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The PRS Season Finale wrapped up today, and we have a new PRS Overall Season Champion: Kahl Harmon! Congrats, Kahl! Kahl not only won the season finale match but was this year’s golden bullet winner. (See the 2023 PRS Season Finale Match results and scores)
Here are the top 25 overall from the final 2023 PRS season rankings for the Open Division:
Well done to Morgun King, Andy Slade, Austin Orgain, and others who also had a phenomenal season. All of the names on that chart are absolutely among the very best riflemen in the world. Great season, fellas!
Your total season score is based on your best 3 pro-level, two-day PRS matches during the season (with at least one coming from a match designated as a “qualifier match”) at a max of 100 points per match. So the most points you can have coming into the finale is 300. The PRS finale match itself counts for up to 200 points in your overall score. Here is a breakdown of how many points each of the top 25 shooters had coming into the finale match and how many points they earned this weekend and added to their total season points. It’s always interesting to see how the shooters got where they did in the rankings.
First, well done to Kyle Mccormack! Kyle came into the finale ranked 23rd overall on the season with 292 points – but had an outstanding performance at the finale and jumped up to 6th overall! You can see a few others entered the finale with under 290 season points and burned it down over the weekend to land in the top 25! Ben Fleenor was ranked 60th going into the weekend but finished 9th at the finale to climb up to 23rd overall on the 2023 season. It’s awesome to see guys turn it on and perform – especially knowing they are shooting head-to-head with the best shooters in the world!
Here are other 2023 PRS season winners for special divisions:
- Top Production: Matt Alwine
- Top Tactical: Scott Peterson
- Top Gas Gun: Jeff Wludyka
- Top International: Jasef Sixt
- Top Mil/LE: Kahl Harmon
- Top Junior: Allison Zane
- Top Senior: Rusty Ulmer
- Top Lady: Allison Zane
View the complete 2023 season rankings.
About Kahl Harmon
Staff Sergeant Kahl Harmon is a member of the US Army Marksmanship Unit and shot in his first pro series PRS match in 2021! He won the finale this weekend by 4 points, which is a sizeable margin in this game. He also won the overall season by 4 points, again a commanding lead.
Here is Kahl’s bio from the USAMU website:
Kahl Harmon was raised in Alta Loma, CA and was born on July 24, 1991. He entered the United States Marine Corps in 2011 and graduated from Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, California. He attended the School of Infantry, Camp Pendleton, California where he was meritoriously promoted as honor graduate and was assigned to 2nd Marine Division Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. SSG Harmon served a Machine Gunner and a Scout Sniper Platoon member in various positions from Team Leader to Section Leader. He furthered his military service joining the Army in 2018 and attended the Warrior Transition Training at Fort Benning, Georgia. Staff Sergeant Harmon served as a Sniper Section Sergeant and Platoon Sergeant in support of Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq and Syria before being recruited to USAMU. He was assigned to the United States Army Marksmanship Unit Action Shooting team in December 2021, as a shooter/instructor.
Staff Sergeant Harmon is an Army graduate from the Warriors Leaders Course in Ft Benning GA, Advanced Warrior Leader Course in Ft. Benning, GA, Sniper School in Ft. Benning, GA.
Since becoming a member of USAMU his notable finishes include Inaugural USMC Scout Sniper vs US Army Sniper Grudge Match Champion, 1st Alabama Precision Shooters Challenge 2022, 1st Badger Ordnance Condition 1-6 Quantified Performance, 2nd MPA Cool Acres August 2022, 3rd 2022 Southeast Regional Finale, 1st 2023 Southern Hunting Challenge in the Arena, 2nd VPRC Rifleman’s Revival 2023, 1st K&M Southeastern Shooters Challenge 2023, 1st South Carolina Precision Rifle Challenge 2023.
I noticed that bio didn’t include his last few wins, which came in the last 3 pro series PRS matches of the season! Kahl definitely was hot coming into the finale and capped off the season well! Here are Kahl’s 2023 pro match results:
View all of Kahl Harmon’s match results
Kahl Harmon joins an elite class of 9 other shooters that have been crowned the overall PRS Season Champs and golden bullet winners:
- 2023: Kahl Harmon
- 2022: Austin Buschman
- 2021: Austin Orgain
- 2020: Austin Orgain
- 2019: Clay Blackketter
- 2018: Matthew Brousseau
- 2017: Matthew Brousseau
- 2016: Tyler Payne (another US Army Marksmanship Unit winner)
- 2015: Dave Preston
- 2014: Bryan Morgan
- 2013: Dustin Morris
- 2012: Wade Stuteville
If you’re interested in learning more about Kahl Harmon and hearing some shooting tips from the latest PRS Season Champ, check out this YouTube video interview with Phil Cashin called “The Winners Circle” from just 3 weeks ago.
