10m Pistol Comp 2026

Welcome to the 2026 10m Competition, a friendly get together on the 10m lanes.  It's been created as an accessible, easy and constructive way to try pistol shooting without tons of rules and regulations.

We shoot standing and unsupported but otherwise it's Anything Goes with no restrictions on calibre or kit.  Want to shoot two handed?  Yep, just do it.  Rest the pistol on your forearm?  Hell, why not?  Pistol scope or red dot sight?  Bring 'em on!  

Use a laser of you fancy or even fit a rifle scope and experiment with the "Taco" grip if you like.

Virtually anything better than a Gat will do for this comp as skill far outweighs equipment here so there's no need to splash out on expensive pistols as the likes of an Umarex "Revolvermatic" or a Beeman/HW SSP are more than capable in the right hands.

If you fancy having a crack (and you should) you'll need to get up to the indoor ranges and say hello.  The four lanes on the left are given over exclusively to 10m shooting and there's usually someone on them.  Ask for Bri or last years winner Jim who both know the ropes.  We pistol types are a friendly bunch so just express an interest and you'll be invited into the body of the kirk.  There's no forms to fill in or subscriptions/entry fees to worry about as we keep things quite informal.

Don't worry about having a suitable pistol to start with, we'll hopefully get something sorted out.

The format is that we shoot 10 shots in a round, split five and five on two targets which are also called cards.  The idea of five per card is to make scoring the holes easier.  The Club supplies specific targets (NSRA 10m Air Pistol, there's a stack of them in the GARC "bunker" so help yourself to two "official" cards and a few for practice) to ensure everyone's on a level playing field and you should only use these.

You can practice as much as you like beforehand but when it's time to man up and shoot your official entry,  you and a witness must pre-sign your two cards.

There's a few reasons for this.  Firstly, it's a declaration of intent, that these cards will be the ones that get counted no matter what your score is.  Secondly, it saves them getting confused with other targets lying around on the bench and, thirdly, it lets your shooting neighbours know when to stop chatting and let you concentrate. 

Good luck with that last bit if Black Tony's in the building.

Once you've signed your cards, put one of them in the “whizzer” and send it all the way downrange.

At this point, I'd recommend setting out your first five pellets as many people have lost count in mid shoot by shooting straight from the tin. 

Load, aim and shoot all five in your own time - no-one'll be standing behind you with a stopwatch.  There's no retracting the target until you've fired all five shots and you can't use a spotting scope/binoculars/whatever to see where you're hitting either.

Retract the target and repeat.

Hand your two cards over to someone else for scoring. Bri usually handles this but he's not always there so, instead, have a couple of your fellow shooters check your cards and come to an agreement.

Scoring goes by the centre of the punched holes to level the playing field between differing calibres.  Bear in mind that we're not recognising the innermost "10.9" bull - both it and the "10" ring count as 10.

Email Bri (garcweb@outlook.com) with your score (out of 100) then wait for him to post an amended table with all the scores and positions, hopefully with you at the top of the tree, basking in glory, the respect of your peers and their envy.

Easy, isn't it.

We'll start off with just five rounds over the course of the year.  You can shoot as many or as few rounds as you like in an evening and let's reserve the option to extend things to 10 rounds if there's enough demand.