The Speed Silhouette Challenge At EBR 2022

The Speed Silhouette challenge at Extreme Benchrest is one of the highlights of the whole event! This discipline requires complete mastery of your air rifle, combined with extreme speed and incredible accuracy.

That’s Tom Adams in action above. He won Speed Silhouette Pro Class at EBR 2022, successfully defending his title from the previous year.

Speed Silhouette shooters need to be able to hit tiny targets at varying ranges – from 20 to 50 Yards – and to transition rapidly from one distance to another. And there’s another aspect to this. A huge amount of practice!!!

Then there’s the matter of the various types of airguns and the techniques required to shoot them. Finally, there’s a range of rules for the different categories. In the “Open” category, shooters start with a loaded gun. “Sportsman’s” and “Professional” categories, the start is with guns unloaded and magazines empty.

This means that there’s a wide variety of techniques in use among competitors in the Speed Silhouette challenge. Let’s look at some of them now.

Most shooters choose to use magazine feed for speed silhouette. So you’ll see competitors pouring pellets into magazine speed loaders…

… then loading the magazine into their gun.

In the Open Class, magazines can be pre-filled and loaded ready into the gun before firing commences. This makes high capacity magazines – such as this one from Midwest Elite Airguns – a very useful device, as (hopefully) the course can be cleared without reloading.

Below, some highly-successful competitors like John Bagakis, below, have made special modifications to the cocking lever of their gun for faster operation in Pro Class. Yes, this is within the rules.

Those shooters in Sportsman and Pro Classes often find it faster to single load, rather than using the magazine. But this takes A TON of practice to master!

Of course, semi automatics do have a definite advantage in rate-of-fire, especially in the Open Class, where the gun can be pre-loaded. But if you can’t clear the course with the number of shots on board, then it can take too long to reload the magazine…

And the result? A great blast when shooting and the happiness from an outstanding performance!