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Show J Unusual Shooting Game How Popular 1 By TED RESTING Two decades ago, an , unusual shooting game crept (across the border from (Mexico and gained a foothold pit Arizona and other parts of khe Southwest. 7j IT WAS siluetas metalicas, Kr metallic-silhouette shooting, shoot-ing, a sport which evolved """".torn the shooting matches of pioneer times and which had T I been popular below the border for many years. "Among shooting competitions competi-tions at inanimate targets, this could well be the most attractive of them all from the spectator standpoint," observes Shooting Editor Grits Gresham of "Sports Afield." He gives two reasons. FIRST is that the viewer can determine the shooters success or failure as soon as he pulls the trigger. And second is that fact that there are more failures than successes. suc-cesses. Many more. The clang of a bullet hitting metal has appeal, a point easily verified at any carnival shooting gallery, and this Mexican version of a shootout shoot-out provides this satisfying sound. BUT ONLY now and then, for the national championship is usually won with a score of about 60 percent. Contributing to the difficulty dif-ficulty is the fact that all shooting is done offhand from a standing position, with no sling, shooting coat or other aids, using a big-bore rifle which can weigh no more than 8 pounds 13 ounces. IN ADDITION, there is the fact that the targets are shot at ranges of 200, 300, 385 and 500 meters. The 200-meter "chicken" is about 11x12 inches in maximum dimensions; dimen-sions; the 300-meter "pig" is about 14x21 inches; the 385-meter 385-meter "turkey," 19x23 inches; and the 500-meter "sheep" about 26x32 inches. An obvious obstacle to the probability that this form of metallic-silhouette shooting will become popular everywhere in this country is lack of space.. .600 yards or so of ground over which high-powered high-powered rifles can be shot. AT THE Remington seminar for magazine gun editors in December 1975, Wayne Leek unveiled an adaptation of the sport which should go far toward surmounting sur-mounting that obstacle. It's a miniature version shot with the .22 rimfire. Wayne, designer of Remington's immensely successful suc-cessful Model 1100 shotgun, and an avid devotee of silhouette shooting, conceived the cut-down "100-yard" range initially to provide himself a way to practice extensively ex-tensively and inexpensively in an area where no full-scale silhouette range exists. BUT NOW Remington plans to make the scaled-down targets tar-gets for sale. At the time of this writing, Wayne was still playing around with various specifications, but the final version will probably be designed for 100-yard ranges, giving the perspective of the different distances of the official of-ficial range. He even had one of the chickens scaled down for 25 meters, making that target about l'2 inches wide. ANOTHER modification is that the targets in this scaled-down version are hung so that they swing when hit, rather than fall over, eliminating the necessity for putting targets back in place after each session of shooting. |