I find competition to be a crucial part of the process in mastering a given skill. It'll reveal whether your given path is correct, or in need of more work. It can be an honest assessment tool in that regard.
Shooting under a bit of stress is good.
Shooting on command, not just when you're ready is good.
Practicing Constant Muzzle awareness, and range etiquette is good.
Dealing with Transitions, Sights to Target, to Trigger, to next target is good.
Demonstrating what you think you know, and validating it is good.
Demonstrating in front of others even if you look bad is good.
Being better than last time is good, cause all the hot-shoes sucked too at first.
3 gun and combat type events can be quite scenario based, and it's easy to loose your foundation in the scenarios, but if you break it down to the essential functions that matter, you have: Draw, Sight Picture, Reload, Movement, and Last but not least, Trigger Control. The quality of your transition between these is what really makes the difference. With visualization you can drill these things again, and again dry-firing.
With enough discipline, and dry-firing, you can build skill with much less rounds than many might think I feel.. Loading less, (5 rounds per mag) helps save during live fire practice. Shooting, pausing, analyzing, taking breaks to contemplate and visualize more while shooting a bit less at first is great too.
An 80 shot practice with my 45 Auto takes me about 2hrs these days. Less shots with more time for it to sink in.
With rifle I think you could shoot far less than that, and still gain.
I knew this guy once who bragged about shooting up $10K of ammo in one year. he couldn't hit shit. All that ammo wasted and no skill attained whatsoever.....
If you don't have a place to hunt, but want to shoot, and match is something to look forward too sometimes.
I'm not a big fan of shooting "sports" in all honesty, as I feel they contribute to the trivialization of firearms I'm currently trying to organize competitive, team-based blank-fire exercises, but it's slow going
This is very interesting. What do you mean?