Who is doing all the Enfield target shooting??

[Robert303]

The other factors are age and eyesight. Most shooters in the UK are 50+ their eyesight is going and so sticking a PH 5a on an SMLE for instance is really the only way they can keep shooting a SMLE. In some cases this applies to their No4s.
Also a number of shoots, such as the Scottish Classic Rifle Championships, are running seperate comps for target rifles of that period so it's quite easy to get into 2 comps insted of one by removing the sight.

[cprher]

So any of the commercially available sights are 'appropriate' in effect as they were supplied from Ordnance sightless. As were the L96's supplied as target rifles - as opposed to sniping rifles

Peter, I heard this for several years now but when I finally got my L39A1 it was important to me for the gun to mount a "proper" sight. I defined that as an AJP 4/47 Twin Zero graduated for 7.62 NATO. I was lucky enough to find one in almost new condition. Similarly, when I got the Model 1917 I decided to outfit it with a PH5B, in my opinion, the best target sight made for that rifle. Mine was new in box and apparently had never been mounted. I'm especially impressed that neither the 4/47 or the 5B require any permanent modification to either rifle to fit.
Keith

[Colonel Enfield]

I would say competitive shooting with Lee-Enfields is a real flop in the US of A, about as popular as Rosie O'Donnell pin-ups. . At my local rifle club we tried to get matches running at 100 yards, made up a bunch of the tin hat targets, our local computer wizard made up some very neat score books, we advertised the matches and.....nothing.

Tried it again the next year and ........nothing.

I've heard competitive target shooting as an organised sport generally isn't hugely popular in the US the way it is in places like Australia and the UK (where it's one of the few legal reasons to own a gun).

Obviously there's still plenty of people who do it, but I've had more than one of my American friends express surprise at the idea anyone would find firing an "old army rifle at things" to be a serious competition, especially when there's lots of new rifles about for practically nothing which are much more accurate and easy to get parts for.

Oddly, these same people see nothing odd about folks dressing up as cowboys and firing guns from Western movies at things.

[ArtioZen]

with Enfields we cannot get anyone (except me I will show up).

I will show too Frederick! Am now setting up my 2016 calendar...

[Peter Laidler]

I'm not a big fan of target shooting but did occasionally partake by borrowing the occasional L39 or sometimes the accurate L81's that were housed in the Armoury. The old RQMS that used to book the zeroing range and come down with me for a shoot told me that the real shooters zeroed the rifle at the 0-0 fixed/sliding scale mark on the range scale and ignored the rest. They just went by the clicks on the scale. Knowing that. say, 10 clicks was 200 yards and 12 clicks was 200 metres and so on up to 900 yards or metres. That meant they could use any of the sights (depending on the clicks per revolution of course. So any sight that was on the rifle was acceptable.

I also found it beneficial because by doing it this way, it was deemed to be an official sport so ammunition and mileage was on the house so to speak!

[Frederick303]

Growing up in the US of A organized target shooting ( national match shooting) was a pretty decent sport, with something like 34,000 rated (it they had a classification) shooters at its peak, sometime in the mid 1980s. For every rated shooter there was likely something like 5 or 6 shooters that fired at local matches but never shot enough registered matches to get a classification. In those days for each DCM club you belonged to (organized by the government) you got 150 rounds of free ammunition per year, which depending on the club usually meant if you were a newer shooter you got around 300~600 rounds per year (older shooters would fire at least once per year but not draw ammunition). Once you fired 150 rounds in competition you got the ability to buy 1 M1 rifle per lifetime from the government for 118 dollars delivered (94 dollars plus shipping and handling fee). The DCM club I went to used to have 18 to 27 shooters per match, mostly shot with M1, M1903 and M14 type rifles with a small smattering of .300 and 7.62 NRA match rifles.

If you went to the nationals as part of a club team your fees to shoot (which included ammunition) were less then the freebies you got (such as 5,000 rounds of ammunition for each team that fired in the NTI and NTT). Sometime you got freebies, such as one year our team go a case of 5,000 Lapua .309 D46 170 gr bullets that were surplus to government needs, just for showing up to shoot as a team (in addition to the team ammo allotment). Food and housing were Spartan, but cheap (like 2 bucks a night).

Of course back then Bianchi cup was the only action shooting event, so if you liked competitive shooting NMC was the main game, the only one related to military shooting. The traditional shooting sports such as pistol bullseye and National Match (NM) shooting have declined, simply stated they have slowly gone from an activity devoted to practical marksmanship skill to shooting activity devoted to high scores under ISSU conditions with all sorts of artificial aids (of course this trend dates from around 1975). As that happened it lost popularity and continues to decline. Then IDPS, IPDA, IPSIC, 3-gun and a whole host of other adrenaline based shooting sports came up along with F class in the 1990s for the precision minded folks, which is where most of the new shooters have gone (one or the other).


