It’s actually happening! For a long time, shooters in the long gun genres of our sport have wanted a performance-based selection process for the IPSC World Shoot teams.
For a long time, it seemed like a pipe dream to essentially launch a new shooting sport within the framework of an existing sport, but it has arrived. Shots were fired on the first match of 2025 and Round 2 of the IPSC Shotgun series that is the Road to Greece 2026. Any match director can submit Form C and put on a Level 2 event, but coming together as a community to put on a series has been an awe-inspiring experience. As we laid out construction of the last few stages for the Dissident Arms Action Shotgun Championship at Ranch TX Private Shooting Club in Eagle Lake, Texas, I just couldn’t resist being taken aback—it’s actually happening!
How did we get here? There have been four IPSC Shotgun World Shoots ever. To date, USPSA has never fielded a team based upon match performance in the way we field Handgun teams. This is simply because applicable events didn’t exist within USPSA. By and large, there were more slots available than interested competitors, so really everyone who was seriously interested got to shoot the match with the delegation, and the USA teams were largely picked by executive or committee review of apples and oranges match performance inside and outside of USPSA sanction. To the multigun community—which largely exists outside of USPSA—selection felt arbitrary and even political. At the same time, though, how do we pick teams for a match format that doesn’t exist in the U.S.? This was a legitimate conundrum.
This is not to say that action shotgun is new. I may have just enough grey hair for a quick history lesson on this. A place that action shotgun started in the U.S. was in St. Cloud, Minnesota, around 2011. A long story short, Del-Tone Luth, home of the OG DPMS rifle manufacturer, hosted one of the original Three-Gun matches in the early 2000s, known as the Tri-Gun Challenge (this predates my participation in the sport). As happens all too often in our sport, that range ran into legal issues of the kind in which a factory-new loaded cartridge originated at the evil gun range and landed magically in little Timmy’s sandbox, etc. The end result was the range became legally restricted to no-blue-sky shooting of single projectile firearms and only shotgun competitions. The legend goes that Uncle Randy Luth, in a bitter true gamer fashion, thought to himself, “Well … they didn’t say what kind of shotgun matches we could do.” Thus, he created the most Three-Gun-like shotgun match he could, with what became the beloved Nordic Components Tactical Shotgun Championships. That match would outgrow the Del-Tone facility and after a few years move to Forest Lake Sportsman’s Club, which is the current home of the USPSA Multigun Nationals and round five of the 2025 USPSA Shotgun Series.
Similar matches went on around the country in the 2011 to 2016 time frame as outlaw Time-Plus format events, but would largely take a back seat to the then thriving sport of Three-Gun. The Minnesota Three-Gun Group decided to discontinue the Nordic shotgun match in place of a Three-Gun match in 2016.
To that end, the sport of action shotgun would largely become a sleeping giant, really only to be reminisced upon when an IPSC Shotgun World Shoot was coming around. Typical for many volunteer organizations, there was a "someone should really put on some shotgun matches" sentiment floating around that never really went anywhere. As the teams returned from Thailand with their stories and treasures and another IPSC World Shoot looming on the horizon, with a little help from my friends, I set out on a campaign to rekindle the sport of action shotgun as a means of selecting the 2026 IPSC World Shoot teams. Several match directors agreed to go in on this endeavor which became the 2025 USPSA Shotgun Series. The first stop for 2025 would be in Eagle Lake, Texas, for the Dissident Arms Action Shotgun Championship.
The match was put on by Mike Whitesides and Lan Nyguen of Dissident Arms. As avid action shotgun shooters, manufactures of THE shotguns that changed the landscape of USPSA Open division competition, and themselves members of past IPSC World Shoot teams, they knew exactly what kind of masterpiece to paint upon the canvas of Ranch TX Private Shooting Club to bring out the best of American action shotgun competitors. The match was intended to replicate conditions and challenges of international IPSC Shotgun competition, a flavor rarely—if ever—seen by American shooters. Under the governance of USPSA Multigun rules, the match was administered as similarly to IPSC as possible. Shooters had to submit their equipment for tech inspection at registration. Ammunition restrictions such as shot sizes and wad types were enforced. Competitors preloaded at the line instead of a staging area. Finally, the stages were designed to simulate IPSC target presentations and challenges.
