At Camp Atterbury, Indiana, the air moves in whispers. A flag flutters downrange, the grass tilts and a shooter adjusts ever so slightly. During the NRA Long-Range National Championships, even the smallest gesture carries consequence. (Watch the ARTV video clip above or at YouTube.)
The Palma Match, an event tracing its roots back to 1874, is precision shooting distilled to its purest form. Each competitor faces the same challenge shooters have wrestled with for nearly 150 years—placing a bullet on target up to 1,000 yards away. The equipment has evolved and the targets have gone digital, but the soul of this shooting sport remains analog.
“The heat, the humidity, the wind—those are all factors that can have a bearing on how well you perform,” said Earl Singleton, a longtime competitor at the match.
The Rhythm of Range and Wind
The Palma Individual Match unfolds in three acts: 800, 900 and 1,000 yards. Shooters fire 15 record shots per distance, each under time constraints At 800 yards, there’s some room for forgiveness. But by the time the 1,000-yard line shooting starts, it’s like trying to thread a needle in a gust.
Most fire bolt-action rifles, custom-built, tube-style actions with peep sights. The guns may have changed since the 19th century, but the principle hasn’t. It’s about trust in your rifle, your read and your routine.
And yet, technology has found its place. At the 2024 NRA Long-Range Nationals at Camp Atterbury, Silver Mountain electronic targets were in use, eliminating the need for the laborious pit duty of years past. The system triangulates bullet impacts using sound and temperature, sending results wirelessly to shooters’ screens in real time.
“Electronic targets are critical,” says NRA Competitive Shooting Division Director Cole McCulloch. “What it does is you have a target that’s downrange, that looks just like a normal target that would be that would appear on a standard system where you have to pull the targets up and down in the pits, but behind the target and on the edges is technology that triangulates the impact of the bullet using audio and temperature and a number of other types of sensors, and then it sends those signals back wirelessly, right to the competitor on the line that pinpoints and scores their shots, so it eliminates any reason for people to be downrange. And the accuracy of the technology is quite remarkable.”
A Culture of Precision and Camaraderie
If golf has the Masters, shooting has the NRA National Rifle and Pistol Championships. It’s not just a competition; it’s a gathering of people who speak the same quiet language of marksmanship.
Some have been making the pilgrimage for decades. Ed Zebedies, a retired competitor with half a century of experience, now referees. “I can’t shoot sling anymore,” he admits, “but I still feel like I’m part of it. I’ve been coming since the 1970s. This is home.”
There’s no prize money that rivals pro sports, no roaring crowd. What draws them is camaraderie—the shared pursuit of a perfect shot. “Once you start coming,” says competitor Eugene Krepela, “you’re going to start coming back. It’s just a like group of people that have the same interest, and they all want to shoot good scores.”
For the NRA, the National Championships sit deep in its DNA—a thread connecting generations of marksmen and women who’ve kept the tradition alive through wars, relocations and the occasional torrential downpour. “I come for the shooting, but I also come for camaraderie,” Krepela added. “I come to shoot with my friends and against my friends.”
Where History Meets the Horizon
There’s a purity to long-range shooting that mirrors golf at its best: a solitary athlete, a practiced motion and an invisible force to be read and mastered. Out here, the wind is the ultimate hazard, and the 10-ring might as well be the cup.
At 1,000 yards, even a breath of air can shift a bullet an inch off center. But when it all aligns, with sights centered and the shot breaking clean—it’s as close to perfect as sport gets.
Earl Singleton grins after a satisfying string at 1,000 yards. “If I ever won this match,” he says, “they’d probably have to resuscitate me.”
And with that, he settles back behind the rifle, reading the flags again, chasing perfection across 1,000 yards of air.
Learn more about NRA Competitive Shooting and National Championships at competitions.nra.org.
