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Earlier this week I traveled to watch the King of 2 Miles rifle competition (Ko2M) at the NRA Whittington Center in Raton, New Mexico. It’s one of the few matches where great shooters from across the country gather to push the limits of what is possible with small arms as they engage targets out to 2 miles (3,520 yards). It was interesting to see what the top shooters were using in terms of equipment and gear, and I’ll share a summary of that in this post. In subsequent posts, I’ll go into more detail on some of the issues these shooters have to address, and share some of their tips along with new products they’re using to overcome those obstacles and ring steel at extreme distances.

Basics of King of 2 Miles Competition

The goal of the King of 2 Miles competition was to push what was possible in terms of cold bore shots, first round hits, and extreme distance target engagement. This is NOT about having unlimited sighters to walk your shots onto the target. You have just a couple of shots to hit a target, or you won’t advance. This is primarily a 3 man team event, with one person pulling the trigger, another spotting impacts and calling corrections to center the next shot, and the last man with an eye on mirage to help call the changes in wind speed and direction. To give you an idea of what we’re talking about, here are the distances and target sizes:

Qualification Round 1,689 yards: 1 cold bore shot, 16” circle (That’s just under 1 MOA at almost a mile!) 1,547 yards: 5 shots, 24” x 37” rectangle 1,719 yards: 3 shots, 24” x 37” rectangle 1,890 yards: 3 shots, 30” x 37” rectangle 2,095 yards: 3 shots, 30” x 37” rectangle

Finals 2,615 yards: 1 cold bore shot 2,727 yards: 5 shots, 33” x 41” rectangle 3,166 yards: 5 shots, 42” x 54” rectangle 3,525 yards: 5 shots, 48” x 60” rectangle



The rules are a little complex, but you’re essentially rewarded more points for early hits and further distances. For example, in the qualifying round you were allowed 5 shots on a target at 1547. If you hit it on the first shot you’d be awarded points equivalent to 5 times the distance (5 x 1547 = 7,735), but if you didn’t hit it until your last shot you’d only get 1 times the distance. So the multipliers are 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 when engaging a target 5 times, and 3, 2, 1 when engaging a target with 3 shots. (View Complete Rules for 2018 Ko2M)

For context, the winner ended up hitting every shot but one in the qualifying round and a few others only dropped a couple more shots than that – which is just ridiculously good! That’s very impressive considering the changing wind conditions we experienced, especially when you realize the bullet’s time of flight can be more than 6 seconds! Go ahead and count that out in your head right now, and think about how long the wind has to act on the bullet.

During the King of 2 Miles in 2016, no shooters were able to connect with targets all the way out to 2 miles. It’s certainly a lot harder than it sounds, especially when given just a few shots and under the pressure of time constraints and competition. In 2017, the winner, Derek Rodgers, was the only shooter to connect with the 2 mile target. This year, 3 shooters connected with targets all the way out to 2 miles in the finals, which shows the advancements we’re making in ELR. Here’s the 3 shooters who rang steel at 2 miles:

The Shooters & Common Equipment

ELR competitors come from all kinds of backgrounds: F-Class, 1000 yard Benchrest, former military, long range hunters, and even a few of us guys who shoot Precision Rifle Series style tactical/practical field matches. In fact, this year the King of 2 Miles was won by Robert Brantley, who comes from the PRS world! But regardless of what shooting discipline they come from, all the shooters share the same genetics that triggers dopamine to flood our brain when we hit a target really far away – and we instantly want to see if we can hit something even further! We’re all addicted to pushing our limits!

The equipment for this type of shooting is very niche. A rifle that is optimized to engage targets at extreme ranges won’t likely be practical for many other applications. Since this is still an emerging sport and people come from various backgrounds and shooting disciplines there is still a significant amount of diversity when it comes to equipment.

While there is a lot of diversity, I’ll try to quickly summarize the specs and gear that were common among the majority of the competitors. While this isn’t intended to be exclusive, it represents what you’d notice a lot people using if you walked around the match or watched several competitors shoot.

Cartridge: 375 CheyTac or 416 Barrett

375 CheyTac or 416 Barrett Bullet: Lathe-Turned Solids (The 400gr Lazer was popular for 375 caliber, and 500gr Lazer was popular for 416 caliber.)

Lathe-Turned Solids (The 400gr Lazer was popular for 375 caliber, and 500gr Lazer was popular for 416 caliber.) Stock/Chassis: Large stocks, such as the McMillan BEAST or Manners LRT (although there were some chassis too)

Large stocks, such as the McMillan BEAST or Manners LRT (although there were some chassis too) Scope: Nightforce ATACR 5-25×56 or 7-35×56

Nightforce ATACR 5-25×56 or 7-35×56 Bipod: Phoenix Precision

Phoenix Precision Total Rifle Weight: 34 lbs. (This is the average weight of the rifles for the top 25 shooters, although they ranged from 23.6 to 44.7 lbs. This weight reflects their “ready to fire” configuration, including optics, bipod, etc.)

