From the vault: Our match report from the inaugural NRA World Shooting Championship in 2014. That year, Daniel Horner, then serving with the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit, finished all 11 stages with a 42-point lead to become the first NRA World Shooting Champion. As published in the November 2014 issue of Shooting Sports USA.
2014 NRA World Shooting Championship Crowns Daniel Horner the Best in the World
By NRA Staff
Photos by Forrest MacCormack
The inaugural NRA World Shooting Championship occurred during the second week of September at the 2,000-acre Peacemaker National Training Center, in Glengary, West Virginia. With 11 match stages and several side matches for 159 shooters over four days, the goal for this massive undertaking was just as bold: Provide standard firearms and ammunition to level the field for the top shooters from virtually every organized shooting sport worldwide, and crown one of them as the World Shooting Champion—a distinction never bestowed upon any shooter in history.
All 11 stages were equally weighted. This, along with standardized equipment and ammunition, not only created a level playing field, but simplified travel arrangements for international competitors. Both the competition and the facility are the brainchild of Cole McCulloch, a retired Marine and avid long-range rifle shooter whose family has been on the property since the founding of the republic. (Note: Cole McCulloch is now the director of the NRA Competitive Shooting Division.)
From Brian Sheetz of NRA’s American Rifleman magazine: “If the sponsor list was any indication, the firearm industry pitched in full force to get the [event] going. The list included, of course, the title sponsor Trijicon, which provided optics from ACOGs to scopes and the tiny and versatile RMR reflex, Vortex Optics and the National Rifle Association that has lent its expertise and support to Peacemaker since the facility’s inception and brings to bear more than a century of knowledge on how to build ranges and organize competitions.
“Gunmakers with products on the line included: Alexander Arms, ArmaLite, Benelli, Beretta, Colt, Daniel Defense, FNH USA, LMT, Magnum Research, Noveske, Taylor’s & Co., and specialty makers such as Berger, MEC and SilencerCo that provided bullets, clay target throwers and silencers, respectively. As a result of all this talent, the event became a multifaceted and informational ‘seminar within a competition.’ Company representatives were on hand to answer questions and, in many cases, compete as well. Add to that the camaraderie that only shooters share, and the 2014 World Shooting Championship was truly a shooting competition like no other.”
National Rifle Champion Ty Cooper, Creedmoor Sports, placed in the top 20 and had this to say: “It was a very humbling experience, competing against the best shooters of several other shooting disciplines. There were 12 stages originally that ranged from USPSA Pistol, Skeet, Precision .22 to F-Class and everything in between. [The NRA Conventional Pistol stage was subsequently withdrawn.] It tested everyone’s abilities on pistol, from seeing how still you can be, to shooting on the move or shooting a moving target (which was the hardest one for me).
“The list of sponsors for the match was extremely long and every gun that we shot in the match was then cleaned up and given away as a prize. Another aspect of this match is that shooters couldn’t touch the sights on any of the guns. This added a challenge. For instance, in the F-Class Rifle stage, I was favoring an eight at 2 o’clock and, with a fishtailing wind, impacts went from the 10 to the seven line. With that being said, everyone was on the same playing field, but the same guns were ‘on’ for some people and ‘off’ for others, which proves that we as shooters can say we are doing the same things but how we see things, how we pull the trigger, how we line up the sights, and how we grip the rifle or pistol are all different, even though we are using the same fundamentals.
“The last stage was the action rifle stage where we had eight close-in targets to shoot with a 45-degree-mounted red-dot optic. Then we dropped down onto a stump and shot four 200- to 220-yard steel targets as fast as we could with a Trijicon scope. The top time from the super squad was a 19-second run.
“One thing I was very impressed with was how they kept all of the guns running. With about 160,000 rounds fired over four days, they had the Frog Lube guys out there making sure that the guns got what they needed. I was able to talk to one of the Frog Lube reps and he explained how it works—that this stuff is made from all natural materials and is actually designed to dissolve carbon, which I saw firsthand with the rifles when they took them apart. I will start using this in my guns and see if it continues to impress me like it did this weekend.”
You can watch the “American Rifleman Television” video from the 2014 NRA World Shooting Championship on YouTube at this link.
2014 NRA WORLD SHOOTING CHAMPIONSHIP LEADERBOARD
Read about the 2024 NRA World Shooting Championship, where Brian Shanholtz was crowned the winner.
The 2025 NRA World Shooting Championship will be held at Camp Atterbury in Edinburgh, Indiana, from September 30 to October 4, 2025. Registration for the match begins April 1, 2025. Learn more at wsc.nra.org.
