The year’s first Starlight 3-Gun Shootout, a unique night-time match, takes place March 10-11 at the Copperhead Creek Shooting Club near Marble Falls, Texas. When the sun comes down this Friday, March 10th, many of the world’s best 3-Gun shooters will add lights and lasers to their comp guns and compete for a trove of cash and prizes. This match is part of a series of night-time events to be held throughout the country in 2017.

Using laser sights and firearm-mounted lights, Starlight 3-Gun competitors will shoot seven stages over two nights, 4 stages Friday night and 3 stages Saturday. The Starlight 3-Gun Championship showcases spectator-friendly pyrotechnics and special effects. Match Director Chuck Anderson says “our goal isn’t just to create a challenging course of fire. We wanted to create a course of fire [with] lights, lasers, strobes, smoke and sound that would absolutely wow spectators, too.

The Starlight 3-Gun Match Series is the brainchild of Jim Shepherd, founder of the Outdoor Wire Digital Network. After Crimson Trace decided to “retire” its popular Midnight 3-Gun Invitational (M3GI) match in Oregon, Shepherd proposed taking the M3GI concept and growing it into a series of exciting night-time 3-gun events with eye-catching lighting effects.

Jim writes: “Shooting for speed and accuracy is challenging enough, but ‘doing it in the dark’ [is] far more impressive for spectators. Accuracy is part of the equation, but unlike precision shooting competitions, you’re racing the clock to shave tenths of seconds off your overall times.

We’ve described it as ‘drag racing with guns’. At the end of the competition, the lowest time wins. It’s a simple measurement system that makes it possible for spectators to actually know who’s leading the match at any given point. And that makes for engaged spectators. And that’s our goal — get people interested in shooting sports.”