Many may not be familiar with these big bore cartridges, so here is a photo comparison of these popular rounds alongside more common cartridges:

Cartridges Used By the Top 10 Shooters

I asked all shooters who qualified for the finals which cartridge they were using. Here are the results:

Robert Brantley – 416 Barrett John Buhay – 375 CheyTac Improved Paul Phillips – 416 Barrett Duncan Davis – 375 CheyTac Gene Nowaczyk – 375 CheyTac Tom Manners – 416 Barrett James Foster – 375 CheyTac Rudy Gonsior – 375 CheyTac Libert O’Sullivan – 375 Libert. This is obviously a wildcat that Libert designed himself. The case is based on a shortened 50 BMG that is necked down to 375. For more info visit 375Libert.com. Jeff Heeg – 375 Warner. Jeff explained this to me as a wildcat that is basically a 50 BMG case necked down to a 375. He said he was originally running 193gr of Hodgdon 50 BMG powder, which pushed a 400gr bullet at 3,355 fps!!! Unfortunately, barrel life was under 200 rounds on his first barrel, so on this second barrel he switched to a cooler burning powder that still produced good pressures. He was anxious to get home and see how the throat had worn over the match.

For more historical context, the 2017 King of 2 Miles was Derek Rodgers using a 375 CheyTac, and the 2016 King of 2 Miles was Mitch Fitzpatrick using a 375 Lethal Magnum. This post isn’t intended to be an exhaustive cartridge comparison, and although I’m tempted to dive into that we’ll leave that for a later post and move on to other equipment these guys were using.

Equipment Details From Top 5 Shooters

I gathered detailed information from the guys who finished in the top 3 for the 2018 King of 2 Miles, and got some photos and basic info from a few of the other top finishers. I really just did this by walking around and talking to the guys, so I appreciate the competitors being so willing to share with the rest of us. It was really interesting to see how diverse their equipment choices were.

I want to be clear: I’m not saying these guys finished on top because they had the best equipment. Many other competitors had similar setups, and a few may have even had better equipment. These top shooters are world-class marksmen that have likely spent A LOT of time at the range, their team (spotter and wind coach) communicated well, and they were able to perform under pressure when all the eyes were on them. While you obviously need capable gear to be competitive, I’d say those things I just mentioned may be more directly correlated to where someone finished. And some other guys just had bad luck. If you were randomly assigned a time to shoot in the qualifying round when there happened to be a lot of switching winds and updrafts, you were out of it before you knew what happened! It was a heart-breaker to watch some of those guys go down. But, it is always interesting to see what the top guys chose to compete with, so here we go!

1st Place: Robert Brantley with Team Manners

Robert is one of the nicest and most humble guys you’ll meet. Robert works at Manners Stocks, and most of his competition experience has been in the Precision Rifle Series. He’s a guy that is easy to root for – very unassuming and always has a smile on his face. Robert seemed sincerely surprised at how many targets he was able to connect with, because he said they’d just put that rifle together the week before the competition. The barrel was an old, shot-out barrel that Moon Roberts at Crescent Customs re-chambered for them, and Robert shot the rifle for the first time less than 24 hours before they packed up to leave for the competition in Raton. He said the barrel only had 17 rounds on it when they pulled into the Whittington Center! If that doesn’t surprise you, this might: Tom loaded the ammo he used for the finals the night before in his hotel room. 😉 Despite all that, it was some excellent shooting and world-class results. Congrats, Robert!

2nd Place: John Buhay

John is another extremely friendly and helpful guy. He never seemed to get tired of my incessant questions! I could tell there was a wealth of knowledge in John’s head, so I felt fortunate to have a conversation with him. John is from Pennsylvania, and has been an active part of the 1000 yard Benchrest community there. John made it a point to tell us the rifle he was using was actually his hunting rifle. He had used it to take clean kills at some pretty unbelievable distances.

I asked John if he had any tips for new shooters that wanted to get into this, and he suggested they spend some time getting comfortable shooting prone. He said the last time he’d shot prone was last year at this same match! He seemed to make it through it alright. 😉

3rd Place: Paul Phillips with Team Applied Ballistics

Paul is a big promoter of ELR, and very passionate about the sport. Paul is the Adjutant of the US Rifle Team, and an accomplished shooter on a number of levels. He’s won several national and world championships, and has broken over 45 NRA National Shooting Records. Paul was a coach on the winning team for the 2016 and 2017 King of 2 Miles.

4th Place: Duncan Davis with Team JJ Rock

Duncan is one of the founders of JJ Rock, a new company whose initial offering is a SuperXL action designed for this exact type of ELR application. Duncan came into the finals seeded in 6th place, but rang a lot of steel WAY out there – including the 2 mile target – which helped him finish 4th overall.

5th Place: Gene Nowaczyk with Team Cutting Edge

Finally, here are the final scores for all shooters from the 2018 King of Miles (Download PDF version):

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