Xtreme Steel Shooting South Africa
Results analysis
How the field, individual shooters and their equipment have changed since 2013. Full match results →
Xtreme Steel Shooting South Africa
How the field, individual shooters and their equipment have changed since 2013. Full match results →
Every recorded XSSSA event from — to —. The field has got stronger: the average score since 2024 is — of the maximum, against — in 2017–2023. Most of that gain comes from the weaker end of the field and from more experienced regulars, not from the top shooters scoring higher. Over the same years the typical rifle moved to .300 magnums, heavier bullets and chassis stocks.
Scores are shown as a percentage of the maximum possible, so years with 16 and 18 targets compare fairly. Wind and light on the day move the whole field up or down together, so single events say little; the yearly view is steadier. The weakest tenth of the field now scores — or less, up from —, while the top tenth is level at about —. Regulars with six or more events now make up — of entries, up from —.
Field average (line), middle half of shooters (band) and the winning score (dots), as % of maximum.
Per year: the score the top 10% reach, the field average, and the score the bottom 10% stay under.
Different shooters per year, and how many of them shot their first XSSSA event that year.
Average score per year by how many events the shooter had done. Regulars score well above first-timers every year.
Share of targets hit with the first and second round, field average per event. Every target gets two rounds; a first-round hit scores 15 points, a second-round hit 10.
Experience is the strongest pattern in the data. At their first event shooters average — against the field; by their tenth it is —, and from the twentieth —. Part of this is that better shooters keep coming back, but most long-time regulars also improve within their own record. "Gap to field" is a shooter's score minus that event's field average, which removes the effect of the day's conditions.
Average gap to the field by the shooter's event number (1st, 2nd … 20th and later), in percentage points.
Score at each event (dots), the shooter's last-5-event average, and the field average at the same events. Pick a shooter here or click a row in the table.
Trend compares the gap to field over a shooter's last four events with their first four (eight or more events). Click a column to sort.
.300 magnums went from — of rifles in 2013–2017 to — in 2023–2026, led by the 300 PRC. Chassis went from — to —, and the median bullet from — to —. Nightforce dropped from — of scopes to — as Vortex, then Kahles and Zero Compromise, took share. Muzzle velocity barely moved.
Share of rifles per year.
Share of scopes per year.
Share of bullets per year.
Share of rifles in a chassis, and on a custom or premium action (BAT, Defiance, Barnard, Stiller, AI, TRG and similar).
Median bullet weight (grains, left) and median muzzle velocity (fps, in the tooltip) per year.
Between shooters, premium gear lines up with much better scores. Within the same shooter, switching gear changes much less. The bar is the average gap to field for everyone using that option; the diamond is the gap only among shooters who used more than one option, measured against their own average. The difference between the two is mostly the shooter, not the rifle.
Built from the results workbook in each event folder (the Scores sheet for hits and points, the published results or entry forms for equipment). The October 2023 and October 2024 two-day events come from the season Total Scores workbooks, one result per day.
Results up to and including Loch Lynne 54 (22 August 2026).
Not included: Bylshoek 1 and 2 and Loch Lynne 12 and 36/37 have no filled-in score sheet in the folders, and Loch Lynne 55 (7 November 2026) has not been shot yet.
Scoring: each target gets two rounds, 15 points for a first-round hit and 10 for a second. Events had 16 targets (maximum 400) until June 2019 and 18 (maximum 450) from August 2019.
Names were matched across years after fixing obvious spelling variants. Equipment entries were grouped by hand-written rules (for example "300wsm", "300 WSM" and "WSM 300" are one cartridge; "NF" and "Night force" are Nightforce). Entries where the shooter only wrote "300" are kept as .300 magnum, unspecified.