The State of Silhouette 2022

Some brief opinions on where we are and where we're going.

“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.” — A League Of Their Own

I received the following question(s) from a junior shooter a couple weeks ago:

I’m doing my Senior Research on the history, modern and future aspects of silhouette. Where do you think the sport of silhouette is right now? Where would you like to see it go? What are your thoughts on the sport? Can you give some of your background with the sport?

This is several questions, all of which I’m sure I’ll be writing more about in the future and I could probably write a whole book about now. I wont do that, but let’s break these down into individual questions and answer them like we usually do. A quick disclaimer so no one gets mad at me for what I’m about to write: this question asks for my opinion, so that’s what I’m about to give. Your opinion my be different and there will be vastly different opinions around the world on these questions. Please feel free to comment below and tell me where you think I’m right and wrong; and PLEASE leave your opinions regarding these questions in your comments.

I’m going to start with the last question since it seems like the most logical place to start.

Can you give some of your background with the sport?

I started shooting silhouette in 2011 after accidentally stumbling onto something about the sport on the internet. I thought it looked interesting and fun because there was no supporting the rifle on anything and the targets were steel reactive targets instead of a piece of paper. I shot a lot as a kid growing up farming and hunting and most of the shooting I did was unsupported. I did some digging around on the internet and found a local match and contacted the match director who invited me to come out. I watched my first match and decided I’d give the sport a try. At this point I was about to get married and was subconsciously looking for something to replace bicycle racing since I was starting to realize that spending 20 hours a week training for racing was going to be too much with a full-time career and a wife/family. I didn’t know it immediately but silhouette would soon replace bike racing and become my new sport.

I had a Savage .22 rifle and borrowed a 24X scope and did some practicing. I shot my first match the next month and shot an 8/40. I watched Jerry shoot some really good scores and I decided that day that I would get good at this game. Air rifle silhouette is pretty popular in Louisiana so I bought an Air Arms TX200, which gave me another rifle to compete with and a rifle to practice with in my back yard. Along with that TX200 I bought four sleeves of pellets, that’s 20,000 pellets. Also, I told my good shooting buddy Daniel Archibald that I thought I could make it to Master Class in Sporter air rifle within a year from starting silhouette. He told me that was impossible and bet me $100 that I couldn’t do it. I bought a CZ452 and had two good rifles to shoot smallbore and air rifle.

In 2012, I raced bikes and shot silhouette. I shot a LOT of silhouette. My TX200 not only gave me another rifle to compete with, but it was also a rifle I could practice with in my back yard. I won my bet with Daniel after 6 months but he said that Sporter Air Rifle was too easy so the bet went to smallbore - could I make it to Master class in smallbore within a year of starting the game?

Two significant things happened in 2012 for my shooting career:

First, Jerry noticed that I was getting better and had some drive and potential so one day at a club match he brought his spotting scope over to me and told me that we were going to be shooting together from now on. He proceeded to teach me how to shoot with a spotter and how to be a good spotter.

The second significant thing that happened in 2012 is that I shot all of those pellets I bought - every one of them. So I shot through 20,000 pellets, four new action springs, and about half a case of .22 ammo in a little over a year. I won the revised bet with Daniel, making it to Master class in Sporter, Target and Open air rifle and Standard and Hunter smallbore all within a year of starting.

I raced my last bicycle race in early 2013 and I was “all in” on silhouette after that.

Where do you think the sport of Silhouette is right now?

I believe that 2022 was the best year for silhouette that I’ve seen. As I wrote above, I’ve only been shooting this sport since 2011, but I’ve been paying attention during that time. In 2022, we rebounded from Covid by crowning the first-ever North American champion with the LAPUA Monarch Cup. The Monarch Cup is HUGE for the sport. It was backed by over $100,000 in cash and prizes! The prizes came from LOTS of companies within the shooting industry, which means that these companies are paying attention to silhouette as a sport.

