My wife — fellow shooting author Amanda Fry — and I made our first foray into the Precision Rifle Series (PRS) at the end of the 2016 season. We learned some hard but valuable lessons at our first PRS match and were eager to begin the 2017 season.

At the beginning of the year, I was sent on a long-term work assignment in Texas. As I always do, I looked for any nearby major match available to me.

As luck would have it, the second event of the new PRS Gas Gun Series was nearby at the Outback Precision Rifle Club in Cresson, Texas. Even better, several of my agency's tactical team members were also attending the event, along with my shooting team captain. It seemed like all the stars were aligning for a great event, and I eagerly registered.

Murphy and his law have the uncanny ability to show up when you least expect them, and as the event neared a freak cold front was rolling through Texas, bringing with it 20-30 mph winds. I had always heard that wind calls are what separates the top long-range shooters from the rest, and I was about to find out firsthand how true that is.

The PRS listened to the shooting community and introduced a new competitive series for the 2017 season dubbed the "Gas Gun Series," which was created after two successful Gas Gun-only events were hosted during the 2016 season.

Realizing that the PRS bolt-gun-centric rules didn't translate directly to the semi-auto platform, the PRS went to the drawing board and enlisted top PRS shooters, 3-Gun shooters and PRS match directors to create an all new format with all the best features shooters love in the Precision Rifles format.

This was a great move, and this series is aimed directly at bringing many 3-Gun shooters over to the PRS. The series is split into three divisions: Open, Tac Lite and Tac Heavy. This essentially breaks down into divisions by caliber. Open attracts the 6mm crowd, Tac Lite the .223 crowd and Tac Heavy the .308 crowd.

There are a few additional bullet weight and fps restrictions, so check the PRS Gas Gun Series website for a complete run down. Scoring for the event is a simple time-plus system with 30 seconds for any rifle target not hit, 15 seconds for any pistol target not hit and 15 seconds for any no-shoot targets.

With the above divisions in mind, I elected to compete in the Tac Lite Division with my JP Enterprises 3-Gun rifle and Freedom Munitions 77 grain ammunition. I switched out my Bushnell 1-6.5x SMRS scope for a Bushnell 3.5-21x DMR optic, added a Harris bipod and an Accu-Shot rear monopod to my Magpul PRS stock, and my rifle was ready for the match. This allows me to jump back into 3-Gun by simply replacing and rezeroing my scope and removing the bipod and monopod.

I packed up my gear and headed to Texas.

I am fortunate to have top-notch shooting facilities in the Phoenix area, but pulling off the Texas highway into the front gates of the Outback Precision Rifle club, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy. The 15-minute dirt road drive has you passing cattle ranches, green pastures and ponds.

I didn't mind a minute waiting as a herd of 20 cattle decided to make an impromptu cattle crossing in my vehicle's path. If I had a retirement dream of my own range and cattle ranch, this was it.

I met up with my co-workers, and the first question during the shooters brief was who was new to the PRS and who had come directly from 3-Gun. About half the hands there raised, and it was clear that the Gas Gun Series was attracting the audience it was looking for.

Our "serious" pose in front of one of the many helicopter props.

After a quick briefing, we departed for our first stage. During the briefing, the weather was warm, and the wind was hardly present. But — like a movie cue — as soon as I stepped foot from my vehicle onto the first stage, the cold weather and wind came roaring in.

The first stage was arguably one of the most challenging of the event. You began with your pistol drawn and had to shoot a series of six four-inch plates approximately 20 yards away. You then abandoned your pistol, retrieved your rifle and climbed approximately 12 feet up an angled military style net to engage three targets varying from 400 to 500 yards away.

At the buzzer, I quickly navigated the plate rack and felt pretty good as I grabbed my rifle and began to Spider-man my way up the cargo netting. As I prepared to shoot my first rifle shot, I learned a hard PRS lesson.

All three targets appeared completely blurry in my scope and looked like nothing but gray blobs. I couldn't figure out what was going on, and I was hazily able to connect on only one of the three rifle targets before the par time expired.

As I walked away, I realized that I had left my parallax adjustment on the 100-yard setting from when I sighted in the rifle. Parallax adjustments are new to me, and I had completely spaced this important adjustment. Feeling like the rookie PRS shooter I am, I asked my team captain to kindly remind me on each stage to make the parallax adjustment going forward.

