Francis Colon Wins $20,000 at 2023 AG Cup!

Related Articles

Finish Out of PRB’s 100 Yard Underground Range

February 12, 2024

Andy Slade Wins $30,000 at 2023 AG Cup!

December 3, 2023

2023 PRS Season Results + New Champ: Kahl Harmon!

November 5, 2023

Today Francis Colon took 1st place at the 2024 Armageddon Gear Cup, winning the $20,000 prize!

The AG Cup is a unique, 3-day precision rifle match featuring $50,000+ of cash payouts, which is the most for any PRS match of the year. Tom Fuller, owner of Armageddon Gear, has designed the AG Cup to run very different than other Precision Rifle Series (PRS) matches throughout the year. The AG Cup only consists of around 25 shooters who have to qualify for the event via AG Cup qualifying PRS matches throughout the year. They represent the best of the best, so the course of fire for this match is designed exclusively with that top-tier professional competitor in mind. Also, all of the big, national-level, pro-series PRS matches are 2-day matches, but the AG Cup is a 3-day match. The match starts with around 25 shooters who compete over the first 2 days of competition. After Day 1 and 2, all the shooters are ranked, and only 16 shooters advance to Day 3.

The big kicker is that all scores reset to zero for Day 3. The scores from Day 1 and 2 don’t carry over, so the $20,000 prize could be anyone’s. It definitely adds a bit of drama to the match!

The location of the match changes, but in the past two years, the AG Cup was held at the Clinton House Plantation gun range in Clinton, South Carolina.

Shooter’s Mindset was on location and live-streamed the event on Facebook (view videos). Commentators said stages on Day 1 and 2 were all shot in one location, but on Day 3, they moved to 3-4 distinct areas. Those were far enough that you had to drive to them, and the winds were a little different at each location – which added even more drama to Day 3.

After all the shots were fired, Francis Colon had the highest score on Day 3 by 3 points. Ben Gossett took 2nd place, which was an impressive follow-up finish after he won the 2024 PRS Finale and was crowned the 2024 PRS Season Champ just a few weeks earlier. Ben was also a previous AG Cup winner back in 2022. Behind those two were Matt Curaso, Clay Blackketter, and Ken Sanoski, who rounded out the top 5.

Here is a chart showing the results of Day 3, which is the final ranking for the match:

The table below gives a breakdown of Day 3, but also provides the Day 1 & 2 scores:

You can see that Clay Blackketter was the winner of Day 1 & 2. Clay was the leader by a few points after Day 1 & 2 last year at the AG Cup as well. Francis Colon and Ben Gossett were also at the top of the leaderboard at the end of Day 1 & 2 as well. All 3 of those guys shot extremely consistently over all 3 days! In fact, even if you counted impacts over all 3 days – Francis Colon would have still come out on top by 1 point over Clay Blackketter.

Great shooting, fellas! Congrats!

The Consistency Of The Pros At The Very Top

You have to be one of the very best shooters in the world to qualify for the AG Cup. And even then, around 10 shooters are cut after Day 2 – and only 15 or 16 shooters advance to Day 3. 12 of those shooters who qualified for Day 3 were the same in 2023 and 2024!

That means 75% of the names shooting Day 3 were the same as last year! That just shows how consistent those 12 shooters are. They can perform on-demand when the stakes are the highest!

I thought it’d be interesting to total up the number of impacts each shooter got over all 6 days of competition from the past two AG Cups. Here are the results:

I’ve always heard that there are lots of guys who might win a one-day match, but it takes another level of shooter to win a two-day match. And I’ve heard a couple of pro shooters say that if matches were decided by the cumulative score over 3 days, you’d really know who the best shooter was. The totals above are based on 6 days at the highest payout match in the world, so it’s interesting to see how it all adds up.

Clay Blackketter has a cumulative 12-point lead over the rest of the field! Wow! Clay had stellar performances at the AG Cup both years, taking a pretty commanding lead in Days 1 & 2 in 2023 and 2024 – but unfortunately, in both years, he shot very well on Day 3 but didn’t claim the top spot. Clay finished 2nd overall in 2023 and 4th in 2024.

You can see Francis Colon is ranked 2nd overall over all 6 days of AG Cup shooting in the past two years. Clearly, Francis can perform very well under pressure. Francis got 7th in 2023 before taking 1st in 2024.

Right on the heels of Francis is Andy Slade, who won the 2023 AG Cup. Andy took 7th place in 2024 – so he and Francis swapped results in 2023/2024.

Ben Gossett is 4th over the past two years – and he won the year before that, so if we’d have added up the previous 3 years, he would have been ranked even higher. Especially since Ben cleaned Day 3 of the 2022 AG Cup (watch the action on this TV episode).

All of the names on that list are the whos-who of precision rifle shooting. It really is nuts to me that 12 of the 16 shooters who made it to Day 3 were the same guys as the previous year. It just goes to show that this isn’t about luck! These dozen competitors are absolutely the best of the best when it comes to precision rifle shooting.

About Francis Colon

Francis is a veteran pro PRS shooter from Michigan who really needs no introduction. He is the co-host of the Miles to Matches podcast alongside 2021 AG Cup Champion Chad Heckler. Chad also was one of the Day 3 qualifiers at the 2024 AG Cup. If you haven’t listened to that podcast, you should! These two outstanding shooters basically unpack everything they know about precision rifles and shooting. It’s packed with literally thousands of tips – and they put it all out there for free to try to help benefit the shooting community. That tells you a lot about who those guys are.

