[Jeff Higgins]

I've competed in a broad variety of shooting disciplines. Black Powder Cartridge Rifle Silhouette and Target Rifle were the only disciplines that held my interest for long. I found traditional "2700", or officially "Bullseye Pistol", to be by far the most tedious. A very real challenge, no doubt about that, but as much of a test of endurance than anything else. Just an unnatural level of repetition of the same damn thing. Some people love it, I gave it a fair chance, and I learned to not love it.

I think the reason I fell in love with BPCR over the rest lies in both the rifles used, and the inability to "spend your way to the front". That, and it combined marksmanship on the day of the match with an obsessive attention to detail at the loading bench, along with an analytical mind that could test and sift through what works and what does not.

I won a lot of matches in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia in the 15 years I competed. I always liked to think that I won those matches in my basement as much so, if not more so, than on the firing line. That was the uniqueness of the challenge that held my interest.

There was really no way to gain a similar advantage in load development in NRA High Power nor Bullseye Pistol, with everything in those disciplines having long since been worked out. You could win either one with factory ammo, and many people did. That eliminated a large part of the interest for me.

These days, I just shoot for fun. I still punch a lot of paper at my club range, which allows pistols out to 50 yards and rifles to 300. I find, however, that such paper punching rapidly gets rather boring, unless it's for a purpose. That purpose is usually load development, always trying something new.

In the end, though, most of my shooting these days is at reactive targets, like metal gongs, dueling trees, the "self healing" targets we can just toss on the ground and chase as we bounce them along, and stuff like that. Far more entertaining than punching holes in paper.