The next stage was a solitary target at 400 yards away, so I quickly adjusted my parallax and dialed in the elevation. The stage had you start with your rifle on a large tractor tire and required you to hop back and forth between the tractor tire and a multilevel shooting wall barricade. Each pass had you changing positions on the wall with a maximum of two shots per position if you didn't connect on your first shot.

This stage went much better for me, and I turned in a top 10 stage time as I hustled between each position. This was my best stage of the match and one of the last stages before the winds really started to come in full force.

Our next stage presented a new shooting prop I had yet to experience: suspended chains.

Luckily during my first PRS match, a shooter on my squad showed me a shooting bag called the Reasor Gamechanger bag (now branded with Armageddon Gear). This clever bag has a flat side with Velcro straps and a side best described as a "valley." This allows you to grip narrow ledges, chains or rings in the crevasse of the bag — greatly increasing your stability.

I was glad to have this bag the entire match, and the suspended chain and suspended ring stages were some of my best stages. I would highly recommend this bag to anyone, and if the match rules allow it, I will be bringing this bag into my 3-Gun game as well.

The Gamechanger bag allowed me to get some grip on this narrow ring.

Wind is now a four letter word to me. Approximately half the match was made up of Tac Lite shooters utilizing .223. Even with the maximum-allowed 77-grain bullets, the winds were throwing the rounds around like BBs. To make matters worse, some of the stages had you firing from high elevated positions across hills and valleys where the winds would dance and gust in different directions at different speeds while you were on the clock.

One stage had you firing from the fuselage of a helicopter mounted to four springs. The feeling of being on a playground bouncy horse was flashing through my mind as the wind rocked the helicopter back and forth while I attempted to engage a series of targets from 400 to 700 yards.

This helicopter bounced and rocked on springs with every shot taken.

The wind was requiring anywhere from a minimum of three to five plus mils at any given time depending on the gusts. I experienced absolutely no wind at my first PRS match, and attempting to learn wind calls on the fly in these conditions left me frustrated and reminded me of how much I truly have to learn going forward. Everyone was feeling the pain from the wind — if there was a swear jar rule, the club could have easily built a new range.

I was fortunate to have a true hero on my squad to remind us all how petty worrying about a thing like the wind is in the grand scheme of life. Kyle Emmons of Roughneck Firearms is a disabled veteran who lost his right leg and suffered severe damage to his left leg due to an IED attack in Afghanistan. It was a testament to Kyle's character that he never lost his smile nor complained about the wind, having to climb a net or go up and down stairs with a prosthetic leg.

During one stage, Kyle's prosthetic leg fell off as he attempted to climb a steep rocky hill to get into firing position after engaging multiple pistol targets. Kyle didn't hesitate for a moment. He scrambled up the hill and fired his rounds, prosthetic or no prosthetic.

Kyle is the type of person you want on your squad, on the battlefield or representing your company, and I look forward to shooting with him again.

Disabled veteran Kyle Emmons lost a leg on this stage but kept right on shooting.

After two days of shooting and 18 stages, we all gathered at the shooters pavilion to begin the awards ceremony. The ceremony featured probably the coolest trophies I have ever seen at a shooting event. Not just a simple plaque, the trophies were 10-inch custom-welded rifle bolt lug replicas on a stand. Now these were trophies to be proud of and displayed prominently in your trophy case or shelf.

Trophies in the shape of a bolt lug were a huge hit.

The prize table was nicely stocked with suppressors from Gemtech, rifles from Lone Star Armory and Roughneck Firearms, Vortex Optics, Proof Research Barrels and an avalanche of shooting bags and certificates from T.A.B. Gear, to name a few of the choices.

My prize table haul of a T.A.B. Gear shooting bag and T.A.B. Gear PRS rifle sling.

I made a small leap forward in finish from my first PRS match, and I'm hoping to continue the trend as I stumble through this whole Precision Rifle world. I take personal pride in competing with what I win from the prize table and selected a rifle sling and rear bag T.A.B. gear to add to my growing support bag and sling collection.

I truly believe the PRS has a hit on their hands with the Gas Gun Series, and I look forward to competing in both the Bolt Gun and now Gas Gun events this season and beyond.