Speed and Timing in PRS

By Les Voth - Bix'n Andy USA

In the beginning of my PRS shooting adventure there was not much standardization for stage times. One match was 90 seconds per stage. One was 105. Another stretched into a more comfortable 120 seconds.

Then, a match director with a serious sense of humor, had a 60 second per stage match - for the entire match. And, yes, it was the same ten shots per stage, dialing for distance, and “all gear in hand” behind the line to start at the ubiquitous “BEEP”! 

(BTW: Who can even hear the beep anymore . . . they should just hit me with a stick at the beginning and the end of every stage to get my attention . . .)

A couple of years ago I was squadded with a couple of guys who had transitioned from Three Gun competition. They were fantastic shots. And they were fantastically fast. Their assessment, though, was that they had to slow down to PRS speeds to take better advantage of all the time they had in this game.

Three years ago, slow old me went to a 600 yard F-Class match. Those guys get unlimited sighters on their first relay, and 20 minutes to shoot a pile of rounds for score. I shot one round to check my zero - I was a couple tenths high. Dropped the next one into the X ring, told the scorer I was shooting for score and burned it up with my 6mmBR.

Dang near fell asleep by the time the other guys in my relay were done with all their sighters and scoring rounds. No discipline? Yeah, yeah.

By 2026 I’m mostly too slow to get ten rounds off, even in many 120 second stages - 67 years of physical abuse and lack of respect for self has had its effect. I’m not mad about that, cuz I’m still shooting/trying/playing the game.

Then there’s the guys, new guys mostly, who time out on a stage, then say they have to slow themselves down. They’re doing so many things in their head that they run out of time for the shooting thing.

What’s the solution for the quick as lightning guys who don’t use the whole clock, the guys thinking too much on the clock that they run out of time, and even the old slow guys who should find a higher gear? Train with a timer!

Before there were Send it levels and Crush it timers hanging off scopes and mounts, competitors who cared used kitchen timers to learn to train their minds to recognize the passage of time. Some of them got so good at it that they could run a stage out to the last second without angst. Pulling off their tenth shot at the sound of the beep. Those guys are still amongst us. See if you can spot them at the next match.

Marvel at them or not, but it’s like they say - If one person can learn it, so can you.

Anything can be accomplished if broken into small enough steps: Chunk down tasks for manageability and success.