So I shot my first competitive match today, and it was really fun. But the way scoring was done for bolt guns was kind of odd to me.

Here's a breakdown.

There are 3 circles, one like 7 inches, one 6 and one I think 4. You were supposed to shoot 6 rounds in the first two, and 8 in the last one at 100 yards.

But here's the catch. Grouping was irrelevant. It was about getting as many down range as you could in 90 seconds.

There really wasn't a system for distinguishing rifles either, so basically if you had a bolt gun with a magazine you were leaps and bounds ahead of someone with a 5 round internal mag.

Now I had always imagined that when you shot bolt, the entire point was to go for tight 5 shot groups and the best shot won. But so long as you were in the circle you were fine and it wasn't counted for or against you.

You weren't allowed to check your zero first either which was kinda a bummer but mine was still good thankfully.

So in my first match ever I shot about 2 and a half MOA, all 6 in the first circle and I was smart enough to load one in the chamber and 5 in my magazine. I got one reload done and fired a total of 12 rounds because I fucked up the reload and put 6 in again and fumbled trying to push the rounds down, and push the bolt over the ones in the mag so I didnt double feed. I got 5 in the second one with about the same MOA with one flier and had finished loading my next 5 when my 90 seconds expired. I was aiming at the smallest circle when the buzzer sounded. So I may not have even counted because I got zero in the third circle. There was also no order that you had to shoot them in either.

They did the semi rifles the same way, but shooting 20 from an AR in 90 seconds wasn't really a big deal. But trying to do that with a bolt gun, and reload a gun with an internal mag was a lot harder then I expected.

But my question is, is that the way normal bolt gun matches are scored? With time limits instead of accuracy?

Sadly I didn't take any pics of my target afterwards, but my brother may have gotten some so if he does I'll try and update with a pic.

I think the objective for that stage in the match was to put 6,6, and 8 rounds into designated targets in 90 seconds.  You can shoot as many rounds as you need in 90 seconds to reach the objective and scored according to how many hits you have on target.  

It is irrelevant what your group size is as long as you hit within the designated target in the allotted time.  It is also irrelevant what type rifle you shoot (semi-auto, bolt w/ mag, bolt w/o mag, semi-auto with stripper clips or enblocs) as the objective is still the same.  Now what you need to find out is if they broke out the folks shooting semi-auto vs. bolts into different divisions, then you can rack and stack yourself against folks shooting the same type of firearms.

Ya so it was separated by gun class, the semi's had the same objective and targets. Bolt guns had their own class but it wasn't limited to magazine capacity. So if you had a bolt gun with a 10 round box mag, you really only had to worry about reloading once and could focus on getting all your shots down range.

It just seemed strange to me, but I still enjoyed doing it.