Also government support pretty much ended, the DCM became the CMP in 1996, government support of matches ended and with it issue ammunition. The CMP became devoted to making money and ended up being a wholly owned subsidiary of the M1 Garand collectors association. With it the focus went from encouraging shooting proficiency to separating well healed collectors from their money. I ran a CMP club for a number of years and the support was less than zero, though most older shooters were blinded by the stuff they could buy and so failed to see the adverse effect of the CMP policies. The matches we used to run that had 18 to 27 shooters now have 4 to 12 shooters coming out, and that in a club that in the 1980/90s was ~1400 members and is now ~2,200.


The ranges now are full of folks shooting AR15 and other black rifles, sitting on benches with optics shooting at distances of 50 to 100 yards. "Epically gay", to use the modern idiom.

In fairness a lot has to do with young men today, they are all playing "medal of honor-seal-sniper modern warfare" computer games, which are all adrenaline based. Such activities do not tend towards the more precision skill based shooting activities, they are drawn to 3 gun and other such activities. The three gun matches do seem to do well, though the skill of discharging 5 rounds with a rifle into a man sized target at 25 yards in minimum time is all together different from trying to hit a 12 inch bull at 600 yards slow fire. A completely different mindset.

[Mk VII]

Lack of access to modern (and not-so-modern) firearms here has brought a resurgence of interest in .303s and similar era arms, and shooting them in competition at a fairly high standard is fairly popular. Clubs have formed for doing so. Old-style S.R.(b) shooting evolved into T.R. once the .303 era ended and gradually this has become a rich man's sport - a converted Mauser or No.4 is no longer good enough at national event level - using rich man's ammunition, despite efforts to subsidise it somewhat for the young.
Old-style .22 indoor leagues are slowly dying as the generation that was content to do that dies off or retires and indoor ranges get increasingly closed down. The only young people who are exposed to shooting are the Public schools and the cadet corps, and some will take it up after school, perhaps many years after school, but not many.

[Colonel Enfield]

The World War I Centenary is certainly helping people rediscover the old rifles too, though it has suddenly pushed the prices up in this part of the world as people with greater wallet sizes than understanding of old rifles decide they want "one of those Anzac guns".

For what it's worth, the service rifle folks where I shoot have made a conscious decision that, at least at club level, people are welcome to use sporterised military rifles in the Service Rifle competition matches; the price of "proper" service rifles keep going up and the first exposure a lot of younger shooters have is getting a cheap sporterised .303 from somewhere (perhaps an older, licenced family member).

We figured that having them show up at the range and having people sniffing dismissively at those rifles and saying "that's not original, it can get in the sea" wasn't going to help anyone - or the shooting sports generally.

There's a few target SMLE and No 4 rifles which show up as well and for new or older shooters they're welcome to join in with the regular competition. Since we all accept the rifles are far more accurate than most of us, the emphasis is on enjoying the competition and its spirit for the most part.

Obviously if you want to shoot competitively at state or national level then you're going to need proper gear, but service shooters are well-known for being a friendly and generous lot and people are often more than happy to share guns if someone's missing an appropriate one for a match.

[Frederick303]

My real interest in Enfield shooting dates to going to the Canadian Fullbore Nationals in 1996 and 1997, New Zealand in 2000 and NSW in Australia in 2002. Between the various trips I spent many happy hors on the rages with old Enfields and it set the hook. Went from a collection of 6 Enfields (which I thought very complete with a 2 - No1 , 2- No4, 1 No 5 and a P14) to a number I do not mention... which is pretty complete. unfortunately it is next to impossible to get folks to shoot a straight Enfield match and they are simply not competitive in any current US competition venue.

There is something to be said for being directed into a limited field of competition. It does seem to keep some semblance of direction and concentration of effort, which in the free range environment of the modern shooting scene is just simply lacking. Simply stated in a field as obscure as black power antique shooting, there are the following areas:

Traditional Kentucky rifle shooting (AKA friendship Indiana)
NSSA (shooting with muskets, aka civil war style)
Long range black powder (muzzle loader and cartridge)
Silhouette black powder (same course as modern rifles)
"Chunk" shooting (blackpowder bench-rest with traditional heavy guns)
Cowboy shooting (for muzzle loader revolvers)
Black powder trap (yes there are guys that do that.)
Modern In-line black powder bench matches.

With all these competition areas, it is very hard for any one activity to get the numbers of folks that used to be directed into one or two activities.

[Patrick Chadwick]

black power antique shooting,

??? Is that a variation on silhouette shooting Frederick? Where do you find the black power antiques? And should you be shooting at antiques anyway?

unfortunately it is next to impossible to get folks to shoot a straight Enfield match

You're in the wrong country for that. Over here, the BDMP holds a yearly "Enfield-Mauser Trophy" match. 3 classes: Enfield, Swedish Mauser, Other Mausers.

---------- Post added at 12:14 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:05 AM ----------

With all these competition areas, it is very hard for any one activity to get the numbers of folks that used to be directed into one or two activities.

Very true. In some competition areas I find myself coming first and last, and wondering if I should bother next year. However, when next year comes I do it again, hoping that someone else will turn up, as for a couple of my antiques it is the only chance to see how they perform under competition conditions.