Best Gunsmiths – What The Pros Use 2013

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This post is about the gunsmiths the best precision rifle shooters are using. It is based on what the top 50 long-range shooters nationwide brought with them to the Precision Rifle Series (PRS) Finale a couple weeks ago. For more info on who these guys are, and why you should care what they think scroll to the bottom of this article.

Best Precision Rifle Gunsmiths

Here is the list of the guys who built the rifles that were brought to the 2013 PRS season finale. It also shows the number of rifles that were represented at last year’s season finale in the semi-transparent gray color.

You can see that Surgeon Rifles and G.A. Precision maintained their dominate lead over the rest of the gunsmiths. Over 1/3 of the rifles were made by either Surgeon Rifles and G.A. Precision. This year there was one more G.A. Precision rifle at the competition than there was Surgeon rifles, while last year they were flipped the other way. (View last year’s results)

Beanland Custom Rifles had 4 rifles represented, which is double what it had last year. While Louisiana Precision Rifles and Parry Custom Guns maintained their 3 rifle count again at this years finale. Beyond that, there was a long list of gunsmiths with 1 or 2 rifles represented. I’m sure any of the gunsmiths represented at the finale are best of breed. All of these shooters know what they’re doing, and should be thought of as the top 1/10th of 1 percent of all competitive shooters.

If you just look at the top 20 finishers overall, you can see that Surgeon Rifles towered above the rest of the pack. It takes all of the rest of them combined to have more than what Surgeon had by itself. Remember there were only 9 Surgeon Rifles total in the competition, which means there was only one of those shooters that finished outside of the top 20 (he finished 28th).

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, there is a question about whether this is correlation or causation, which essentially is just saying did the fact they were using a Surgeon Rifle influence how well they did … or did it just so happen that the best shooters chose to use a Surgeon Rifle. You’d likely need random sampling and a larger sample size to be able to answer that definitively, so I’ll leave it up to you guys to debate. I’m just trying to present the data I have the best I can.

I also thought it would be interesting to look at the overall average finish (i.e. final rank for the season) based on who made the rifle. The data clearly shows that on average the shooters using a Surgeon Rifle placed better on the leader board. That could also be due to the elite shooters on the Surgeon Rifle Team.

Like I mentioned earlier, I’m sure any of these gunsmiths (and even some not listed) would be completely qualified to build a precision rifle that the owner would be proud of. This is a good list to start from, because these shooters are very serious competitors, and most know enough that they could easily be a gunsmith (or already are). So if they put their trust in one of these companies, you can too.

Meet The Pros

The Precision Rifle Series (PRS) is a championship style point series race based on the best precision rifle matches nationwide. PRS matches are recognized as the major league of sniper-style rifle matches. At the end of each year, the scores from 15 different matches are evaluated and the top 50 shooters nationwide are invited to compete head to head in the PRS Finale Match. The info below is based on the equipment those pros brought with them to the most recent finale. This is a great set of data, because 50 shooters is a significant sample size, and this particular group are also considered experts among experts. Thanks to Rich Emmons for allowing me to share this info. To find out more about the PRS, check out What Is The Precision Rifle Series?

Other “What The Pros Use” Articles

This post was one of a series of posts that look at the equipment the top 50 shooters in the country use. Check out these other posts:

• Best Rifle Calibers & Cartridges
• Best Long-Range Scopes
  
• Best Gunsmiths
• Best Actions
• Best Barrels
• Best Stocks
• Best Precision Bullets, Powders & Brass
• Best Muzzle Brake & Rifle Suppressor
  
• Best Shooting Rest Bags