Cheating In Matches

[jdw276]

I try to control attitudes. Our shoots are about fellowship and friendship. Compete within yourself to do the best you can. The prize is the ability to shoot and friends you make at our age. Does it happen at our shoots, i bet it does, but I hope our fellowship and friendship becomes more important than where you finish. We have good shooters with that friendly attitude and those that might be more competitive, I believe the challenge has made those that consider fudging better real shooters when they are off at formal competitions. I tell the newbies if a $5 prize creates a bias towards competition, this club may not be for you. I have my fingers crossed every match. Cheat and find another match within 2 or 3 hour drive. Good luck with that.

It is fun scoring a target with say 10 hits, comprising of two obvious groups and two different size holes. Next to it is a fresh looking target with no holes. "Alright you two, who shot the wrong target?" Only supposed to shoot 5 times. They hear about it in front of everyone. Then they start arguing about who's target is who's.

 

[Rudall]

I have heard of an instance in a .22 50m match where a shooter's first four shots built up a single ragged hole in the centre of the 10 ring (not so unusual), see one of my cards in the attached pic.
Then what if the shooter shot the fifth bullet into the sand instead of risking it outside the group, as in the pic? Who would ever know that the fifth shot was not in the centre of the ragged hole?
In the instance I refer to, a judge saw the splash in the sand and disqualified the shooter.

 

[toot]

Why do folks have to cheat in matches? Folks are over 70 years old.

Folks will cheat, openly, to get a cheap medal.

It is not like we are shooting for Cadillacs.

Range Officers will ignore open cheating.

Thoughts and cures?

why only people over 70?

 

[toot]

if this guy knowes that all 70 yrs old's cheat, then why don't he call them out.?? jmho.

 

[Eric Krewson]

Again, archery related but may cross over into M/L shooting; I have a friend I have known since he was a kid, I ran a city owned indoor archery range and watched him progress through the years. Until later in life he always worked the $10 an hour jobs and just got by, in his mid 20s he was good enough to compete on a national level in 3D competition, at this stage his rig probably cost him 2K which was a lot for a guy just scraping by.

He shot at the top level for about a year then dropped off the radar. By then he had started running the archery department at Dick's and doing much better financially. When I saw him the next time, I asked him why he quit competing, he said " I am not traveling all over the country and spending so much money for equipment only to be beaten by a pencil.

The cheaters really deflate the value of any competition, M/L included.

 

[jimhallam]

Why do folks have to cheat in matches? Folks are over 70 years old.

Folks will cheat, openly, to get a cheap medal.

It is not like we are shooting for Cadillacs.

Range Officers will ignore open cheating.

Thoughts and cures?

I set up and wrote the R&Rs for the main "Historic Arms" Meetings in the UK and ran them for years. When I passed this over to another person (a poisoned chalice?) I took 4 highlighting pens and marked up those R&Rs which I had to add over time for the four WORST offenders. It was nearly a QUARTER of the document ;-(((
What I can't understand is that the "winner" has a trophy on the mantlepiece which is reminding him of his cheating.
During the last meeting that I ran one of the Range Offiiers came to me reporting a chap who was cheating. (He obviously didn't want the confrontation). I got to the firing point and saw that it was one of the regulars, who was in the MLAGB International team: he was well known for being so desparate to win that he used to try to buy rifles from winners of matches!
I pulled him off the point and he raged at me -- - "I'll never ever come to this meeting again!"

JOB DONE ?

 

[jimhallam]

I set up and wrote the R&Rs for the main "Historic Arms" Meetings in the UK and ran them for years. When I passed this over to another person (a poisoned chalice?) I took 4 highlighting pens and marked up those R&Rs which I had to add over time for the four WORST offenders. It was nearly a QUARTER of the document ;-(((
What I can't understand is that the "winner" has a trophy on the mantlepiece which is reminding him of his cheating.
During the last meeting that I ran one of the Range Offiiers came to me reporting a chap who was cheating. (He obviously didn't want the confrontation). I got to the firing point and saw that it was one of the regulars, who was in the MLAGB International team: he was well known for being so desparate to win that he used to try to buy rifles from winners of matches!
I pulled him off the point and he raged at me -- - "I'll never ever come to this meeting again!"

JOB DONE ?

Following up on this ....it happenned back in the day. My R&Rs were based on ORIGINAL "period" rules ... and in some matches at Wimbledon it was 5 shots with no cleaning between shots ---- one can find "ramrods?" from the period fitted with scrapers to loosen the fouling.
In our 200y standing percussion service rifle matches you were allowed to WIPE the bore between shots, mainly because modern BP was not as clean burning.
In THIS case I watched Mr "M. N." and he was using TWO rods, so HOW was he not "cleaning", especially when on examination they were fitted with different "ends" ?

 

[user 53891]

See L.D.’s post #18 for some examples.

Well, I guess if you have to cheat, then it's on the cheater, they know they cheated, and will always know!! Those types are very insecure in themselves.

 

[Uriahs]

Why do folks have to cheat in matches? Folks are over 70 years old.

Folks will cheat, openly, to get a cheap medal.

It is not like we are shooting for Cadillacs.

Range Officers will ignore open cheating.

