I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
Welcome to the marksman challenges. These are your opportunity to take action and practice the things that we talk about here at The Everyday Marksman. At the end of the day, you can read a lot about marksmanship, survival, mindset, and gear, but knowing isn’t the same thing as doing.
Each marksman challenge focuses on a single topic area. The completion criteria for each challenge is different, and there are varying levels of proof requird to complete the challenge. Additionally, each challenge has multiple levels of difficulty. If you complete a challenge, then you earn the associated badge, which appears on your profile within the community forum.
You can complete any challenge at any time, unless it says otherwise. Think of this a bit like Boy Scout merit badges. The more you complete and the more skills you master, the more capable a citizen you become.
I suggest starting off with the Go-Getter challenge, which focuses on goal setting and then start working your way through.
/// Challenges
The Everyday Marksman Postal Match Series Challenge
With this challenge, we introduce the new Everyday Marksman Postal Match series. What are postal matches, well I’m glad you asked. Think of them as friendly competitions you can do from home.
Overnight Outdoor Challenge
This marksman challenge is about spending a night in the wilderness. What good are all of the knot tying, fire-making, and other outdoors skills if we don’t put them to use. Take this chance to get out there and enjoy a bit of nature.
The Everyday Knot Tying Challenge
This Marksman Challenge is all about the art of tying knots. I’ve long observed that experienced outdoorsmen learn to tie a few reliable knots extremely well, and use them for just about everything. Knowing knots also means you can carry less stuff. So let’s get on to the challenge.
Amateur Radio License Challenge
This challenge is deceptively simple: get your ham radio ticket. I’ve been saying over and over that the time to start learning about radio is well before there’s an actual emergency situation where it becomes required. So what better way to encourage you to get started than offering a challenge?
The 1 MOA-All-Day Challenge
This marksman challenge is all about holding 1 MOA of precision for as many shots as possible. It’s timed and forces you to reset your position between each shot.
The Dry Practice Tune-Up Challenge
This Marksman Challenge is all about tuning up your skills through the use of disciplined and recurring dry practice (the activity formerly known as dry fire). If there is one recurring theme in every expert I’ve interviewed so far, it’s the importance of dry practice.
100 for 30 Pushup Challenge
This challenge is about the lowly pushup, one of the simplest and most effective exercises you can do. But, really, it’s not about the pushup itself- it’s about discipline and routine building.
The Pistol Fundamentals Challenge
The PIstol Fundamentals Challenge is my variation on the classic Dot Torture popularized by Todd Green and Dave Blinder. It’s a 30-round challenge testing your ability to maintain accuracy across different circumstances while under time pressure.
The Survival Fire Marksman Challenge
Building a fire is a fundamental outdoors survival skill. Fire keeps you warm, cooks your food, signals others for help, and purifies your water. But too many of us take the easy route for building one. The survival fire challenge is about doing it the old fashioned way.
The Go-Getter Marksman Challenge
Vince Lombardi once said, “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all of the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”
At its heart, The Everyday Marksman is about taking action. The more action you take, and the more wins you amass in the process, then the stronger your mindset becomes.
As Coach Lombardi put it, winning is a habit. So even if you have to start with small wins and slowly build up to big wins, that’s still building a habit towards success. For this challenge, you are going to set a goal, tell us about it, and then follow it through to completion.
Conquering the Emergency Shelter Challenge
For this challenge, we’re pivoting to the survival world. With hunting season approaching, or just general outdoors activity in cooler weather, I thought it was appropriate to work on developing and deploying an emergency shelter kit.
So let’s talk about the Emergency Shelter Challenge.
The Minuteman Marksmanship Challenge
Welcome back to another Marksman Challenge. For this one, we’re balancing speed and precision, while also giving a shout out to the guys at the Revolutionary War Veteran’s Association (RWVA) for their excellent work in the Appleseed program.