What is 10m Air Rifle Shooting?
What is a good shooting score?
What is Air Gun Shooting?
Having been a 10M Air Rifle Shooter for some years now, I have come across many such instances when I have had to explain to many what my sport was actually about. Having to explain our sport and not finding the right words to do so is a common problem all of us experience. We at Aim Down Sight will try to solve this problem of yours by accumulating our knowledge and putting it down in simple words. Our aim is to help those in the field express themselves better and to spread the word those who will be the future of shooting.
10M Air rifle Shooting is an Olympic Event governed under the International Shooting Sports Federation (ISSF). As the name suggests, this is a sport that is shot over a short distance of 10M by an air rifle in an upright standing position. The shooter uses an air rifle with a 4.5mm or .177in caliber, which is a lightweight pallet and the weight of the rifle and also only be a maximum of 5.5kg.
This game has had its own World Championship since 1970 and has been an Olympic event since 1984 for both men and women events, so it’s been around for quite some time now. Interestingly professional air rifles used in this event, in today’s age are designed with such finesse that they no longer have any recoil effect upon firing. This property is not present in all professional shooting events, and yes there are many other than the 10M ones.
In this event the use of specialised clothing, like trousers and jackets made of specialised material to improve stability and prevent back injuries that may be caused by the asymmetrical position the body is put in during the event, is also allowed and are now a very important part of this professional event. This clothing includes a jacket, trouser, shoes and a glove along with other accessories.
Jackets and trousers are now considered essential for every shooter, amature or professional whereas accessories like shoes and gloves come second in line. However there are other small accessories like ear plunges, caps and belts that shooters add according to their needs and wants. All in all a set of all these, clothes and accessories, is called a shooters kit. Similarly even a shooter’s rifle can be modified with additional accessories according to every shooter’s individual need.
The event is played indoors in ranges that may have electronic, manual or semi-electric lanes and as mentioned above the distance between the shooter and the target they are firing at is supposed to be 10M. Amongst these only those lanes that are fully electronic have been used for national and international level competitions for the past couple of years now. In these types of lanes, there is a monitor that is placed on one end of the 10 meters and the target placed on the other end has sensors on it that have the ability to read the shots fired by the shooters. These readings are extremely accurate, to the decimal.
Now let’s talk about this target everyone is shooting at. A 10M Air Rifle target is supposed to be at a height of 1.4M from the ground and does not change according to the height of the shooter. The diameter of the target is supposed to be 45.5mm which includes both the black and white portion of the target. The black portion of the target is supposed to be 30.5mm in diameter and the bulls eye is a dot with the diameter of 0.5mm. All of these technical measurements can be confusing but what we are roughly trying to say is that the bullseye in 10M air rifle shooting is as small as a dot of a pen and the black portion of the target is about the size of a soda bottle top.
The rules of this game according to the 2013 set said that the highest match score in the men’s event could be 600 with a maximum of 10 points for each shot and a total of 60 shots. However, 109.0 could be the highest finals score with a maximum of 10.9 points for each shot and a maximum of 10 shots. Similarly for the women’s event the highest match score could have been 400 with a highest possible finals score of 109.0. However with the increase in competition the rules of the game were changed in 2018. Now the highest a shooter can score in a single shot, in a match or in finals, is 10.9 with a total number of 60 match shots for both men and women and a total of 24 shots in the finals.
Explaining the decimal system of recording shots can be a bit tricky but let’s give it a try. Just like any target hitting sport the closer you get to the allocated bullseye the more points you score. So if you hit bullseye you get 10 points and the points decrease the further your shot is from that bullseye. With the rise in competition in the event ISSF decided that it would be best of all matches to be scored not in whole points but in decimal points. So even if you hit the bullseye is not enough, how close the center of the shooter’s shot is to the center of the bullseye is what is measured now.
10M Air Rifle Shooting is not a sport that requires physical movement but requires a lot of technical knowledge and the ability to apply this knowledge when needed. A stable body, good presence of mind, micro-coordination and a calm mind are just some of the things a shooter must practice and perfect to succeed in this sport. This event doesn’t need agility or speed but a sense of grounded calmness during high pressure matches and finals situations. So it is safe to say that 10M Air Rifle shooting is not like other sports in terms of physical and mental need. The perfect example for this is Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra. In an interview Bindra siad that despite his efforts, he never managed to excel in sports like cricket and football and so his uncle one day suggested he try something a bit more unconventional. Shooting was the sport that stuck and giving it all he had he became Abhinav Bindra, a name known across the world. Are you ready to be the next big name in shooting?