Horner Wins Trijicon World Shooting Championship

Daniel Horner of the USAMU has been crowned the World Shooting Champion, and he has a $50,000 check to prove it. In the first running of the Trijicon World Shooting Championship (TWSC), 159 of the world’s top shooters competed in a grueling 4-day, multi-discipline event. To do well at the TWSC you had to be an expert with rifle, shotgun, and pistol — and you couldn’t have any real weaknesses. You needed mastery of speed pistol, trap shooting, long-range rifle shooting, cowboy action disciplines, “run and gun”, and defensive action scenarios.

SSG Daniel Horner (File photo — not from TWSC)

Horner topped the field with 966.856 points. In second place was Bianchi Cup Ace Bruce Piatt with 924.895. The legendary Jerry Miculek took third with 870.153. Jerry’s performance gave hope for us old guys. There must also be something about Miculek DNA — Jerry’s daughter Lena was the top female competitor, finishing 28th overall. We also want to acknowledge young Brian Nelson who, competing as a Junior, finished fourth overall, a great accomplishment. Other than Nelson, most of the top finishers are professional 3-Gun competitors. These folks know how to put rounds on target quickly and transition smoothly from one firearm to the next.

For four days, the shooters competed in twelve equally-weighted disciplines from various shooting sports. The match combines pistol shooting (action and bullseye), rifle shooting (action, smallbore, high-power, and F-Class), and Shotgun (Sporting Clays/trap/tactical). All firearms and ammunition were provided for each event.

Horner won the big prize through consistency. Out of the 12 shooting events, he finished in the top 10 in all but two. Writing in the Shooting Wire, Jim Shepherd reports: “Horner took outright stage wins in the Wobble Trap Doubles (100%) and NRA Action Rifle (100%) and used them to overcome his two worst scores, a 28th-place finish in F-Class rifle and a 13th-place in .22 rifle. For his achievement, Horner wins the $50,000 prize, and the dubious honor of now knowing that every competition shooter in the world has him solidly in their sights now, not just the 3-gun shooters he regularly tests … and bests.”

Big Cash Awards and Unrivaled Prize Table
Competitors came to the Peacemaker National Training Center in Glengary, WV for a chance to be crowned the “World Shooting Champion” and receive a $50,000 first place cash prize. This match carried “multi-gun” competition to a whole new level, with BIG MONEY at stake:. There were cash payouts for most stages and over $150,000 worth of hardware on the prize table.

First Place Overall: $50,000 Lady Champion: $5,000 Pistol Segment Winner: $5,000 Rifle Segment Winner: $5,000 Shotgun Segment Winner: $5,000

Second Place Overall: $3,000 Third Place Overall: $2,000 Fourth Place Overall: $1,000 Stage Winner $2,000 Side Match Winner: $1,000

Meanwhile, in Spain — the ISSF World Shooting Championships
The next TWSC will be held October 15-17, 2015. This inaugural event went well, and it will surely grow in prestige as time passes. However, we do question the notion that this was truly a “World Championship”. The TWSC took place in West Virginia at the same time that the ISSF World Championships were being held in Granada, Spain. That means that virtually none of the world’s top shotgun aces or top prone/3P rifle shooters attended the TWSC — they were in Spain instead. Over 2000 shooters are competing at the 2014 ISSF World Championships, including hundreds of Olympians. The TWSC had less than 200 competitors, and few Olympians. TWSC was, then, more realistically, a North American Multi-Gun Championship. Let’s hope that, in the years to come, the TWSC will attract more foreign-born competitors. That way it can properly be called a “World Shooting Championship”.