F - Class
Sitting at Franny Moore’s place, the late George Farquharson of Kamloops B.C. and a group of fullbore prone shooters talked about the concept some 20 years ago, in approximately 1986. Farquharson figured, that older shooters would be able to continue long-range shooting longer if their eyesight and bodies could be augmented by allowing them to use a scope and a rest to shoot, allowing these shooters to continue shooting along side of the people they had been competing with for most of their lives.
The first time F-Class was fired was 17 years ago at Victoria B.C. in 1989.
F-Class was officially started in Canada by George “Farky” Farquharson, who was a railway man who was one of the most skilled debaters of his day. In 1990 to 1991, he convinced the Canadian NRA (the DCRA) to approve his idea and F-Class was named after him. It was started as a fun class. In the beginning, it was mostly old time shooters, who put a scope and bipod on their rifle and shot along with the rest of the TR shooters. F-Class, the newest addition to Long Range shooting, is the fastest growing long-range shooting sport in the world, and it is sure to continue growing as more and more people become familiar with its unique advantages and challenges.
F-Class has migrated to the rest of the British Commonwealth and also to Germany, France, the Netherlands and the USA. The first US shooter to try F-class in Canada was Bill Wylde in the early 1990’s, followed by JJ Conway in 1996. The Queensland Rifle Association held Scope class (Now called F class open) competitions first at the Australian Shooting Games in June 1997 and subsequently at the Queensland Rifle Association Queens in the same year.
It’s first appearance was in 2000 at the 118th DCRA CANADIAN FULLBORE RIFLE CHAMPIONSHIPS matches in Ottawa were a handful shot this new style. A few even shot F-T/R as well and in 2001, the F-Class had its own scoring aggregate results at the 119th DCRA CANADIAN FULLBORE RIFLE CHAMPIONSHIPS matches in Ottawa.
Prior to 2003, there was only one class of F-Class rifles in the Canadian (DCRA) Championships, that being F-F, which stands for F-Class Farquharson (F-F) and meant you used a scoped rifle in 308 with 155g Sierra Match Kings or in. 223 with 80g Sierra Match Kings. In 2003, the DCRA they changed their rules to include F-F, as described above, and F-Open (F-O) for all other calibre or bullet combinations in a 308/.223 rifle.