I’ve been competing in shooting sports competitions since 2014. I’ve shot everything from GSSF to Steel Challenge, USPSA, IDPA, PRS, 3 Gun, 2 Gun, AK Competitions, and more. What I’ve learned over the years from all types of competition shooting is consistency wins more often than shooters who try to “hero or zero” every stage.
I’ve also learned that it always comes down to the Indian, not the Arrow, meaning skill beats buying guns/gear every time. I’ve watched shooters rise through the rankings in various shooting sports and have studied how they’ve improved so drastically. I’ve found that the best shooters have mastered the fundamentals of shooting, no matter the platform. They also understand how to use gear to their advantage and almost always have the mindset that less gear or gadgets is more.
I’ve also specifically watched fellow female competitive shooters outshoot not just other female competitors but also male competitors. This isn’t as easy as it sounds when it comes to action shooting sports that require a lot of movement or gear. Women are already at a disadvantage compared to men in sports such as 3 Gun, 2 Gun, the Tactical Games, and other “run and gun” style of matches where body weight/size and capabilities are not equal between genders.
This is how I’ve learned to get better at specific skillsets where body size, weight, strength, or muscle doesn’t matter. Other female competitive shooters and I have learned how to gain points or speed against our male counterparts without having to “outweigh” or “outmuscle” them. Let me dive into what I did to change my shooting and go toe-to-toe with the guys.
Learn, Practice, and Execute on Specific Skillsets
If you’re into one style of competition shooting, break down the aspects of that shooting sport to understand what you need to be good at to ultimately perform. For me, I have always wanted to become the best 3 Gun competitive shooter that I could be. It’s one sport that requires a mastery of all three guns, yet is also very physically demanding.
There are some matches I attend nowadays where a stage winning time will be over 60 seconds, meaning you not only have to have the skills to perform with three platforms on one stage, but you also have to have the strength and speed to carry all of the guns and gear throughout that minute plus stage. I essentially separated 3 Gun out into two equal parts shooting and running/navigating obstacles. I knew my focus had to be on the shooting aspect as I wasn’t going to best anyone on the physical aspect of 3 Gun.
The shooting portion of 3 Gun is a lot. You have steel and paper targets for rifle and pistol (and occasionally an option for shotgun), spinner style targets for pistol, rifle, or shotgun, static and aerial clay targets for shotgun, slug style shotgun targets set at an average of 60-100 yards, and long range rifle targets averaging as far as 600-700 yards.
These shooting skills take years to master for a reason and aren’t easy to tackle all at once. I had to break down the penalties for most major 3 Gun competitions and determine where I should spend the most time improving. The hardest hitting penalties at most matches are spinner and long range rifle targets, so that’s where I started to focus my time and energy in improving.
For a whole year, I dedicated myself to Precision Rifle Series (PRS) competition shooting to better my long range rifle performance in 3 Gun. I teamed up with a well-known professional PRS shooter and shot a half dozen major 2-day PRS style competitions all across the country. My first PRS match went about how I expected and I finished towards the very bottom of the scores.
As the year progressed, I learned a lot about how to read wind, how to use the Kestrel 5700 to true my data, how to build proper shooting positions with a bipod and support bags, and gained confidence. By the end of the year, I had shot so well I was moved to the “classed up” amateur category right before my final PRS match, the GAP Grind, with my pro teammate.
PRS took me from a terrible long range rifle shooter to one of the best 3 Gun long range rifle shooters, and that was after only a year of dedication. In the last year and a half, I have placed higher than I’ve ever placed in 3 Gun and beaten a lot of my male counterparts on many of the long range stages. This skill alone is what I attribute most of my 3 Gun success to and is what has moved the needle for me the most in the final scores.
While I don’t have any spinner style targets at home or at a range to practice, I have learned the proper cadence or sequence of how to shoot these targets whether it’s with a pistol, rifle, or a shotgun. Too often, I watch shooters rush shooting a spinner target and accidentally stop its swing by shooting it too soon or too late. I’ve watched shooters run out of ammo trying to spin it quickly, but miss extensively, and never having enough make up shots.
