US Steel Challenge Practice

The Steel Challenge has been called drag racing with a handgun and is a fun an exciting way to get introduced into the world of competitive action shooting.  Even if you’re not looking  to become the next world champion it’s still a fun way to spend half a day shooting with your friends.

Steel Challenge consists of 8 different courses of fire. Each stage has 5 steel plates, of different sizes, arranged at various locations & distances, one of which is designated the stop plate. The plates may be shot in any order, as long as the stop plate is shot last.  Our monthly match consists of 6 of those stages (rotating between all 8 over the year) with two 7-stage matches in September and December & one 8-stage match in March...

The shooter shoots each stage 5 times & keeps the best (lowest) 4 scores. The 4 runs on each stage are totaled up and the lowest total time wins. Almost any type of pistol can be used be it a rim fire or center fire firearm. Center fire divisions include USPA Open, Limited, Production, Single Stack & Revolver.  On the rim fire side there are pistol optic, pistol iron sight, rifle optic & rifle iron sight divisions.  Rim fire divisions are a great way to introduce junior & new shooters to the sport since there is no holster requirement like in the center fire division.  All rim fire guns are started from the low ready position.  Center fire guns are done from the surrender draw position. 

The shooter may shoot as many times as needed to hit all the plates, with time capped at 30 seconds per run. A missed plate counts as a 3 second penalty. The simple stage design, rules, scoring and low cost (with .22) make this the perfect intro to action shooting for new shooters.

For more information, contact Jim Flynn, dragntec@gmail.com