Thoughts and cures?

Evidence?

 

[1BadDart]

Again, archery related but may cross over into M/L shooting; I have a friend I have known since he was a kid, I ran a city owned indoor archery range and watched him progress through the years. Until later in life he always worked the $10 an hour jobs and just got by, in his mid 20s he was good enough to compete on a national level in 3D competition, at this stage his rig probably cost him 2K which was a lot for a guy just scraping by.

He shot at the top level for about a year then dropped off the radar. By then he had started running the archery department at Dick's and doing much better financially. When I saw him the next time, I asked him why he quit competing, he said " I am not traveling all over the country and spending so much money for equipment only to be beaten by a pencil.

The cheaters really deflate the value of any competition, M/L included.

Many years ago I shot outdoor archery target, (before 3D targets became affordable) these were paper targets on bales of straw. There was one guy who always did well, he never shot first but carried binoculars and would tell other shooters where they hit, then he'd shoot. It took a couple seasons to figure out that he had the focus knob on his binoculars marked for different yardage. He didn't get banned, but it did result in a no optics rule. After being caught he was a bottom half shooter and faded away pretty quick.

 

[Uriahs]

Many years ago I shot outdoor archery target, (before 3D targets became affordable) these were paper targets on bales of straw. There was one guy who always did well, he never shot first but carried binoculars and would tell other shooters where they hit, then he'd shoot. It took a couple seasons to figure out that he had the focus knob on his binoculars marked for different yardage. He didn't get banned, but it did result in a no optics rule. After being caught he was a bottom half shooter and faded away pretty quick.

What a dirty dog

 

[dave951]

As long as there is competition, there will be cheaters. If there is no rule on what they're doing, it's not cheating. If there is, have the guts and integrity to enforce the rules to the letter. No mercy, hammer time for cheats. That's the only way for a competition to be deemed fair.

 

[BackDraft]

Evidence?

Curious… did you perhaps just jump down here to comment after reading the OP? Because I’ve sure seen lots of evidence presented in this thread…

 

[Loyalist Dave]

As long as there is competition, there will be cheaters. If there is no rule on what they're doing, it's not cheating. If there is, have the guts and integrity to enforce the rules to the letter. No mercy, hammer time for cheats. That's the only way for a competition to be deemed fair.

Unfortunately there are folks that conduct competitions who have zero idea how to observe that the rules are being followed.

LD

 

[Walkingeagle]

Curious… did you perhaps just jump down here to comment after reading the OP? Because I’ve sure seen lots of evidence presented in this thread…

Evidence? You’ve seen evidence? Or you’ve read statements?
I’ve never seen cheating in any shoot I’ve participated or observed. With that being said, I’ve never shot in a large shoot like you folks down there have.
Walk

 

[JEBMs]

It’s funny the number of people who didn’t understand how cheating could be accomplished until examples were given by the ones who had actually witnessed it. I’m guessing that most of the folks who post here would never consider cheating so they haven’t really thought out methods to cheat. But like in anything that you do there’s always “that guy”. In the workplace there’s people who if they worked as hard at their job as they did getting out of work they would be a good employee. By the same token there are people who if they worked as hard on their shooting skills as they do scheming about ways to be dishonest they wouldn’t need to cheat.
I have never shot in a match and now don’t get to shoot much at all. If I was in a match or at a shoot, for some idiot to ruin the experience by cheating I believe it would be cause for some stern words and a calling out in front of everyone there

 

[dave951]

Unfortunately there are folks that conduct competitions who have zero idea how to observe that the rules are being followed.

LD

As a sports official I can say this, often tournaments and various competitions have their own, unique set of rules. I can't count the number of times I've worked a tournament and the other officials on my crew didn't bother to check what the rules were for the tournament. Same thing extends to shooting. If you're working as an official at a competition, it's imperative to know the rules for that match. There is no excuse.

 

[hawkeye2]

I won't mention any names but there was a skirmisher who carried a short dowel with a mini ball glued on the end. He was caught after doing it for who knows how long. He also often claimed doubles even when there was no possibility of them being doubles.

There have been instances of shooters taking their fired target back to the campsite and then turning it in later, I wonder why. At the Nationals competitors are not allowed to even touch their fired targets; they are removed by the staff and turned in for scoring with all posted targets being removed at the end of each event finished or not.

 

[dave951]

Maybe I'm a bit hardcase or Old Testament here, but in my opinion, getting caught at cheating should result in a ban for a couple years for first offense and a second time for life. Make cheating a Rubicon you do NOT want to cross, ever and it will go way down. This will only work if those running the competitions have the starch to enforce it.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

As a sports official I can say this, often tournaments and various competitions have their own, unique set of rules. I can't count the number of times I've worked a tournament and the other officials on my crew didn't bother to check what the rules were for the tournament. Same thing extends to shooting. If you're working as an official at a competition, it's imperative to know the rules for that match. There is no excuse.

Well that's true, but what I'm referring to is folks that have organized an event, they know the rules since they selected them, but they simply have no idea how the rules may be circumvented, and are aghast if cheating is found and how it was done. They simply assume that within this group of participants, many of which are strangers to them, that nobody would look to "game" or cheat the contest.

LD