Army Reserve Marksmanship Postal Matches
Overview of matches available to everyone, including soldiers at ALL military ranges.
“Why didn’t someone tell me we could go to matches like this?”
“I wish I could go shoot matches like you do.”
These were the types of complaints I’ve heard over the years from military personnel bemoaning having never participated in some shooting event.
Pro Tip: If you want to participate, go! It’s not an “insiders club.” Good competitive events have open enrollment and encourage new participants. You don’t need unit support; individual soldiers can sign up and go on their own. Of course, all civilian-hosted events are open to the general public.
While every branch of the military has some form of competitive shooting available, it’s not possible to send everyone to every event. And “just go” might be a rung too high for someone’s first try.
Promoting an activity demands setting up that activity and then regularly telling others about it. New participants are best encouraged with a low barrier to entry. That was the intent of military postal matches.
Army Reserve Marksmanship is formally established in Army Regulation 140-1, Chapter 7. It includes the mandate that postal match events be available to all soldiers at the unit level. Link to download the Course of Fire book and video demonstrations.
Download the complete Course of Fire book:
https://www.usar.army.mil/Commands/Functional/ARMU/Resources/PostalMatch/
Video demonstrations:
Any modestly experienced shooter will recognize that these are not high-level shooting challenges. However, they greatly exceed the standards set for qualification. Even more important, they offer the easiest, lowest possible bar to entry.
All of these courses use targets and resources already available on every Army range. They’re also purposely easy to host on any civilian range. The download link above includes targets that you can print yourself if you don’t have Army-provided versions. Every Army unit can host these during every qualification. The only thing stopping this being available to every soldier during qualification is a lack of will.