Congratulations to winner Kahl Harmon: Excellent shooting.
I see four shooters with scores over 490. That’s really good shooting.
Cal, thanks to your articles we know a lot more about some of these shooters than we would have normally.
Paul
You bet! Thanks, Paul
Well done to all the shooters and thanks Cal for reporting and commentating. Seriously top level shooters!
PS. I am sure that some of those will kick themselves for not carrying in more points during the season.
Regards,
Thanks, Mare. I was following it this weekend, and honestly had made some of those charts just for myself (because I’m a nerd and make charts for everything!) … and then thought others might like to see it.
And you may be right. Everyone wants to carry as many points as they can into the finale, but the competition is getting stiffer every year. I’ve been watching and participating in this sport since it started in 2012, and the level of competition over the past 5 years is unbelievable! To win a match today, you pretty much have to be perfect … and have a little luck! It’s hard enough to get one pro series match, much less 3. But, what this article shows is if you aren’t carrying in over 295, you probably don’t have much of a shot to win it or even finish top 5. Kyle sure came close, though! He was leading after Day 1 by a couple of shots, and I thought if he did that again he might have a chance … but Kahl killed day 2. Hats off to that guy. I’m sure there is extra pressure on you when you do this for a living and are representing the military.
Thanks,
Cal
Nice to know about the man , BUT I’ll bet most would like to know ALL about his weapon .
I agree, Tom. I’d be interested in seeing that, too. Maybe I’ll be able to provide that info at some point.
Thanks,
Cal
He talks about it in the MPA interview. He’s running a Terminus Zeus in 6GT, Berger 105 Hybrids, Bartlein barrel chambered by Ben Gossett, in an XLR chassis with Nightforce ATACR and Hawkins 1-piece mount.
Thanks, Mike!
First off Cal, thank you for all of your hard work over the years. I have been lurking for a long time, and your engineering prowess and insane attention to detail is amazing! Keep on your fantastic forays as people really do appreciate what you do!
A few points of interest….on the discussion at hand, the other curious point Kahl Harmon brought up in the vblog (thanks for posting Cal) was that like 55% of competitors bedded their actions and 45% did not. His attitude was: why leave anything to chance? Phil Cashin chimed in, saying a 2 thousandths play of the action (incurred by a bump to the scope or barrel) in a v-block chassis set-up translated into a 1″ shift for POI at 100 yards, which obviously only gets worse the further you go out in range. Phil went on further to say the unsupported spaces between a cylindrical action of sorts leaves a lot of area without direct contact support to the chassis/stock. Kahl said bedding did not translate into greater accuracy as much as it kept his rig from losing accuracy if it got bumped around. In the vblog, he mentioned he would bang his barrel that was attached to his bedded action against a post or similar and said he would not get a shift in POI when he shot groups afterwards. He also seemed to express doubt in barrel prefits as a possible source of error in consistency that could be kept out of the accuracy equation by just having the smith turn one specific barrel to a given action. So we know from that comment Kahl is not using the Terminus Quick-Change action option with a shouldered Bartlein prefit.
So here’s the question: I am guessing people that do not bed fall into one of three groups: a) they don’t want to epoxy bed their chassis/stock only to one action type, b) they think they will want to sell it sometime later and know people won’t usually spring for a used bedded chassis/stock or c) they have an action like an AI AX or Surgeon 1581XL which has a flat bottom that mates to only a specific type of chassis/stock that the buyer went for in the first place.
Cal, I know you did an article a ways back where you showed two identical MPA BA comp rifles you use in competitions (a main and a back-up). Did you bed your actions for those?
I am thinking you did NOT bed your 1581XL-based Surgeon Remedy (the 300 Norma Mag one with the 338LM swap option) when you were clearing stages out to 2000m with Scott Satterlee’s course a while back?
