The Iron Man Silhouette Championship earns its name the hard way. Over two days at Deep Creek Range in Missoula, Montana, competitors fire 320 rounds for record, every one of them from the standing offhand position, the least stable and most punishing stance in rifle shooting. Mornings belong to smallbore .22 LR at 40 to 100 meters. Afternoons move to centerfire at 200 to 500 meters. This year the weather added its own scoring system, with shifting winds, hard gusts and rain working against every shot.
Erich Mietenkorte beat all of it.
The Team Lapua veteran won the 2026 edition June 6-7, taking all four individual titles across Smallbore and High Power in both Standard and Hunter Rifle, then clinching the Overall Aggregate Championship. It was his fifth Iron Man win, a number no one else has reached, and his aggregate score tied the all-time mark that fellow Team Lapua shooter Cathy Winstead-Severin set back in 2017. Nine years later the record finally has company.
Ask Mietenkorte how he did it and the conversation turns quickly to what he was feeding his rifles.
In smallbore he runs Lapua Midas+, lot-tested and matched to his rifle at the Lapua Rimfire Performance Center in Mesa, Arizona, a process that pairs a specific batch of ammunition to a specific barrel for the tightest groups it can find.
“In a match like this, there is no room to wonder whether the ammunition is going to perform. With Lapua Midas+, I know that when I do my part, the bullet goes exactly where I point it,” Mietenkorte said. “That level of confidence allows me to focus entirely on execution, even as conditions and pressure build. Lapua rimfire ammunition continues to set the standard for consistency, precision and reliability.”
The high power side is where this win carried extra weight, because Mietenkorte validated a brand new combination under championship pressure. He shoots 6 mm BR in Hunter Rifle and 6 mm GT in Standard Rifle, both built on Lapua brass and Vihtavuori powder and topped with Berger’s new 6 mm 120-grain Long Range Hybrid Target bullet. The 120 LRHT is the heaviest in its class and carries an exceptional 0.328 G7 ballistic coefficient, with a hybrid ogive that makes load tuning more forgiving and Berger’s meplat-reduction process tightening consistency from one bullet to the next. Berger says Doppler radar testing puts its BC variation less than one percent.
On paper that is a lot of engineering. On the range it showed up as a quarter MOA.
“Berger’s new 6 mm 120-Grain Long Range Hybrid Target bullets performed exactly how you’d want in a championship. Vihtavuori N140 with 120 LRHT's produced outstanding precision from the start. Five-shot groups at 200 meters averaged 1/4 MOA, and that accuracy held all the way to 500 meters,” Mietenkorte said.
The bullet did more than stack up titles. It carried Mietenkorte through the Bull River Ultra Slam, knocking down 20 rams in a row, the kind of clean streak that turns a good weekend into a career marker.
Metallic silhouette shooting traces back to Mexico, where it is known as siluetas metalicas, and the early version was considerably more dramatic than today’s. Live animals were staked downrange, and the first shooter to draw blood claimed the critter for dinner. Once that proved hard on the local livestock the sport switched to heavy steel cutouts shaped like chickens, pigs, turkeys and rams, and the rule that a hit only counts if the target topples has stuck ever since. Standing offhand at 500 meters, toppling steel is no small ask.
The Iron Man victory caps a strong run for Mietenkorte, who swept Smallbore and High Power at the Bernd Meier Silhouette Championship in British Columbia this past March and topped both aggregate leaderboards. Five Iron Man titles, a record finally matched and a new high power load proven when it counted. Not a bad way to spend a wet weekend in Montana.
See the full results of the 2026 Iron Man Silhouette Championship at nassasilhouette.org. Learn more about Berger Bullets and Lapua.
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