Is benchrest dying?

82boy

82boy

Patrick Kennedy
Well hopefully I don't stir the pot too much, and get ban for this thread.

I got to thinking (Dangerous thing.) after the last post that James Mock posted about equipment, and thought I would put this up for discussion; Is Benchrest Dying?

This question was spawned because of a phone conversation I had about a moth ago, with a well know Benchrest shooter. (We will keep his identity secrete.) He said that he has seen that attendance is falling at the match's he attends, and he believes that what we know of point blank Benchrest will be non existent in ten years. Now piggy backing on this, I can say from my experience, at the match's I have shot at I am usually the youngest participate in attendance. (Being 38 years old.) I would say average age of a Benchrest shooter is a bit beyond 55. I have seen in our area that match's are shrinking in size. I have seen a few post of ranges closing off not holding match's and older shooters leaving the range. (Passing on.) We all seen the end of Precision Shooting Magazine, and from what I have gathered it was due to cost of producing the magazine compared to the amount of revenue brought in from the IBS. Is this saying they have less members than they did a few years ago? Could all of this be that part way caused by high gas prices, lack of supplies, and other things? Is this shooter and I being pessimistic?

What are your thoughts on this subject? Are you seeing the same thing as this shooter is seeing? Should the leadership of both sanctioning bodies be concerned? Should they look for new ways to attract newer shooters? Does anyone have any optimistic tales, or facts to add? My main concern is to keep this sport I dearly love going, and hope to never see it end.
 
Absolutely Not!!

It is easy to look at the trends of the past decade and see falling membership and participation, but those numbers are a small part of the story. The aging of our membership and the global economic slump have been major contributors to those trends, but I know for a fact that NBRSA membership is on the rise and has been for over a year now and, for now, those old trends seem to be reversing. There are program proposals being worked on that promise to bring some vibrancy back to the competition. Last but not least, there is fast growing overall interest in accuracy competition (fed at this point by long range tactical interests) which ultimately becomes the source of new BR membership. Competitors find benchrest when they are ready to upgrade their skill sets, when they can afford to compete, and when it offers a physically available avenue for competition (important to aging shooters who are challenged by optics or physical requirements). Benchrest is the gold standard by which practically all aspects of precision shooting are measured and as such will probably never be huge (takes too much commitment to play) but also will never go away (there will always be people willing to make the commitment to play at the highest level).

Rod
 
I don't know if its dying but it is certainly hurting. The attendance numbers are way down. The cost to compete has reached the breaking point for a lot of folks. The price of travel and hotels has been a problem for awhile but the skyrocketing cost of components has been almost the last straw. I have shot very little for the last couple yrs because of the cost involved, it just gets harder to justify spending the money and time required to compete. I hope the sport survives but I don't see the costs getting any better.
 
You know this subject comes up from time to time and you could do a search and see what's been said before.
Since you haven't gotten a lot of replies to this thread it would seem that most are tired of talking about it.
It seems to me that the solution is to figure out a way to attract new younger competitors to the game. If you look at benchrest like a business it would become apparent that it needs to get new customers to replace the ones you will inevitably lose. Some of the problems that have been discussed in the past are: (1) the current crop of shooters don't wish to change anything. (2) there seems to be little interest in developing a "factory" class that would make the sport more accessible to a beginner. (3) Group matches are expensive and time consuming to run.

The NBRSA and UBR appear to be making some headway in score shooting, but that doesn't answer much for group shooters. Also, UBR is regional and doesn't seem to getting much interest outside the region. There are solutions to most problems, but as a group (slight pun) we don't seem to have the leadership to do what needs to be done.
 
I've been in some sort of shooting sport since the early 1960's. Yes, interest in a particular discipline cycles some based on current economic conditions but what I have seen is that a sport, trap, clays, silhouette, etc just cycles, and in about 10-15 year increments.

Someone gets started in one of these sports and then he brings his buddies in. Over time they get worn out dragging all that "necessary" equipment around, they sell it and quit. My problem is that I forget to sell it, or have some sentimental attachment to it. I still have my bullseye pistol box and guns, my trap guns, shell pouches and vests, etc., all my silhouette guns, sight smokers, etc, and so on.

Anyone want to buy 3,000 once-fired AA's or 2,000 Gold Metals?

