Bullseye participation statistics 2004-2014

Today I received the following Bullseye competition statistics from Denny Willing at the NRA.  These are not statistics of the number of different shooters, just the quantity of scores submitted to the NRA for Bullseye registered or approved matches.  i.e. if you shot 10 outdoor matches, you are counted in these statistics 10 times.

Here are the 11 year stats, 2004-2014 --note that the 2014 statistics are partial as the 2014 season isn't over.


                                        Outdoor                                                 Indoor
2004                                  10374                                                   6857
2005                                    9845                                                   6621
2006                                    9909                                                   6404
2007                                    9500                                                   6502
2008                                    8808                                                   6878
2009                                    8972                                                   6725
2010                                    9052                                                   6765
2011                                    9194                                                   6306
2012                                    9100                                                   6606
2013                                    9369                                                   6320
2014                                    8626                                                   5451

Kinda interesting. By these numbers my local match represents 1.5% of the total and the next closest match probably represents +1.8% (estimated).  That's not counting the other 2 matches in our state which I would estimate to be about 1% each.  That makes our state about 5.3% of the total. (If you take out the 7.6 % represented by the National Matches 2700 - assumed 656 scores, estimated which I assume is in the total; that looks even better).

Cecil

Sorry forgot to add this was for the outdoor numbers only.   I rarely think of indoor since we don't have much in sanctioned indoor around these parts.   I think the quote from Sargent York was something like.....  

"How did you all get into this valley..?" 
"We was born here....."

Impressive numbers from 2013 considering the powder and 22 ammo shortages

CR10X wrote:Kinda interesting. By these numbers my local match represents 1.5% of the total and the next closest match probably represents +1.8% (estimated).  That's not counting the other 2 matches in our state which I would estimate to be about 1% each.  That makes our state about 5.3% of the total. (If you take out the 7.6 % represented by the National Matches 2700 - assumed 656 scores, estimated which I assume is in the total; that looks even better).

Cecil

So, you are taking the total number of scores (=shooters for any one match) from your local matches?

Pretty impressive.  Unless your state by population has much more than the "average" population of the 50 states...

One lousy statistics class ruined me for watching the news. BAD interpretation of stats, stacking numbers by aggregating multiple years, and just plain FAILING to put into context like comparing to last year by TeeVee news bozos makes it very, very hard to not grouse at, or even yell at, the news "reporters".

So there's a good chance that there are now (to be generous) somewhere around 5,000-6,000 active bullseye pistol shooters in the country? Now, I see why the NRA would be hard pressed to explain to its millions of members, the money spent each year on things like the National Pistol Matches.

BE Mike wrote:So there's a good chance that there are now (to be generous) somewhere around 5,000-6,000 active bullseye pistol shooters in the country? Now, I see why the NRA would be hard pressed to explain to its millions of members, the money spent each year on things like the National Pistol Matches.

That really put things into perspective, even if each participating member gave $10 to market Precision Pistol we'd only raise $50-60K This just further supports the fact that if we want this sport to grow it's up to local clubs to promote or get local sponsorship.


- Dave

BE Mike wrote:So there's a good chance that there are now (to be generous) somewhere around 5,000-6,000 active bullseye pistol shooters in the country?

Just thinking out loud here but it sounds like 5,000-6,000 would be very generous...

Roughly 9000 scores turned in but that includes multiple scores from the same participant (if I'm reading the original post correctly). If 5,000 active Bullseye shooters participate in only 2 matches a year, that would be 10,000 scores turned in. If the average shooter participates in 6 matches a year that would give us roughly 1500 shooters, nationwide. I wonder how many matches the average Bullseye shooter participates in each year...

Any way you figure it, I agree - the local clubs need to grow some Bullseye shooters.

Clay

I believe that the participation numbers are skewed. There are bullseye matches that are not NRA registered or approved. Further there are CMP leg matches that won't show up either. Generally there are 135+ pistol shooters at the Atlantic Fleet Matches. I imagine that there are a similiar number at the Pacific Fleet Matches. 

We can no longer base our participation statistics on NRA reporting.

The Obama factor starts to show from 08 up, if the economy gets better the numbers will go up. Ive talked to a lot of shooters that skipped matches due to high gas cost and ammo,powder,22 costs and scarceness

jmdavis wrote:
We can no longer base our participation statistics on NRA reporting.

I'd suggest that the NRA numbers are a VERY good indicator, everything else adds up to a small fraction.

- Dave

dronning wrote:I'd suggest that the NRA numbers are a VERY good indicator, everything else adds up to a small fraction.

I think a better way to say this is the NRA metrics are representative of the sport as a whole.  Even though un-registered/un-approved matches and leagues take place, the odds are that those operate in a similar ratio to the number of registered/approved matches.

So, we can make assumptions on the overall health of the sport based on the NRA numbers even though they don't include all of the bullseye events, matches, and leagues nationwide.

dronning wrote:

BE Mike wrote:So there's a good chance that there are now (to be generous) somewhere around 5,000-6,000 active bullseye pistol shooters in the country? Now, I see why the NRA would be hard pressed to explain to its millions of members, the money spent each year on things like the National Pistol Matches.