Just trying to understand the concept here as manufacturers like Foundation and AI say no need to bed their actions as they say their chassis/stocks are action-specific. I have smiths tell me that if one is serious, you take the hit on ever being able to sell the chassis/stock, bed the action, and move forward with one less variable to worry about, regardless what the manufacturers say. Same smiths also tell me to leave prefits behind as well echoing what Kahl has most likely come to learn: that prefits are made to fit into the tolerances of the clones of the action specified. That the prevailing wisdom has to be a prefit could not possibly be as consistent and tightly fitted as a smith-turned barrel of the same manufacturer (think: Proof Research).
So, for example, when the Wade Stuteville’ says his Impact Precision actions or Joel Russo with his Terminus actions are made to exacting tolerances, mention prefit compatibility, and then we see wins by people using these actions, are we to assume these wins are not with prefits?
Am I missing what seems to be obvious to everyone but me: that those who place in the top of PRS/NRL are using BEDDED NON-PREFIT barreled rigs?
Hint Hint: I do not see AI rifles anywhere near the top, if at all, anymore, and they use prefit Bartlein barrels chambered by Win Tactical (coincidence[?])
Hey, Scott. I appreciate the thoughtful comments. You’re clearly a sharp guy and have raised a lot of good questions. I don’t want to represent my opinion as “the truth” on this subject, but I can share my thoughts and what I’ve done personally.
You asked about my twin competition rifles that are in an MPA BA Competition chassis. I’ve made some minor changes to those over the past 2-3 years (most of which I already updated that article to reflect), but the action and chassis are still the same.
I started asking myself the same questions about whether bedding mattered or not. I wasn’t getting “bad precision” from those rifles – but you can’t help but wonder if bedding an action would improve performance, even if it was only slightly. So I did epoxy bed one of them. Honestly, part of that was I thought it’d be a fun experiment. I actually did the work myself, and it was the first time I’d ever bedded a rifle – but it seemed pretty straightforward. The result: Nothing changed. I fired a ton of groups before and after, and there was really no meaningful or statistically significant difference. In fact, I don’t think there was any measurable difference.
But I have also seen a few bedding jobs from Mark Gordon at Short Action Customs that looked like art. They were really incredible. I’d say perfect. You could really see Mark’s OCD attention to detail and experience in the bedding job. Honestly, I’d never even talked to Mark before, but his work was a standout on a few custom rifles that I’d seen. Although I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong with my bedding job, over a few months, I started wondering if an experienced professional epoxy bedding the action to the chassis might have a different result. So I eventually reached out to Mark and sent him the action and chassis that I hadn’t bedded. The result: Nothing changed. Again, I fired a ton of groups before and after, and there was no meaningful difference. (But Mark’s bedding job did look amazing! 😉)
So, both of my competition chassis are now bedded – but that didn’t improve my precision in a measurable way. But, like Kahl and Phil wisely point out, that doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t value to doing it. However, the value isn’t clear. It’s more theoretical or academic. Their thoughts on a non-bedded rifle having unsupported areas between a cylindrical action and a stock/chassis and those being more susceptible to micro-movements when a rifle is bumped or jarred seems plausible. I haven’t actually intentionally banged my rifle against a post like Kahl has – but I guess that is the kind of thing someone who becomes a PRS Champion thinks of and tests.
I remember the 2012 PRS Champion, Wade Stuteville, told me the year he won it all, he actually won the PRS finale by a very slim margin. He told me that a big part of that finale win was related to one stage with a tiny porthole that didn’t give you enough room to rest your rifle unless you rested your barrel on the barricade directly. Wade told me he knew what his point of impact shift would be in that scenario because he’d practiced it and memorized how much resting his barrel on a prop would shift his impact. So he cleaned that stage, and most others dropped a couple of points. The fact that Kahl tested if his POI shifted after he banged his rifle on a post reminded me of that story from Wade. They knew more about their rifles because they were intentional enough to test them in ways most of us don’t. That might be why they’re both PRS Champions. (Oh, and they’re both much better shooters and practice more than me, too! Ha! 😉)
Sorry for the aside. Yes, I do have a custom 300 Norma/338 Lapua switch barrel rifle that is on a Surgeon 1581XL, and that action is not bedded. But, that Accuracy International chassis is literally made for the Surgeon 1581XL. It’s got a square bottom, and the chassis even has the big relief cut in it for the oversized recoil lug on the 1581XL. So that AI chassis that came on my Surgeon Remedy rifle couldn’t even be used for any other action. It’s not bedded, but if the chassis was CNC’d specifically for that action and has a perfect fit without any of the those small gaps that Kahl and Phil mentioned, I can’t think of how bedding in that scenario would improve anything.
