How to prepare for an airgun competition: a step-by-step guide

Airgun competition covers far more ground than most shooters realise. Hunter field target and field target are the best known, but there is also 10m Olympic-style rifle and pistol shot indoors on electronic targets, benchrest, silhouette and speed events, bell target leagues, and any number of club ladders and winter series that ask nothing more than an entry fee and a willingness to be beaten. What they all have in common is that the result is largely settled before you reach the firing point.

New competitors tend to assume the gap between them and the shooters at the top of the card is equipment. Occasionally it is. Far more often it is organisation. The people who score consistently did the tedious preparation in advance and arrived with nothing outstanding, which left them free to think about nothing but the target. Here is how to put yourself in the same position.

Pick the right competition to start with

If you have never entered anything, resist the urge to begin at a championship. Club-level rounds, winter leagues and open days exist precisely so that people can learn how competition feels cheaply. Shoot two or three before you enter anything with a title attached.

It also pays to be honest about which discipline suits you. HFT rewards fieldcraft, guessing and a settled hold from awkward positions. FT rewards precise rangefinding and patience. Benchrest strips out almost everything except consistency and conditions. The 10m disciplines demand positional discipline unlike anything else in airgunning. You do not have to commit for life, but preparing properly for one is far more productive than dabbling in three.

Sort the entry, the rules and the power check early

Entries close, squads fill and some meetings need your details in advance. Deal with it in the first week rather than the last.

Then read the rules for that specific competition rather than assuming they match the last one you shot. Class definitions, permitted equipment, seating, bipods, scope magnification and the use of rangefinding aids vary between disciplines and organisers, and turning up in the wrong class is a miserable way to spend a Sunday.

Power is the one to be most careful about. Chronograph your rifle across several separate sessions rather than once, and if you can, in different temperatures, because a PCP that reads steadily in a warm workshop does not always behave the same way at eight on an October morning. Springers settle at their own pace too. Know where you sit and leave yourself proper headroom rather than sitting on the limit and hoping. As a reminder, an air rifle held without a firearm certificate in England and Wales must not exceed 12ft-lb of muzzle energy, while in Scotland an Air Weapon Certificate is required for any air weapon above one joule.

Practise the shots you dread

Firing large numbers of pellets is not preparation, it is just noise. Useful practice means deliberately seeking out the shots that take points off you, which is exactly what most of us avoid.

Everyone has them. In HFT it might be the long stander, the kneeler on sloping ground or the reducer tucked into dark woodland. In FT it may be rangefinding into shadow or a target sitting at an awkward elevation. On the 10m range it is holding the standing position when the arm starts to complain. Work them in short, focused sessions rather than burying them at the end of a long comfortable one.

Shoot alongside somebody better than you as often as possible. Scoring yourself against a clubmate whose standard you respect produces the mild, useful pressure that solo practice never generates, and gives you an honest measure.

Freeze your setup a month out

This is where a lot of good work gets undone. New pellets, a different scope setting, a trigger adjustment because somebody in the clubhouse swears by it, a fresh tune the fortnight before a major: every one of them replaces a known quantity with a question.

Pellets deserve particular discipline. If you have a batch that groups well, buy enough of it to cover both your practice and the event, put it aside and stop reading forum threads about magic tins. Batch variation is real, and a batch you have proved beats one somebody else has.

Checking is fine. Altering is not. Torque your stock screws and scope mounts with a driver rather than by feel, because inconsistent torque produces symptoms that look exactly like poor shooting. Confirm your zero and rewrite your holdover card if anything has moved. Fill and check your buddy bottle or dive cylinder well in advance, and make sure it is in test. Replace tired o-rings, charge or replace batteries in electronic rifles and rangefinders, and give the barrel a light pull-through if that is part of your routine. Do not decide to strip a rifle down the week before something you care about.

The airgun competition kit list

Write it once, use it every time and add to it whenever it lets you down. A list you reuse improves each season; a list you improvise repeats the same gaps.

The essentials look roughly like this: rifle and case, pellets and spare pellets, air source and fill adaptor, pellet pouch, allen keys and small tools, spare o-rings, spare batteries, range card or holdover card, scorecard holder and a pen that works, knee pad, mat, seat, eye and ear protection, water, food, waterproofs, sunscreen, spare socks and a towel. Add the certificate or membership card if your event requires it, and add whatever you personally always forget.

Pack two or three days ahead and pack the same way each time, so you know without looking which pocket holds the keys. Think about comfort across a whole day rather than the first half hour. Weather turns, and boots that rub after three hours will be the only thing you can think about by the back half of the card.

Sleep and food are not optional extras

Treat yourself as carefully as you treat the rifle: no experiments. Competition morning is not the time for a new breakfast, an unfamiliar supplement or three times the usual caffeine. Eat something ordinary that you have eaten many times and that releases its energy slowly.

Carry food you can eat between lanes or details, because a nine o’clock start can easily become a mid-afternoon finish. Something with protein and slower-burning carbohydrate does far more for you than a chocolate bar that lifts you briefly and drops you at the worst moment. Drink steadily through the day and start the day before rather than on the morning, because mild dehydration blunts concentration long before you feel thirsty.

Sleep is the cheapest advantage available and the one most readily thrown away, usually by lying awake rehearsing the course. Set two alarms, know your route and parking, and give yourself enough margin to arrive unhurried. Half an hour spare to walk the ground, look at the conditions and talk to people beats any amount of last-minute shooting.

Build a routine and repeat it

Being in the zone is not weather that arrives or does not. It is what happens when you have a process you trust and follow it regardless of how you feel. Settle, check your position, range the target, breathe, squeeze, follow through. The sequence matters less than the sameness of it, because when your head is busy the routine is what your hands fall back on.

Keep your attention small: one lane, one target, one shot. Between them, let your concentration drop deliberately rather than trying to hold it at full stretch for three hours, which nobody manages. Talk to your squad, drink some water, look at the trees, then switch back on as you settle onto the peg. That on and off rhythm is itself a skill and can be practised at the club long before it matters.

When a target beats you

You will drop targets, including on the day you shoot your best card. What separates a good score from a poor one is almost always the next shot rather than the missed one.

Give yourself a physical reset: a breath, a look away, then a return. Do not carry lane 12 to lane 13, and do not spend lane 13 explaining lane 12 to yourself. Resist counting, too. Totting up your score halfway round invites you to shoot the card instead of the target, and no card has ever been knocked over by a pellet.

Keep a note of every entry

Before the day blurs, write down two things that worked and two that did not. Over a season those notes build an accurate picture of where your points actually go, which is more useful than a vague sense that you are bad at standers.

None of this is complicated and none of it is expensive. But arriving with your rifle checked, your air topped up, your kit packed and a routine you trust hands you the only advantage that works in every discipline, at every venue and in any weather: nothing to think about except the shot in front of you.