Anyone have a Garage Sale sign to loan me??

Thankfully my 20 year old grandson is carrying part of it off.
 
When I started shooting benchrest in 1996 the southeast region had a shoot somewhere just about every two weeks, and attendance was rarely under 40 shooters with many being in the 50+ range.

Last year I started holding shoots at Brock's Gap Training Center in Birmingham. This is the first new NBRSA SE Region range to start holding shoots in the last 12 years. In that same period of time at least four ranges have stopped holding shoots. At the present time there are only 5 ranges in the SE region holding shoots, and two of those only hold one shoot each year.

Both last year and this year we only had 25 shooters attend. We will hold a second shoot in November and I hope attendance will be better.

Brock's Gap has only 100 yards available and we do not have onsite camping. I have to work with the facilities available. Many shooters are not willing to attend unless they have onsite camping.

Organizing a group shoot is expensive and requires a tremendous amount of work. When attendance is so low most match director's (including me) really wonder if it is worth the effort.

Bottom line...if local region shooters don't support the matches by attending, local region group shooting will die out and we will only be left with big matches like the Super Shoot, East-West, Shamrock, Cactus, etc.

We need more shooters to step up and start matches at their clubs. With more places to shoot, travel will be less expensive and maybe more shooters would attend.

Steve
 
Attendance

I dropped in on an air rifle benchrest match a year or so ago and was amazed at the number of participants, the number of younger shooters (20 to 30 years old) and the high class (expensive) equipment. I would venture to say that the air rifles are every bit as expensive as the CFBR. It is not just the economy.
 
I have been following this for some time. The decline is pretty much across the board nationally. I would say the only growth is a slow, steady uptick in the 600 yard game. IBS has added quite a few 1000 yard ranges too, especially in the Midwest. In the short-range game, the decline is evident in both group and score. I follow attendance trends in both the IBS and NBRSA so it is not a "IBS problem". Shoots that once had 50-70 are now at 20-40 competitors.

I do not believe it is the economy at all. Other disciplines are growing. For example, I think the 3-gun competitions are growing each year. There are other shooting games, as well, that are expanding. Benchrest has always been a niche shooting sport, albeit an important one. The problem we have now is that there is far more types of shooting disciplines to choose from compared to 20-30 years ago.

As many of you know, IBS has teamed up with accurateshooter.com to feature some of our matches on that web site. They get about 120,000 unique visitors per week. So I think that both IBS and benchrest will be getting some good exposure there.

Jeff
 
This comes up periodically, the answer is yes, the attendance at Registered Matches is off. We even had to cease having Registered Matches at Tomball this year because of no Match Director.

There is a rumor we will have a Registered Match Director again next year, so perhaps we can start up again with at least one group match and one score match.

We do have decent attendance at our Score Club Matches, 35 to 40 shooters. But it is just a single yardage in the morning, pretty laid back, and informal. $15 gets you a warm up and 5 record targets.

The rules are brutally simple in the Benchrest Class. Any legal firearm.

I will run them as long as shooters come out.
 
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Patrick,

You need to look outside the USA - benchrest is growing. The last 'Worlds' I attended in France in 2011 had over twenty countries taking part. No other fullbore shooting discipline has this much world interest. It may be in a 'trough' in the USA but elsewhere, it's thriving.

Vince (UK)
 
steve stanley said:
I don't know if its dying but it is certainly hurting. The attendance numbers are way down. The cost to compete has reached the breaking point for a lot of folks. The price of travel and hotels has been a problem for awhile but the skyrocketing cost of components has been almost the last straw. I have shot very little for the last couple yrs because of the cost involved, it just gets harder to justify spending the money and time required to compete. I hope the sport survives but I don't see the costs getting any better.
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We have no 'young' shooters at ouir matches.

The last gentleman and his daughter (11 yo) that shot ended up w/ a divorce. Dont know anything else about em.

I do know that the ammo supply is taking or going to be taking some bites out of shooters.

Price is also killing many shooters. Even if the gentleman mentioned above was stillshooting-how much can a young family afford. One eve practice and two shooters at a match and you have shot $50 to $60 bucks w/ 'mid' priced ammo, which is actually HIGH priced ammo.