When they run out of ammo, not only did they waste time in attempting to spin it, they also take a 30-60 second penalty for not spinning it. That raw time plus penalty time is next to impossible to come back from on a stage. I’ve learned that taking my time to spin a spinner might not be the fastest raw time, but it beats not spinning the target at all and having a giant penalty tacked on. If you can spin a spinner, you’re already in the top 25% of shooters who just about the only ones that have the skillset and patience to flip it over.
Compeitition Shooting Gear Mastery
Less is more. If you remember nothing else from this read, remember that less is more. You cannot buy the win or buy gear to make you a better shooter, but the right gear used properly can make a difference in your shooting ability. For example, a good quality bipod and the right support bag can make a world of difference in the long range rifle shooting world. When it comes to competition shooting, especially for rifle, stability is everything.
For PRS and 3 Gun shooting sports, you could find yourself shooting off of a vehicle, from inside a school bus, off a tire or a tank trap, prone, off a bench, and other various props. Your bipod needs to be able to cant and pan, and adjust for various height. Depending on the shooting sport, the fill of a support bag can make or break the stability of the gun, especially if that’s the single one point of stability for the rifle. All of that to say, having good quality gear is helpful, but you have to be able to master how to use it as well. You can see in the image below how my bipod legs are set to two different heights to negate the angle of the car hood so my rifle is level when shooting.
I vividly remember one specific 3 Gun match I went to where a fellow shooter had a bipod and plate bag attached to his rifle, a support plump pillow clipped onto his rifle stock, and another bag slung across his back. He was planning to use all of this to shoot two different positions on a stage with all four support systems.
After the timer went off and the adrenaline dumped, the execution didn’t go as planned as he got overwhelmed in the moment and had too much gear to cleanly execute either shooting position. In hindsight, one support bag would’ve been much easier to work with and was a hard lesson for him to learn.
One thing I wanted to talk about under gear mastery is the offset red dot optic. I run two red dot optics on all of my pistol caliber carbines (PCCs), the IWI Galil’s I use for AK competitions and on my 3 Gun AR-15s. The reason for dual optics on the PCCs and Galil’s is multi-purpose. The primary red dot optic is just that, my primary optic. Having a secondary optic is a great backup as I physically have had a primary red dot optic fly off my upper during a match leaving me with an empty rail (no back up iron sights either). The primary optic on top is zeroed for 25 yards (PCC) or 50 yards (Galil) because that it what is needed for USPSA or AK style competitions.
The offset red dot is mounted at a 45-degree angle which allows me a better sight picture with less strain when shooting around hard lean out corners. The offset red dot optics are always zeroed for 7 or 10 yards depeding on the shooting sport. I use the offset optic to shoot close range paper targets overlayed with no-shoot targets, which allows for faster shooting without having to compensate for height over bore on the primary optic zero.
The offset optic on my 3 Gun AR-15 is used for any and all close range paper target shooting, with no-shoots or otherwise, because it saves me time rather than having to zoom out and back in when transitioning from paper to long-range rifle targets. Even if you didn’t want to use an offset red dot optic, offset iron sights would still save you time and hassle from having to zoom in and out constantly using an LPVO scope.
Consistency Wins Matches
When it comes to any kind of competition shooting, the shooter most consistent is usually who wins the match. I have seen this firsthand time and time again where the winner of a match won’t have a single stage win, but will consistently be in the top 5-10% of shooters.
That’s all it takes to perform well in the overall scores. In 2025, I did something that I’ve never done at KalashBash and AK Masters; I shot a consistent match. In BOTH matches, I shot 80% plus of the match winner (Josh Froelich won both) and placed 13th and 14th overall at both matches. I bested a buddy of mine at KalashBash, who I have never beaten in any shooting competition, just by shooting more consistently than him. (We shot together on the same squad so everything was equal environmental wise.)
My goal for competition shooting has always been to compete against myself to be a better shooter. It’s also been to win High Lady, but more importantly, to be able to compete against the guys. While I’m never going to win a 3 Gun competition, my “doable” goal is to place in the top 15 in Open Division at the matches I attend.
In 2024, I placed 25th at my final 3 Gun competition of the year and last year, I placed 17th. The progress I have made has come from focusing on the skills with the biggest return or ROI to reduce as many high-time penalties that I can. I’m looking forward to the major matches coming up in 2026 to see just how high I can place after everything I’ve learned about how to improve in the world of competition shooting.
