Precision Rifle Series One of the most exciting shooting sports available today is the Precision Rifle Series—better known simply as PRS. It is a discipline that requires competitors to master the fundamentals of rifle marksmanship and external ballistics in settings that are both fun and challenging. BY KEITH WOOD hannon Kay, an active-duty infantry officer and former Special Operations sniper, climbed into the bed of the 4x4 pickup and rested his rifle’s fore-end across the tattered foam insulation that covered the vehicle’s roll bar. The rules required the rifle to be in contact with the bar, which meant that the shooter had to bend at the waist or squat rather than sit or kneel for stability. Even standing on solid ground, I could see the truck move on its worn suspension; I can’t imagine what that bounce looked like through a powerful optic. At the tone of the buzzer, the stage required the shooter to engage each small “head flapper” target at 320, 356, 382, 429 and 460 yds. in under 90 seconds. Out of the dozens of shooters that ran through that stage, only Kay achieved a perfect score. The stage was just one of 20 at the two-day CORE Classic match held at CORE Shooting Solutions in Baker, Fla., in September of last year. The CORE Classic was one of 30 matches across the nation that made up the 2017 Precision Rifle Series (PRS)—a calendar of matches that constitute an overall points race during the course of the year. For lack of a better analogy, the PRS is like NASCAR’s Cup Series for long-range rifle shooting. Longrange “sniper-style” rifle matches started springing up around the country in the 1990s and slowly built momentum as part of the mainstream of competitive shooting. As they gained popularity, organizers sought out a mechanism to create a championship atmosphere in the sport—the Precision Rifle Series was born out of that desire and held its inaugural season in 2012. As civilian interest in long-range shooting has snowballed during the past decade, the PRS has grown exponentially; in 2012, there were only 164 PRS members, today there are more than 2,000. PRS matches feature targets—usually steel—positioned anywhere from 200 to 1,200 yds. from the firing line. The closest target at the CORE match was 262 yds., and the farthest was at 840. A typical stage requires the shooter to engage multiple targets at varying distances, often from different shooting positions and in varying wind conditions. All of this takes place under extremely tight time constraints—the skill level displayed by the top professionals in this sport is astounding. An example stage from the two-day CORE
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MARCH 2018
AMERICAN RIFLEMAN
Photos by author
