.22LR Rimfire Rifle Benchrest Competition
Second Saturday/50m, and Fourth Saturday/100yd, of the month. 9:30AM Start. Emmaville Rifle Range.
About This Shoot
Our club hosts a monthly Benchrest Rimfire Rifle Competition at the Emmaville Rifle range, where a variety of targets are shot at a distance of 50 metres. The competition has categories for both scoped and open sight rifles, with members shooting basic hunting rifles using simple rests, through to heavy target rifles with powerful scopes, and all the associated gear.
Terry Howard shooting his light but accurate Lithgow LA01 in our rimfire comp.
Club rifles, rests and ammunition are available if you would like to come along and try out a shoot, or bring your own rifle and see how good it can shoot!
One of our rimfire shooters, uses a highly accurate ANSCHÜTZ heavy target rifle, off a specialised front rest.
Our top shooters also ‘dress the range’, from their bench to the target, with ‘wind flags’, which indicate the direction and speed of the wind on the range, allowing the shooter to ‘aim off’ as required to have the wind ‘blow the bullet’ into the bull. Reading the wind in .22lr rimfire shooting, is a skill absolutely needed to make consistent very high scores.
Contact our Rimfire Benchrest Comp Organiser for more information - Don Lawson ph. 0427 763 826
Please note that a 100yd Rimfire Benchrest Comp has been added to the 2024 Range Calendar.
The competition uses an adapted version of the SSAA rules, which you can peruse by clicking the following button. The shoot organiser is the source for clarification of any rules. Particular rules to our shoot are as follows.
One-piece rifle rests are not allowed.
We do not follow strict rifle grading rules as suggested in the official SSAA rule book, but instead the simpler broader categories described as follows.
Heavy Rifle : Heavy weight target style rifles with wide flat stock fore-ends, and heavy barrels often with tuners.
Light Rifle : Lighter hunting style rifles with sporter barrels without tuners.
Open Sight : Any rifle shot with open sights.
Group shooting involves trying to put five shots anywhere on the target, but into the smallest spread of holes as possible; with the distance between the furtherest apart two shots being the size that goes on the scoresheet for that shooter. Ten minutes is allowed to shoot the group.
The hunter target is of the familiar kind, with rings marked with scoring points, with the bullseye in the centre scoring highest 10. However a shot which also hits a single ‘dot’ in the centre of the bull scores an extra ‘point one’, and with our most accurate shooters, it is often only these extra ‘super-accuracy’ points that are needed to separate those in the top places on that target. There are five targets on a card and the shooter puts two shots in each one, which gives a possible score of ‘100-point-Ten’ which if ever shot, is a score to remember!
(Note : The 6th bottom right target in the box, is a ‘sighting target’, which shooters use to ‘test the wind’, and so the hold-offs needed to hit the bull, in the seven minutes allowed for this target.
Other targets that are regularly shot in our comps include ‘The Rat’, which allows no sighting shots, and requires two shots in each target, including the indistinct target in the body of the rat, which is a particular challenge as it can be difficult to see your shots there,. Therefore, basic skills such as knowing how many shots have been fired are practiced.
Occasionally ‘novelty targets’, such as one called ‘The Black Death’ are fun to shoot, and make a day at the range not such a serious undertaking.
Our rimfire comp scorers are exacting in their assessment of each target, using special tools to separate a shot which touches a scoring ring, and therefore gets the high score, (called best-edge scoring) from one which is very close but not quite there. In group shooting, here, they are measuring the spread of the shots to 0.001 of an inch!