How does IPSC shotgun differ in flavor from American action shotgun? Well, simply look at the common perception of what shotguns are for: they spray pellets everywhere, two blasts on your front step to scare away home invaders. Most competitors can’t tell you what size choke is in their gun—and if they could, I bet you a hundred bucks it’s an Improved Cylinder. American action shotgun is fast, loose and violent. Everything in an American action shotgun array falls over, makes noise or explodes. In the past I have shot entire Three-Gun matches with spreader chokes and felt little challenge for the effort. For the most part, the current state of Three-Gun use of shotgun is a hoser third leg on the multigun stool. Use of buckshot is as unimaginative as it is rare, and slug shots are rarely challenging beyond is your gun zeroed. IPSC shotgun is an entirely different animal.
IPSC shotgun is as in-depth and technical as any long-range rifle sport. One would be closer to having an accurate picture of this match if they perceived an Area or National USPSA low-cap pistol match, scored hit factor with one hit per paper scoring. Every round belongs to a target and misses will cost dearly. Buckshot is a combination of KO steel at Comstock-scored paper (believe it or not, you can shoot nine pellets at a classic target and still not slam dunk two Alphas). Slug targets are Comstock-scored paper, as technical as any pistol match. While birdshot targets make up the majority of the round count, they are often enough put in immediate proximity to no-shoot plates that a full choke can be your best friend.
The match itself was 12 stages over two days. An IPSC-flavored 3-2-1 ratio of speed shoots, medium and long courses was used. Within the short and medium courses, two stages highlighted buckshot skills to include KO and activated swinger targets. Additionally, two stages utilized slugs with scored paper, tight no-shoots and even a static clay target. The match really tested the full and unique breadth of DVC with a shotgun, and the match was sold out with 120 competitors.
As far as the IPSC team standings go, the races are heating up and there is nowhere to hide for a cheap seat to Greece. Open division is a tight race that will probably go down to the end, with Jon Wiedell and Verick Beise at each other’s throats, and Joe Farewell, Brian Nelson, Reuben Aleckson and reigning champion Scott Green having something to say on the matter as well.
Modified is a smaller group, but dense at the top with Taylor Olhausen and Sam Larkin starting out with match wins and Houston Russell, AJ Anthony, Hunter Andreas and Lena Miculek hot on their heels.
Standard started out as a quiet question mark, but quickly became the second largest division in the match with a statement win from Jeremy Lightner, and Nate Staskiewicz, Matt Martini, Aaron Hayes, and Evan Craig all within a five percent arm’s reach. If you thought you could short stroke your way to Greece on a Manual slot, you would be wrong. Ross Haney and Sam Rydberg shared the available top tier, with Evan Nichols in the mix to let everyone know that no one rides for free. There is literal heat everywhere in the field, and those keeping score at home will have some races to watch in this series as the season progresses.
Interest at large in this segment is also exciting for the sport. While the number of seats and interested athletes is pretty small, once again, this match was sold out at 120 competitors. For a long time, the limitation of the sport was the number of events, and this season we really needed some match directors to stick their necks out on the speculation that the series would succeed. Building out the action shotgun segment is an investment in diversity and sustainability in the sport because it gives another dimension to USPSA beyond its current status as primarily a pistol-centric action shooting sport. Developing the single long gun segments also creates more of a pipeline for participation in the multigun sports, and makes them more approachable to up-and-coming shooters.
This year has started with a bang and we are off to the races with the 2025 USPSA Shotgun Series. With many shooters pining for roster spots on the team heading to IPSC World Shoot Greece in 2026, and others intrigued by the opportunities and complexities of shotgun competition, it’s going to be a great season. Remember, action shotgun is a highly reactive, target-rich environment. If you are on the fence about joining us, just remember that almost every shotgun target makes noise, falls over or explodes when you hit it.
Article from the May/June 2025 issue of USPSA’s magazine.
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