Dust off your .22 rifle and try something different! The members of a British practical shooting club ( Harlow Practical Shooters) are finding ways to amuse themselves despite having their cartridge firing handguns confiscated. They are shooting a form of "IPSC" rifle competition using semi-auto and manual repeating .22 rimfire rifles. Check out the 'Mini Rifle Postal Competition" link below to get the full story. This is a super way to have affordable fun with your .22 rifle. It also serves as a great introduction to action style shooting for anyone who hasn't done a lot of shooting - we had several kids and spouses shoot their first ever rifle competition in this event.

The courses of fire in this competition consist of multiple targets which the competitor tries to shoot as quickly and accurately as possible. The stages in the postal competition consisted of 4 to 8 targets at distances from 5m to 20m. After you finish shooting each of the five stages, the points you scored on the targets are added up and divided by the time it took you to shoot all of your shots. This gives you a ratio of points/time know as a hit factor. The higher your hit factor the better you will place. Unlike traditional target shooting which only rewards accuracy, this form of scoring rewards both accuracy and speed.

With .22LR ammunition available at less than $15 for a brick of 500 rounds, this is one of the most affordable forms of shooting available. Given Canada's depressed gun market, a novice can pick up a used .22 semi-automatic rifle and a 1000 rounds of ammunition for under $100. Anyone with a printer can churn out regulation targets for these events and use sliced up address labels as target patches. Hopefully this event will catch on as it is just about perfect for introducing people to the pleasure of shooting.

We have run this match on a couple of Friday afternoons after work and plan run fun matches on a montly basis. Dust off your Ruger 10/22 or whatever else you have and join us to see how fast and accurate you can be. You don't need a fancy gun, Greg O. used his open sighted Ruger to beat everyone who had a telescopic sight equiped rifle in our first match! If you don't have a 22 rifle come on out and borrow someone else's gun - this will be a hoot! You'll need at least 50 rounds of ammunition, along with the usual eye and ear protection. We're charging $5 per entry to help pay for the range upgrades we've just completed.

Mini-Rifle Links

• EOHC's 28 July Mini-Rifle Match Results
• Harlow Practical Shooters - the home of the Mini-Rifle postal match.
• Mini-Rifle Match Info Package - with printable target (PDF format)
• Rimfire Central - a great resource for .22 rifle fans.
• Ruger 1022 Home - a great resource for Ruger 10/22 owners.
• Ruger 10/22 Modifications - and more.
• Ruger 10/22 Bedding Experiments - for the handyman who cannot leave well enough alone.
• Ruger 10/22 Magazine Clips - the lego approach to increasing firepower.