Emily likes a challenge. She’s a long-range shooter who lives for the thrill of victory on the shooting range. Shooting high-power precision competition presents a unique set of challenges that must be accounted for when packing a range bag, and there’s a lot to make sure you bring along.

“Shoot Like a Girl”

I have shot precision rifle competitions my whole life. So, I have amassed quite the collection of shooting gear over the years. I started out with small-bore 3-postion .22 then graduated to high power across the course with AR-15s.

My main rifle is my scoped AR. It is a custom-built Colt lower with a Douglas barrel. Barrels tend to last 5,000 rounds, or about 6 months in high power shooting. Less if you shoot Rattle Battle.

I also have a Celestron spotting scope for watching the mirage and calling wind. Comes in real handy at 600 yards.

High-power requires a lot of gear. So much that I have a shooting cart to carry all my gear around.

You have to remember this is precision shooting, we aren’t running around. We have time to set up for the shot and call wind. 20 minutes to shoot 20 rounds standing at 200 yards, and you bet we take all 20 minutes. So the key to remember here is ‘precision shooting’.

Range carts. Mine is kind of a build based off of the Creedmoor Sports range cart. It’s lighter but misses some of the perks.

I was in high school and college when I was buying gear, so I got the designs in my head from what many companies were selling and made my own.

The main thing is that it’s lightweight and can handle the weather. Then I have my shooting coat. When you put the shooting coat on and have it buckled up it feels like you are leaning on a post for standing.

The goal with the coat is to have rigid and stiff support. The coat also helps to take the recoil from the fun wood guns like the M1A and M1 Garands.

After the coat is the mat. The mat needs to have good non-slip padding so you are not sliding around in prone. A centimeter of movement on one elbow at 600 yards can knock you out of the 10 ring and lose you the match. Once again Creedmoor has some of the best, but you can get the mat anywhere.