Sounds like you have a great venue and lots of action shooting experience To build on. Longest 3 Gun ranges i’ve shot matches at in Ontario have been 100 metres. Think you’d get a lot of interest from Ontario 3 gunners if you host matches with 200 yard rifle targets.
Here are some randomly ordered 3 Gun 101 thoughts.
First off, if you haven’t shot a 3 Gun match before, suggest you look to shoot and help out at a couple matches, preferably at different clubs to see how others do it. It’ll be a good learning curve and you’ll discover each MD and club will have slightly different rule sets. For the most part though they are fairly similar. Some use a variation of IDPA rules and scoring, some IPSC, some 3 Gun Nation, etc. Nice thing is as a MD running an Outlaw 3 Gun Match, you get to decide how you want to run the match.
If you already shoot IPSC , Idpa or other action shooting sports at your club, adding 3 Gun to the mix shouldn’t be to difficult. And the MD’s and volunteers from those disciplines will be a great resource.
Put together a dedicated team of volunteers to help design and build stages, RO, score, tear down, flip burgers, etc. The more the merrier! And take good care of your volunteers.
Get your club exec on side and keep them fully informed. Many clubs and club execs, especially those that don’t have action shooting experience, can be very ignorant and hence fearful of 3 Gun.
Safety of course is always paramount! Know your range rules and permitted safe angles of fire, etc. (There’s a thread on here about this.) This will dictate your stage designs. Some sort of holster certification is almost always required ...unless you’re shooting down south.
Most ranges prohibit steel core ammo and some RO’s will check ammo with a magnet. Bird shot is typically 7.5 or smaller. HG 9mm or larger.
Typical 3 gun targets are mini and classic IPSC or Idpa paper targets, steel plates, poppers, clays, which can be used for SG, Rifle and or HG, small water bottles, Texas stars, spinners, plate racks, clay throwers, etc. Rifle and HG steel has to be shrouded in Ontario of course.
Patch guns, timers, tablets, practiscore, spares batteries and spare or two everything, including RO’s, are IMHO a necessity to a well run match!
What else. When designing stages, not only is safety a concern, but time it takes to patch and reset. If you’ve got 100 and 200 metre clays and or paper targets that need to be scored and patched, they are going to take a lot more time. Better off making those ones reactive steel targets that don’t need to be reset.
Good luck and don’t forget to post your match here on CGN
