2022 Lever Action Silhouette Season Brings Hits + Misses for One Shooter

The 2022 Lever Action Silhouette season has come to a close and now is the time to reflect. For a newer shooter, the sport is constantly about trial and error with sights, holds, powders, and battling the natural elements. When teammates at the office ask about how my season is going I accurately joke, "hit and miss". This season I showed overall improvement with my first-ever 1st place finish (on the first day of the season) in early March using my "Wild Bill" Winchester Model 9422.

Lever Action Silhouette consists of 4 animal shaped targets at varying distances downrange. The closer the target is, the smaller its size. A standard match consists of taking 10 shots at each target bank for a total of 40 shots. At the time of this article, my highest match score on record was 26x40.

Lever Action Silhouette has been described as competitive plinking due to its combination of youthful fun and the level of competition the match structure brings. I use the term youthful specifically to call out the draw most competitors have to the sport that transcends them to yesteryear. I am a young gun compared to most of the shooters I compete with as they have many decades experience behind a rifle.

The competitors pool certainly aligns with the concept of Lever Action using simple time-period pieces of equipment without the use of modern magnified lenses, spotting scopes, stands or other equipment to assist their shot.

Much of my season was spent at my local gun club in Nebraska in preparation for the mid-season Championship in Raton, NM. Shooting in numerous matches a month, I was hoping to dial in my sights and my loads, but hit a snag a few weeks prior to my departure when I blew the barrel in one of rifles (Marlin .45 Colt).

Using another rifle (Marlin .30-30) I was able to collect a "10 in a row" pin on chickens going into the Lever Gun Championships. This provided me the confidence boost to overcome the use of a brand-new unfamiliar rifle.

The NRA will keep records on 10 in-a-rows as they are reported and when a shooter has fired a 10 in-a-row on each animal in any discipline, the shooter will be awarded a serially-numbered Grand Slam pin and a special recognition certificate.?

The 2022 Western National Lever Gun Silhouette Championship in Raton, NM brought on a great learning experience, but the highlight was when my 14 year old son finished with 20x60 in smallbore and won a trophy to commemorate his 2nd Place in Junior class. He got his first job as a NRA target setter and on the days he was not competing her was getting his sweat equity out in the desert heat.

We have a fun family side bet of low pig score kisses the pig target. Typically, shooters do best on the pig-shaped targets (on average) and so its anyone's game. My 8 year old (now 12) even outshot me (once) on pigs. My father-in-law squadded with my boys and I to make our team of 4. He was feeling overly confident in his ability to shoot all pig targets and made the claim that if he shot 15x15 pigs we all would have to "kiss the pig" and well...

Labor Day weekend brought a strong finish when I competed in 4 matches across two days. Compared to the performance of other shooters, my performance wasn't much to write home about, but in the first match I shot 9x10 pigs!

Each year, the shooting season comes to an end for me personally at the Bill Denny Memorial Match in September. Its not that there are no more matches to be found, its a tribute to the legacy of "Wild Bill" who introduced the Midwest to the sport in the 1970s. He happens to be my wife's grandfather and the man that introduced me to competitive shooting. I'm happy to say that I finished the match on a career high performance (in that match discipline) of 24x40.

More in store for 2023!