Having said that, in 2020, I tested an Accuracy International AXSR rifle chambered in 300 Norma and ended up buying it after my review (because it was/is amazing). It is a complete rifle build from Accuracy International and was the first AI rifle I’d had much experience behind. I’m pretty sure AI glued that action into the chassis, which I’ve heard they do for many of their rifles (if not all of them). So that whole argument I just made about the chassis being specifically cut for the Surgeon XL action would seem to be true for the square AI action in the AXSR – so why did AI glue in their action? I know AI tests the crap out of their rifles (and I even gave photos of a bunch of those tests in my article), so I’m going to bet that they believe something similar to what Kahl and Phil were saying. You might have a lot of confidence that the action wouldn’t move without the glue – but you KNOW it won’t move with the glue. And when guys are potentially jumping out of helicopters with the rifle and then have to use it to potentially save a life, you don’t want to leave things like that up for question.
In my recent article about Austin Orgain’s rifle, I asked Austin if he bedded his Foundation Stock because I’d heard that “you don’t have to.” Actually, Wade Stuteville personally told me that you don’t have to bed a Foundation Stock. Wade doesn’t say that for all of the chassis that some other gunsmiths say you don’t have to bed, so it’s not like that is his default answer. (For those that don’t know Wade, he is not only the 2012 PRS Champion but a gunsmith for many of the top PRS shooters and one of the founders of Impact Precision and designer of the Impact 737R action that many of these guys run. So he’s an expert among experts in this space.) When I asked Austin Orgain if he personally bedded his Foundation Stocks, he said, “No. Well, I actually did bed one of my Foundation stocks, and I have another one that is not bedded. I wanted to see if it made a difference – and it didn’t. So I never bothered to bed the other one.” Austin has won more PRS matches and PRS championships over the past 6 years than anyone, so obviously, you don’t HAVE to do it.
I do think the Foundation stocks may fall into another category than other chassis with V-block. I believe Foundation stocks are CNC’d for a specific action. The way I understand it, it is a perfect bedding surface that mirrors the body of the action and doesn’t have any of those gaps or unsupported portions of a cylindrical action like Kahl & Phil were talking about. When you bed an action to a chassis with a V-block you are drastically increasing the area that is contact with the action by filling those voids, but on a Foundation there isn’t a V-block and instead the action is fully supported like it was bedded. That is at least the way I understand it, but I could be wrong.
The question about pre-fits is similar to bedding, but it’s also a different question. I also asked Austin Orgain point blank: Does Wade Stuteville custom-chamber your barrels for your specific actions, or are they his standard pre-fit barrels for any Impact action? Austin told me, “Wade runs the same CNC program to chamber my barrels as he does to make all of his Impact Precision pre-fit barrels that you can buy online.” So clearly, you can be successful with pre-fit barrels – but you’re left with that lingering question of whether there is some niche scenario where a barrel that is custom fit for your specific action might give you a slight edge. Would the threads on a barrel that is custom fit to your action be slightly tighter than a pre-fit that could fit on any action from that manufacturer?
I’ve read the research by Dr. Harold Vaughn published in Rifle Accuracy Facts, and he dedicated a whole chapter in that book to research he’d done investigating how the “Barrel-Receiver Threaded Joint Motion” can impact a rifle’s precision. If you haven’t read that, I’d say, based on your questions, you’d find it VERY interesting (find links to digital copies here). The summary of his barrel-receiver threaded joint experiments is that he was able to demonstrate that the standard V thread barrel joint does move, especially when the barrel is hot. He also showed that often, a barrel’s threads are not evenly loaded, which is part of the problem. I’ll share an excerpt of how he summed up that research in his own words:
Having said all that, I will say that I personally have pre-fits on my rifles right now! I have done it both ways. I have burned out several barrels over the years on my competition rifles, and as I think back on it – about half of them were barrels that were custom fit, and half were pre-fits. I sent my actions off to 2 different top gunsmiths and had them custom-fit barrels for them at different times, and at least 2 other times I ordered pre-fit barrels from 2 others who are also top gunsmiths and didn’t send them my actions. I can’t say that I’ve noticed any difference. Honestly, I think since I changed to a Nightforce scope, I haven’t had any point of impact shift from my rifle being banged around. I would bet money that the optic is the weakest link in terms of losing your zero or having a POI shift more than the threads on the barrel. I know I used to have that with other scopes but haven’t since I’ve been competing with a Nightforce on my rifle – and that’s the #1 reason that scope is on my competition rifles. I’ve literally had someone accidentally knock my rifle over as we were about to walk up to stage 1 at a match and it banged directly on metal. They were horrified and felt terrible. But I said, “Don’t worry, it’s a Nightforce!” I still had a perfect zero at the start and at the end of that match. I’m not sponsored by NF (and would decline if they tried to sponsor me) – but it’s awesome when you can have confidence in your gear like that.