Francis worked at Applied Ballistics for the past few years as their Business Development Manager, which he said was mostly marketing and lab projects. But in August 2024, he left AB to join MDT Sporting Goods full-time as a Special Project Manager. Francis had been a sponsored shooter on Team MDT before that, but now he’s a full-time employee, too. I bet we can look forward to even more innovation from MDT with Francis’s input on product development.

Francis was also a competitive golfer before he turned that competitive spirit towards precision marksmanship. Francis first became a member of the PRS in 2019. According to the PRS website, Francis shot 8 matches in his rookie season, and he won 4 of those, finished 2nd in 3, and got 5th in one. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen as strong of a start as that! He won two of his first 3 pro matches! Clearly, Francis had the mindset and mental game of an elite competitor before the buzzer went off on his first stage at a match.

I’ve heard that Francis shoots 15,000+ rounds per year out of a precision bolt-action rifle! He is absolutely one of the fastest shooters in the sport – if not THE fastest PRS shooter. He held the record for the fastest clean on the standard PRS Skills stage, which was 25.9 seconds! That was for the 8-shot version before it was changed earlier this year. You can watch Francis’s record-breaking barricade run in the video below – it will only take 25 seconds!

Here is a story I heard that I feel tells you a lot about Francis’ character:

Congratulations again, Francis! I know becoming the 2024 AG Cup Champion is the culmination of a lot of work that you’ve been putting in over the years.

Francis Colon’s Rifle Setup

Here are all the details about Francis Colon’s competition rifle that he used to win the 2024 AG Cup:

• Chamber: 6.5 Creedmoor
• Action: Impact Precision 737R Short Action
• Chassis/Stock: MDT ACC Elite Chassis (Francis did say that he bedded the action in his chassis)
• Trigger: TriggerTech Diamond Single-Stage (set to 15 ounces – own it every day)
• Barrel: 26” Bartlein with a custom contour, which is basically an MTU contour that is 1.15” at the muzzle. So it is very close to a straight 1.25” barrel but has a very subtle taper to 1.15”.
• Gunsmith: 5×5 Precision (Chad Heckler is the owner/gunsmith and is one of the most popular gunsmiths among the pros)
• Scope: Leupold Mark 5HD 5-25×56 with PR2-MIL reticle (typically runs 21x magnification on most stages. Never runs below 18x at a match and sometimes runs up to 25x).
• Scope Mount: Area 419 Tactical One-Piece Mount
• Suppressor: 30-caliber Area 419 Maverick in short configuration with the brake attached to the end (Francis said he never runs a standard muzzle brake at a match)
• Total Rifle Weight: 22.1 pounds

Francis handloads his match ammo, and here is all of his load data and specs:

• Cartridge: 6.5 Creedmoor
• Bullet: Berger 140 gr. Hybrid
• Brass: Lapua 6.5 Creedmoor SRP Brass
• Primer: Federal 205M Match Small Rifle Primer
• Powder: Vihtavuori N150 (undisclosed charge weight)
• Muzzle Velocity: 2,840 fps

Important: You should always reference comprehensive reloading manuals, start with the minimum recommended loads, and work your way up. Just because this load is safe in Ben’s rifle doesn’t mean it will be in yours. There are a ton of factors that vary from them to you, including exact chamber/barrel dimensions, brass specs, reloading scales, powder lots, etc., so it’s critical to follow safety precautions. Failure to follow safe loading practices could result in gun damage or severe personal injury (including death) to the user or bystanders. The author has not independently verified the accuracy of the data and cannot be responsible for errors in published load data. PrecisionRifleBlog.com and Francis Colon assume no responsibility for the use of this data. The information is to be used at the sole discretion of the user, and the user assumes all risks.

Below are some of his other shooting accessories that Francis uses at matches:

• Magazines: MDT 6BR Magazines
• Primary Bipod: MDT Ckye-Pod Single-Pull Standard Length (not the PRS/short)
• Level: MDT LRA Send iT Electronic Level
• Timer: MDT Crush It Timer
• Dope Card Holder: Hawk Hill Dope Card Holder
• Rear Bag: Armageddon Gear Plus One Game Changer (slightly larger than a schmedium)
• Positional Bag: Armageddon Gear Game Changer X
• Plate Bag: Gray Ops Mini Plate PRO with Armageddon Gear’s Mini Plate Pad
• Rangefinder: Leupold
• Tripod: Two Vets Tripods
• Ear protection: Custom-Molded Non-Electronic
• Chronograph: Garmin Xero C1 Pro Chronograph
• What do you carry to spotting at most PRS matches? Leupold BX-5 Santiam HD 15×56
• What do you use to calculate your ballistics? Kestrel 5700 Elite with Applied Ballistics (uses a G7 BC as the drag profile)
• What phone app do you use to calculate ballistics? Applied Ballistics Quantum (previous AB Mobile)

If you’d like to learn more about Francis, I’d go straight to the Miles to Matches podcast. You really can listen to Francis and Chad talk about rifles and competitions for literally hundreds of hours. I’ve personally listened to almost all of them, so clearly, I think it’s worth the time.

Finally, below are a few more helpful videos from Francis about his rifle setup, mental mindset, and other topics that he filmed with MDT: