NRA Imperial Meeting – Gallery Rifle and Pistol Events

In the middle of the Imperial meeting there still languishes the most relaxed competitive Gallery Rifle and Pistol (GR&P) meeting on the circuit.

The Imperial Gallery Rifle and Pistol meeting runs for five days – middle Wednesday to middle Sunday – (12-16 July 2017) and is worth at least a couple of days out of your usual routine to attend. The meeting still seems to be continually off the radar for a lot of GR&P shooters.

In the 1990s and earlier it was a pistol meeting. It changed to a GR and MLR/P meeting in later years and has been running ever since with the most recent addition of LBR and LBP offerings.

The meeting is open to all shooters and offers competition in Galleryrifle Centrefire (GRCF), Galleryrifle Smallbore (GRSB), Long Barrel Revolver and Pistol (LBR/LBP), Muzzle Loading Revolver/Pistol (MLP/MLR) and some Air Pistol (AP).

There are unlimited medal entry matches, squadded trophy matches and team matches.

The format of the Imperial is slightly different to many GR meetings people may attend. It’s broadly split into two streams and there are one or two nuances, mainly regarding sights.

The traditional trophy matches are run over the weekend and if entered will be squadded affairs.

The trophy matches, for GRCF, are iron sights only; running throughout the meeting and making up the bulk of the shooting are the unlimited entry matches – simply called “the Unlimiteds”.

Any sights are allowed here so scopes, red dots or any variation are perfectly acceptable.

The idea of the Unlimiteds is exactly what it says – unlimited entries. People can shoot as many times as they want in any chosen event and keep submitting scorecards to be processed for that perfect score. In fact to get a score on the board shooters have to submit at least two cards in any event. They can submit more if they wish, however, only the top two will be crunched for the final record.

That’s the formula, the encouraging factor is to shoot as many times as the shooter wants and on this basis the entry costs are deliberately kept low.