The fact is, I’ve never heard anyone say their precision was hurt by bedding their rifle or having a barrel custom-chambered for it. Neither of those may have improved anything in a measurable way, but it didn’t hurt. So I’d probably say your gunsmiths are giving you good advice. If you do it, you move forward with one less variable to worry about. I have been thinking about trying out some other chassis or maybe a Foundation stock. If I switched to one of those, would I bed it? Maybe. I’m honestly not sure.
Now, I’ve never heard, “Prefits are made to fit into the tolerances of the clones of the action specified.” That sounds suspect to me. Maybe some gunsmiths do that, but I doubt that is what every gunsmith does. And I don’t know that a smith-turned barrel is always tighter than a pre-fit. I had a barrel that was chambered by a Benchrest gunsmith one time, and he told me that he actually hand-fit the threads. I don’t know if that matters, but I can say that is still the best shooting barrel that I have ever owned – and I’ve gone through a lot of barrels! So I’m not saying that you’re wrong there, but I at least think it’s plausible that a prefit barrel from one of the leading gunsmiths might be as tight as a smith-turned barrel from another gunsmith.
I do know that Austin Orgain said he competes with barrels that are chambered by Wade Stuteville on the same CNC machine running the same program as his standard pre-fit barrels that he sells online. The reason Austin doesn’t just buy one of his standard pre-fits is he’s sponsored by PROOF barrels, and Wade’s standard pre-fit barrels are Bartlein barrels. So Austin sends Wade his PROOF barrel blanks, but from there, the chambering and cutting of the threads is done exactly like a pre-fit barrel from Stuteville Precision. There isn’t anything done to make them better fit his specific actions. So I’d say Austin Orgain is using pre-fit barrels, and he got 4th overall in the PRS this season. That at least seems to stand in opposition to your theory that “those who place in the top of PRS/NRL are using BEDDED NON-PREFIT barreled rigs.”
You do ask some great questions! And guess what?! Ken hasn’t sent out my “What The Pros Use” survey yet to all of the top shooters, so I quickly went in and added those 2 questions this morning: 1) Is your barrel a pre-fit or custom-chambered for your specific action? 2) Is your stock/chassis bedded for your action? So, hopefully, soon, we will know what most of the top shooters are doing on their competition rifles. Can’t wait to see what they say!
Thanks again for the thoughtful comments! You’ve obviously got me thinking!
Cal
Hey, I reached out to John-Kyle Truitt (owner of Foundation Stocks) and asked for his thoughts on some of the things I shared in the last comment, particularly those related to bedding Foundation Stocks and how they inlet those for particular actions compared to V-block chassis.
Here is what John-Kyle said about Foundation Stocks and bedding:
Saying the PRS Champs from 2017 through 2022 are all running Foundation Stocks that aren’t bedded is a pretty big statement. Honestly, I guess I hadn’t realized it had been that many years in a row that the PRS Champ had been using a Foundation Stock. But you have Matthew Brousseau in 2017 and 2018, then Clay Blackketter in 2019, then Austin Orgain in 2020 and 2021, and Austin Buschman in 2022 – and they all ran Foundation Stocks. That is an amazing streak for one stock/chassis to be used by the PRS season champ! That is 6 years in a row … which is over half of the time the PRS has even been around! Nuts!
Like I said in my last comment, Foundation Stocks likely need to be sat in their own category because they are different than the V-block in most chassis. So I bet less Foundation Stocks are bedded than other chassis. It will be interesting to see the results from the “What The Pros Use” survey with that question in there.
Just wanted to share those comments from John-Kyle, since I wasn’t sure about some of that since I don’t own a Foundation Stock (yet).
Thanks,
Cal
Congratulations all!
Thanks Cal, I knew you would go all out on the queries I had and you never disappoint. Your relationships with top shooters and manufacturers put to rest both the bedding and prefit questions. I am eager to know the results of your latest survey as well and again thank you for your commitment to conclusions based on data alone.