Shooting Styles Guide
Many of you who are getting licensed are looking to get into range shooting, and picking up a new hobby. Once you end up joining a range, you will get to have all the time in the world sitting in your lane getting better and better until… you ultimately will get bored.
The nice thing is that there are lots of cool competitions and shooting styles you can get into.
Precision Shooting Styles
Mapleseed or a Precision Rifle Series match is a great place to start if you are looking to fulfill the fantasy of becoming a sniper. These are precision shooting matches for a variety of calibres, starting with the .22LR. Mapleseed is a great place to start, as it can be very educational, teaching you how to optimally set up and sight and your gear.
Bullseye League follows the same ideology, but for handguns. It’s all about precision shooting at fixed distances, and will help you develop and maintain the fundamentals of shooting.
Often these two styles of shooting require an immense focus and precision. Regular training and mastery of your firearm is required to start winning any of these competitions.
Action-Packed Shooting Styles
If you are looking for something more action packed and speed driven, there are a lot of styles of shooting to start looking into. IPSC (International Practical Shooting Confederation) or IDPA (International Defensive Pistol Association) both host a variety of competitions around “running and gunning”. Both require you to complete a course beforehand, teaching you to draw from a holster and how to move not only effectively but safely.
Many of you are likely frustrated by your inability to buy handguns right now, but these courses and competitions are working out letting you rent handguns, especially for training. They also have different divisions for pistol calibre carbines, which you can still buy and shoot with.
Once you have your IPSC or IDPA certification, this opens up a whole new world of competition. You can start shooting 2-Gun or 3-Gun style competitions. This is a lot of the stuff you see in movies, shooting with a rifle, pistol, and shotgun. You will have a course set where you get to move and shoot, while transitioning between firearms. Most of the outdoor clubs or ranges tend to have some variation of IPSC, IDPA, 2-Gun, or 3-Gun, you just have to figure out when they are running and where you can shoot.
Western Shooting Styles
Oh, and if none of this modern stuff suits you, there is Cowboy Action Shooting! It‘s a little less popular out in Ontario, but there are still places to go sling guns like it's the wild west. Often you’ll need an alias, and some period appropriate attire. The stages are fun and will help you live out your cowboy fantasies.
Shotgun Shooting Styles
If shotguns are more your speed, don’t fret! There are a lot of cool shooting styles like Trap, Skeet, and 5 Stand. All of these are shot from a variety of stations at clay pigeons that move differently based on the style you are shooting. In trap, the clays are moving away from you, in skeet, they will be thrown across the horizon left or right. In 5 Stand, you get a combination of all this and more random directions.
Sporting Clays is another style you will come across, and it is like golf with a shotgun. You will move throughout the facility from station to station. Each station will have a unique movement pattern for the clays, and you have to shoot them within a par (usually one shot per target). It is a lot of fun and a great way to spend a day with some friends.
Finding Shooting Competitions
Practiscore is currently the be-all and end-all in finding all these competitions. While all these competition styles tend to have their own websites and social pages, actually finding the match date and details can be difficult. Match directors will post the event and registration on Practiscore. You will have to create an account, but once you do, you can follow ranges in your area, find matches you want to go shoot, but most importantly contact match directors.
Getting in touch with match directors is key in getting access to events. All these matches and events are held at Ranges, and you simply will not be able to join them all. A lot of the events you want to shoot would be open to everyone, but if you can’t find details, you just ask: a lot of matches will give you permission to join.
The world is your oyster when it comes to the different disciplines in the shooting sports world. Find which styles tickle your fancy and get out there and shoot!
