I was looking at a couple of Contenders at the last local gun show I attended. A guy walks up and we get into a discussion about the Contenders, and what a good deal they were. He mentioned he had just come from a 22lr IHMSA match at the local range. I have been interested in trying Silhouettes for a long time so I got all the details and was going to attend the next match. As luck would have it I got called in to work that weekend so was not able to attend. I did however make it to my first ever silhouette match yesterday. I brought my Taurus Tracker with a Redfield red dot sight that I have been working on for the past couple of months in preparation for squirrel season. They said I would be Hunter Class (makes sense). Used two stages of fire to see what sight picture I needed on the sight in targets, then they "threw me to the wolves", put me straight into the rotation. 9 chickens, 10 pigs, 7 turkeys and 7 rams. I'm here to tell you it is just plane fun when them little metal targets flop over. To be honest I surprised myself a little with the days shooting. Funny thing I was getting lots of advice on how to hit them on the first four relays, not so much on the last four, actually every one was exceptionally friendly and helpful. I will definitely be joining IHMSA and attending as many local matches as possible.

Many, many years ago we had various forms of Silhouette- NRA had hunter pistol in big bore and rimfire, IHMSA had big bore Silhouette and later had .22 Silhouette. Then IHMSA added field pistol that was similar to NRA. I liked IHMSA the most, because it had bigger guns and positions other than standing. I did the standing parts when I had to. I think shooting games run in cycles and eventually silhouette faded away in my part of the country.

What I remember about rimfire silhouette was that NRA used the same size targets for rimfire and bigbore but IHMSA used smaller targets and they were particularly difficult. The few matches I attended that had rimfire targets just set them up for fun, not competition.

Have always wanted to try handgun silhouette, there is just no one doing it around here.

I began my competition in Handgun Metallic Silhouette, both IHMSA and NRA, in 1978, and competed seriously for a number of years, during the heyday of its growth. Those were wonderful days when the sport was popular and in growth mode, with a lot of talented shooters.