The U.S. Smallbore Silhouette National Championship was the best I’ve seen from both a participation standpoint and a competition standpoint. Not only were there 160+ shooters, there there were more shooters competing that could WIN than probably ever before. There are more great shooters on the line today than I’ve ever seen. From what I’ve heard from guys and girls that have been around the game for decades, silhouette has more champion-level shooters today than ever before. We are not competing against just one or two other top-level shooters to win a championship. To win a national championship in 2022, we had to get through 10 - 15 shooters that could all win. The competitiveness of a sport is a great indication the health of a sport and silhouette in 2022 is VERY competitive.

Another great sign is the number of championship matches available throughout the continent. I shot 14 championship matches in 2022! Most of those were in the southern region of the United States. Last week I was asked by a sponsor to provide a list of the championship matches on my 2023 schedule and there are a LOT of matches to choose from! They are all over the place in most every region of the country and Canada. Mexico is FULL of championship matches, too! The availability of big matches with elite competition is extremely important for our sport and those matches are definitely out there!

Finally, I shot with more junior and new shooters in 2022 than I ever have before. Those numbers are important in and of themselves but the most impressive and exciting thing about these shooters is the effort they are putting into becoming champion shooters. That’s something I never hear anyone talk about but the more shooters that we have that take the sport seriously and strive to get better, the more shooters we will have that will travel to big matches and the more investment these shooters will make to the sport. Serious shooters that compete to win are more likely to start and support club matches and local silhouette programs because these are the places that give good shooters a match environment to hone their skills, compete, and get better. The more grass-roots club matches we have, the better our sport will be.

Where would you like to see the sport of Silhouette go?

I would like to see our sport continue to unite internationally. There is so much more to silhouette than what is here in the United States. I believe that the way to take the sport to the next level here in North America is to continue what the Monarch Cup started by promoting and supporting more and more international continental championships. In 2023, NASSA will be fully operational and will provide the central organization for promotion and sanctioning of silhouette in North America. Hopefully, the next steps will be North American championships in all of the international silhouette sports (Smallbore, Highpower and Air Rifle). We already have a North American Championship for Smallbore with the Monarch Cup; all that is missing is NASSA-sanctioned North American championships for highpower and air rifle. The vision is for these to be single-weekend matches rather than a series and for them to be, like the Monarch Cup, the biggest matches with the best prizes in the world. All of this is currently being planned and, if sponsorship support is there, will be happening in the next couple of years. If we eventually have the three-match Monarch Cup, plus a North American Highpower championship, plus a North American Air Rifle Championship, plus national championships, plus regional and state championships, plus the other silhouette sports like Lever Action in the US and iron sights in Mexico - we will have a championship calendar that can rival any sport in the world!

Of course, this is the 10,000-foot view of the future, but the future really depends on folks stepping up at the grass-roots club level, and I’ve written about that here.

What are your thoughts on the sport?

I believe that the best thing that silhouette has going for it is that it is, at its core, a great sport that can never be fully mastered. It’s a completely skill-based, hit-or-miss, reactive-target sport that can be played by anyone - male/female, big/little, short/tall, etc. It’s a real sport in that it’s something that takes an enormous amount of real work to be good at. There is nowhere to hide in silhouette and no shortcuts to get where you want to be. That means that it’s not a sport for everybody; but there is no sport for everybody. Every sport out there is only attractive to the right kind of person; and just like every other sport, we have the responsibility to get our sport in front of the people who will be drawn to it and who are willing to put in the work to become good at it. All of those things are what makes silhouette great - to me. I loved bicycle racing because it is incredibly difficult and it takes an inexhaustible amount of work to be good at it - but if you are willing to put in the time and the work, you can be great. I am the type of person that is drawn to a difficult sport like bicycle racing. Silhouette is exactly the same. It’s HARD to be great in silhouette. “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.”

What are my thoughts on the sport? My thought is that, for the right person, silhouette is the greatest sport on the planet!

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and I hope you all get the chance to do some shooting or whatever else you love during the holiday season. Please send me emails with questions and ideas of topics to cover (dustinflint@yahoo.com). I have a little backlog of emails that are helping me to plan future newsletter posts. For those of you who have emailed and not seen a response yet, I have not forgotten about you and I promise to discuss your emails very soon.

Until next time, keep shooting!