moving backer is used behind a group target where in many cases all the shots are in the same hole.
Click to expand...

Just one of my frequent post wording problems. :eek:
I thought the comma would work and show what my preference is when it comes to registered matches, but dropping the word “score” from that sentence would have been better.
 
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