The shooting sports have more disciplines than you can shake a stick at, and it’s often overwhelming when you’d like to get involved in something new. This article is an introduction to Silhouette Shooting, specifically for Smallbore, and for those people who want a little more fun than punching holes in paper.

That’s where metallic silhouette targets come in. You either hear the Thwack! of metal followed by the wildly spinning target headed toward the ground, or you miss. There’s not much in between.

For Smallbore silhouette all you’re going to need is a .22 LR rifle and a scope that will let you adjust for elevation.

Why the need for elevation? Well, a .22 LR drops about a foot at 100 yds and you’ll be shooting targets at 40, 60, 77 & 100 yards/meters – so there’s the challenge. You can use a single setting and use “hold-over” for starters, but getting your settings for all four distances is much easier. Thankfully the targets get bigger as the distance increases, so let’s talk about the targets…

Silhouette Shooting is descended from a very old Mexican sport using live animals and inherits the target shapes from that game; the Chicken, the Pig, the Turkey and the Ram. The targets are placed at the staggered distances in banks of five. Depending on the size of your match, you’ll be shooting at 10, 15 or 20 of each animal. Chickens are about 2.5” square with the Rams growing to about 6” square. Pins are awarded for shooting multiples of five in a row too.

You’ll get 2.5 minutes to fire five shots at five animals, left to right, off-hand. Yup, no slings, no rests, just you holding still and plinking. A new beginner with some reasonable skill can expect to clean 5-15 animals in a 40-shot match, at which point you’ll be hooked. You’ll see some Master Class shooters take 35+ of targets off the stands and wonder how they do it. Some will say they have good equipment. No doubt that a good rifle with a clean trigger and a nice scope will certainly help, but these guys can come close to shooting the same with off the shelf rifles too – they’ve practiced. Not to worry though, like most sports, Silhouette Shooting has different classes for shooters so they can advance and shoot against people of their skill level.
Developing a good stance and follow-through on each shot are critical to getting better scores, more so than equipment, so feel free to bring that .22 rifle you have in the closet, or better yet, show up and ask if they have a range/loaner rifle to try, most do. And if they don’t, you can bet someone would be happy to loan you their gun to try – it’s a very friendly sport and shooters are always looking to help each other out, especially new shooters.

For more information, be sure to do an internet search or Wikipedia for “smallbore metallic silhouette”. Here are a few sites to get you started: www.steelchickens.com, https://www.bctsa.bc.ca/Silhouette