Hey! Thanks for the welcome!
I am in central Iowa as well, Mingo which is near Bondurant. I am pretty excited about the upcoming shooting season, this is the first one that I am going to be involved in any capacity. I will most definitely go with your advice and get out and RO to gain some more exposure until I get my "sea legs" under me.
Could I trouble you for a good resource to see what matches are going on around central Iowa? I have been using the NRL22 website and was able to find the two clubs around us (White Pine Precision Shooters and Skunk River Practical Rimfire) but it sounds like there is a lot more coming up.
Thanks again for the reply to the thread, hope to see you around!
Oh right man. You’re closer to high lakes outdoor alliance. They have a really nice range with berms out to just under 800. Prs props and stuff there to practice on.
As for resources, lookup Iowa Precision rifleman club and Iowa precision rifle match (iprm) on Facebook. If you’re not on Facebook, you can still pull up their pages for schedules. IPRM hosts a really nice entry level match several times a year at different ranges in iowa. Really good place to just show up and and see how you do with a low entry fee.
You’ll find info for the bigger matches like PRS and NRL hunter on those pages as well. Usually a match director will put out some info about events and also posts looking for RO’s.
That being said, if you RO next weekends Southern iowa showdown PRS match, you get free entry into the following weekends 1 day match put in by GE precision. I’m gonna be shooting this match but there are some top level shooters showing up to the first pro series 2 day in iowa and RO’ing gives you an opportunity to watch how 120+ shooters approach a stage. If you’re interested, find the post about RO’ing and get ahold of the match director ( Matt Sabotka)
Now one really cool thing about the NRL hunter matches is that if you volunteer to RO, you can shoot the match for free (huge value) on registration day and have your points count with the other competitors for prizes as well as walk the RO prize table, then you can watch squads of shooters shoot your stage and learn all sorts of different techniques and tips. I’m doing that for the Vortex whitetail madness match in Missouri the 22-24th.
Lastly, make an account (for free) on practiscore.com This is where your scores are tracked and where you will sign up for matches. You can filter what kind of match you’re looking for and a radius of travel and it will tell you all of the matches coming up. There’s way more out there than you’d think and iowas precision rifle scene has exponentially grown in the last 5 years since I got out and came back home.
Hope all that helps and I hope to see you around!
