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Gallery Rifle
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The guns
 Gallery rifles employ an underlever action. This classic design is by far the most common but there are modern variations on the underlever theme used by some.They are very specialist, quite expensive and outside the scope of these notes.  There are two popular brands of rifle in general use - Winchester and Marlin from the USA. There's one other readily available in the UK - Rossi from Brazil. All of these rifles fire pistol calibre rounds (typically .38” special, .357” magnum and .44” magnum).


Rossi  Puma 92 Rifle

 The rifle pictured is a Rossi, chambered for .38/.357” magnum in stainless steel. It has a 24" heavyweight octagonal barrel and the magazine holds 12 rounds. It's a top eject, I.e. spent cases are ejected straight up from the top of the action. This means that fitting a scope or red dot sight is not easy - the only way to do it is with a side mount. Winchester and Marlin both produce side eject models, making it easy to mount a scope.

One important consideration when buying one of these rifles is barrel length. A shorter barrel means a shorter tube magazine with less capacity and many competitions require 10 rounds to be loaded at the start. If you cannot get ten rounds into the gun you can still shoot but you will not be competitive in against the clock events. A brand new rifle will cost £500 or so but good used examples can be picked up from £200. Gun Mart magazine is a good place to look for current prices. Check the club shop too, maybe find a bargain.
Equipment
 No extra equipment above and beyond the rifle is needed to start competitive shooting. Some invest in a looped belt for their cartridges but at club level spare ammo in a pocket is more usual.
Competitions
 The club courses of fire are many and varied often involving shooter movement and a variety of targets, some static, some moving. Although there are prizes at the end of the year the atmosphere at these competitions is totally informal. Entry fee is just £1, to cover the cost of targets and trophies. Our course designers have a reputation for putting together 'challenging' courses of fire. Some members use other words!  A typical turning target routine (shot at 25m) might be:

Load 10 rounds. Gun in shoulder but barrel pointed downwards at 45 degrees. Target turns and faces you for two seconds, fire one round. Target turns away for four seconds, then faces you for two seconds - fire one round. Repeat ten times.

Using the same targets, the second stage starts as before - loaded with 10 rounds, pointed down at 45 degrees. This time the targets face you for four seconds, you fire two rounds, then they turn away for four seconds. Continue until 10 rounds fired.

 An alternative routine might be:

Rifle placed on chair beside you with the magazine filled (chamber empty), on the left hand side of the range. Distance from backstop around 15m. On start signal retrieve rifle, load round into chamber and pull string activating hidden moving target. Shoot at least 1 round at mover before it disappears. From the same position, engage and knock down the six skittles standing on the sand backstop. Reload as necessary.
Apply safety and move to right hand side of the range (barrel pointed down range, or you'll be disqualified), with strong hand pull string which activates another mover and engage with a minimum of two rounds.
From the same position knock down six baton rounds standing on the sand back stop, reloadi as necessary.

Using the same safety rules as before, move to centre of range and engage four paper targets, one shot on each through the opening in the door in front of you.
This is just a rough example. Throughout the stage reloading takes place as and when required. This type of shooting is against the clock and your score on the targets is divided by the time taken. This produces a ‘hit factor'. So, slow and accurate or fast and less accurate? You choose!  Either way, great fun.