That really put things into perspective, even if each participating member gave $10 to market Precision Pistol we'd only raise $50-60K This just further supports the fact that if we want this sport to grow it's up to local clubs to promote or get local sponsorship.


- Dave

The big hit to bullseye pistol participation was when the military drastically cut their support. I know the way I got started was that someone invited me to try it out and also invited me to my first match. I still think that a significant number of new bullseye pistol shooters start out because of one-on-one contact. For most of my active bullseye pistol shooting, I wasn't located close to a club who held bullseye pistol matches, so I traveled. In this day and age, bullseye must not only compete with other shooting sports, it must also compete with many more sports and activities (many of them electronic). One thing we have going for us is the respect that gun folks and competitive shooters have for the skill level that is accomplished when one becomes a bullseye pistol shooter.

Grumpy:  See note added to my original post.  I was looking at outdoor only since that's about all we have.   I live with figuring out how the stats and numbers are created and manipulated every day.   In my defense, I was just in a hurry.

I don't think the the NRA number is a good indicator.  I know a number of "outlaw" matches that use NRA rules, courses of fire and targets and never get sanctioned (approved or registered) so neither the money or the scores go in.   Would they double the reported number, probably not, but I think it would be significant. 

And these reported numbers already send in at least $4.50 each (amount for approved matches, registered is higher.)

Thanks

Cecil

Cecil, 

Your experience with the unregistered, unapproved matches is the same as mine. Some of these are .22lr only and others are not.

I belong to two clubs that have bullseye leagues.  Out of all the people that shoot in both leagues combined only three of them shoot in NRA registered matches.  So in my case, for every 10 shooters we have one that shoots NRA Bullseye matches.

And yes, that picture is me as a three year old.  Discovered it when I was throwing out a bunch of old junk. :-)

Chip

I agree with Chip, Cecil, and jmdavis about the number of competitors who shoot in non-NRA matches.  I think that a 10-1 ratio is about right for what I have observed also. 

The NRA specs are just what they are--NRA specs.  We can use them only to measure trends related to just that subset of competitors.  If we see growth in the NRA specs, we can assume that we have growth in the non-NRA ranks also.

10 to 1 ratio, so there could be as many as 90,000 bullseye shooters out there? Grumpy made some good points about the reliability of statistics...

Whatever the actual number of bullseye shooters, it's pretty likely that when it comes time to allocate resources to the various competitive disciplines NRA is going to be looking at their own numbers. And whatever the actual number, the trend we can see looking at NRA's numbers isn't good.

The answer remains the same - we need to get bullseye growing, and while NRA might be able to do some things to make that easier the real growth has to come from the local clubs and shooters.


Clay

When you consider the economy, the near complete lack of 22 ammunition and the cost and lack of availability of centerfire ammunition and components for reloading these numbers are not bad.

Looking at the data indoor is flat to slightly down if you put a trend-line on the data you can see this.  The outdoor did see a decline from 2004 to 2008 but then has been on a slight increase since 2008.  The average number of participation's from 2004-2007 is about 900 more than 2008 to 2013.  Gun sales in the last 7 years have been very strong and so have ammo sales.  Seems like those sales were not to BE shooters.

Toz35m wrote:Looking at the data indoor is flat to slightly down if you put a trend-line on the data you can see this.  The outdoor did see a decline from 2004 to 2008 but then has been on a slight increase since 2008.  The average number of participation's from 2004-2007 is about 900 more than 2008 to 2013.  Gun sales in the last 7 years have been very strong and so have ammo sales.  Seems like those sales were not to BE shooters.

There are a lot of external events, outside of desire to participate in bullseye that drive these numbers.

I suspect that the decline in indoor numbers is due to the heavy hand of the EPA, that shut down quite a few ranges due to lead and air quality issues.     Those ranges that could not afford the upgrades to their ventilation systems were forced to close.  

It will be interesting to see what kind of participation we get in 2015 with the price of gasoline on the decline again.  

I went to Perry for the first time in 2008.   Boy was it expensive to make that 2600 mile round trip,  not surprised attendance was down overall that year.

Very interesting stats.  Thanks for sharing them Rob.

It is amazing with high cost of .22 ammo and recent shortages of powder, primers etc... that the numbers have not trended even further downward.

At least in my area southeast PA, primers, powder and .22 are becoming in better supply.  Cost still is too high for .22.  Throw in gas, foood and time away from home, ouch!

We have multiple small clubs in our area that shoot informal bullseye leagues which are not NRA sanctioned.

At our club we have a junior team of 4 kids under 18.  It was also encouraging to see youth photos of one New Jersey junior team of over 10 young people.

I can't seem to get my own sons involved.  I'm working on a couple of people at work who our sport may suit.

Last week I took one of those guys out who could hardly hit the target at all 5 yards according to what he told me before we went.  We started with air gun at my house, some dry firing, and then went to the range.  By the time he was done shooting, he was hiting black most shots at 10 and 15 yards using an old model 10 of mine.

I guess the sport grows as each of us brings others into awareness of proper marksmenship skills and the challenge of trying to improve yourself.  Sone get bit by the bug some do not.

I am forever indebted to the Marine:) who spent a great deal of time with me and my friends teaching us the fundamentals.  Of the three of us, I'm the only one who shoots matches.  I was  not competing for some time up until this year.