July2026 (1) - Flipbook - Page 87
One of the great things about
shooting silhouette in south Louisiana is the competition. It’s crazy how good our young shooters
are. There is always at least one
teenager or college kid that will
shoot an excellent score. The
average winning score at our club
matches in 2025 was something
like a 38.4 out of 40. I don’t know of
anywhere in the world that requires
a 39/40 to win a club match. Welcome to Louisiana!
Anyway, I was hoping to have some
good competition at today’s soggy,
rainy match and I was not disappointed. Most folks reading this
have never heard of Logan Benoit.
You’ll know all about him soon. In
early May, he won our smallbore
Standard Rifle state championship.
It was his first silhouette championship outside of 4H and he beat four
national champions and several
other excellent shooters to win it.
Logan is 14 years old.
He showed up today - so my first
goal of training day number 1 was
to win this match. It is very important to simulate match conditions and create as much pressure
as possible. I knew Logan would
shoot great, so I shot right next to
him and paid attention to his score
as we went along (I would never watch another shooter at a big
match because that just generates
unneeded pressure; but I was looking for pressure at this match, so I
counted both of our scores.)
TIP: Identify what makes you
nervous or feel pressure at big
matches, then try to recreate
those scenarios at club matches.
(Do shootoffs make you nervous?
Make sure you’re doing shootoffs
at club matches. Don’t like people
watching you shoot? Ask a few
God Bless Black Powder!
people to follow you around and
watch you shoot at club matches.
Loud talking, distractions, all those
things are perfect at club matches.)
The first session of any training
block is the perfect time to look
back at how I’ve been shooting and
correct any issues. I can typically identify exactly how I’ve been
shooting but this has been a very
unusual shooting season. Usually
by this time I would have already
shot four championship matches
and about twelve club matches. I’d
know exactly how things are going.
This year I’ve only shot two championship matches because I was
traveling with my family during
one and another got cancelled - and
I’ve shot ZERO club matches since
October! (It’s been a busy year.)
However, it’s not like I have no
indication of how I’ve been shooting; I won both the Spindletop
Regional and the Louisiana Silhouette Championship - and I shot a
perfect score in winning that state
championship - so things have been
going pretty well. I had an issue
with my smallbore rifle’s trigger at
the Louisiana Silhouette Championship, so I adjusted it to make the
second stage a little heavier. That’s
a possible problem to watch out
for and a possible adjustment to be
made. My second goal was for that
trigger to be perfect by the end of
the match.
Jerry, my spotter, was at the match
so we were able to work together.
Perfect! I had three goals for this
first training day: (1) win the match
against an excellent shooter; (2)
make sure the trigger is adjusted
perfectly; and (3) dial in the communication with Jerry.
It rained lightly all morning during
the match, with heavy thunder-
storms expected around noon, so
we decided to shoot one 60-shot
match instead of two 40-shot
matches to get off the range before
the heavy rain. Logan and I both
started on chickens and we were
off!
I could tell during warmups and
right off the bat on the chickens
that my trigger was MUCH improved over how it felt at the Louisiana Silhouette Championship.
I felt like it cost me several shots
then but it was breaking exactly
how I like it today. I drilled 15 of 15
chickens with only one shot outside of the center (that shot hit the
neck). Logan hit 12 of 15 chickens,
so I jumped out ahead by three.
On the pigs I had a couple hits high
in the back but thirteen hits right
around the middle with good shots.
15 of 15 pigs. Logan also hit 15 pigs.
I missed my first turkey. It felt like
a clean shot - good trigger break
- but I broke it on the top edge of
the back and it slipped right over
the top of the target. No big deal
because I followed that shot up
with 14 nearly perfect shots to hit
14 of 15 turkeys. Logan was not to
be outdone; he hit 14 of 15 turkeys
as well.
We finished on rams. The wind
started whipping on the first two
banks. I missed my first ram on
the only poor shot of the match.
I drilled the next four with excellent breaks right on the spots that
Jerry had me shooting for. On the
second bank, I broke the first shot
too high in the back and it missed
right over the top. The second shot
was almost the exact same shot and
I just barely nicked the top of his
back. I made more discipled shots
and hit the next three in the middle. I finished the match with five
perfect shots and got all five on the
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