Im retired and drive a ways to the shoot-gas and bridge toll and I got $50 or more just getting there and back home. I dont do much else and for 6 or 7 matches-suck it up and shoot.


PS-to Jackie Schmidty--Is Harry Berry still shooting?? Tell him his MI shooting friends said "HELLO". Would be nice if he made the Aug Memorial shoot. He can check the CCSA site for schedule or PM me.
 
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82boy said:
seen that attendance is falling at the match's he attends.
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Talk to the owners of amusement parks, cottage rentals, and all extra curricular activities in the last 5 years. Things according to wall street journal are coming back, slowly.
If you have an average income, and an extra grand pops up...you going to go on a weekend that excludes most of the family? Prolly not
 
I guess you could call Benchrest shooting a nitch. For lack of a better word.
Heres the factors cost of equipment race to keep up with the top dogs. Enough time to attend matches along with the necessary $$$$$ it not cheap.
Then the lack of a classification system putting people with little experience against people who have nothing better to do then shoot {pros}.
All of this has been gone over before , yet the sanction bodys prefer to keep it the way it is.
I was reading an old PS magazine from the 90s and German Salazar amoung others had replys to this same question .
The bar is quite high to say the least. So now we have a big fish in the little pond syndrone.
 
Most of the "new Shooters" I have seen come forward

are from the Retiree ranks. Retirees have the dough to do what they want , if they want to do it. Far too much emphasis is placed on young shooters. There is a multitude of reasons why this is the wrong place to look to grow the ranks. Most often it's the "kid" found Girls so I am now alone. Wrong thinking on the entire shooting community's part. Folks who can afford to shoot and have the time is the place to be looking. Also the "Bangers" is the wrong place to look; those who have "Black Guns", load all the clips they have, go the to the range and shoot every round into one target, only because they have to or get kicked off the range. RETIREES is where it's at.
 
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Important Factors

You won't develop bench rest shooters unless they have a decent and convenient place to practice. I drive over 90 minutes to get to a decent range where I won't be constantly annoyed by the "blasters" who shower me with hot brass and violate range rules. I work full time and have a long commute, so this is difficult. Most of my "practice" is at matches. I also shoot service rifle, bolt rifle, F-class and egg shoot matches. I'm still in the phase of wanting to learn all facets of shooting, but I like bench rest the best. In four years or so when I can afford to retire, I will have the time to really tweak loads and equipment and get meaningful practice, plus drive to more distant matches. A piece of property with a range on it would be ideal, but probably won't happen. I quit my "Home" range because of liability concerns over non-member's activities. The next closest range is 35 minutes away, and most of the time the behavior of other shooters makes it not worthwhile. So, my key factors are time and proximity to a good range.
 
It was rumored 10 years ago that Benchhrest was dying. I'm going to shoot as often and as much as I can, while me and Benchrest is still alive. What other alternative is there?



Glenn
 
It most certainly is dying out here in west Texas...the trend is going to the Long range guns much of it non registered fun type shoots with clay targets and steel plates out to 1,000 yds...the other draw is the tactical weapons type shoots, also fun matches with different disciplines...short range paper shooting is too boring for the shooters that want something more...and I know of many shooters that just quit shooting (still have all their equipment) short range BR...want to go with something more challenging where anyone can win...the longer the distance the more variables and the better shooters get bitten...it leaves the door open to the lucky ones...and these shooters spare no expense to play those games...short range BR is just too boring for most these days...IMO...:(



Eddie in Texas
 
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Dying here in South Louisiana

We used to have a match in St Bernard parish and we had a match in Donaldsonville. No more. The closest match to me that I am aware of is in Lake Charles. I have not shot a match in 2 years but sure would like to. Hard to generate the enthusiam to go to a Houston or Alabama big match when I do not have small local matches to practice at. Thinking about selling my mostly new stuff and moving on. Bummer.
 
well....

Well,

Horse ( Sorry Wilbur) There's a tremendous rift between ARA and IR 50/50 in the US that needs to be addressed, and there are a lot of young shooters in both disciplines, that could advance to national, or multi-national competition, if there was a middle ground. I've seen them at matches. What up guys? Crush ourselves together? Find some common ground?

First thing required is a leader. Right now I would nominate a D.K. but there are other possibilities.

Thoughts?

Gerry
 
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