2025 in hindsight

The last year was a year of progress and decline, both at the same time. As usual we kept grinding on the range, going to competitions, but we also did a few changes to the general approach.

So, who are we?
If you’re a first time reader or if you have followed us and maybe not fully understood the account there’s two of us. Old man and key writer on Instagram and other outlets is Henrik (generally called Henke), gunfluencer, father and general sponsor. Then we have junior and rapidly rising shooting star, Sander, showing the old guys how you’re supposed to do it.

How we planned 2025
As usual we set out to improve and reach higher goals than ever before. We have consistently risen throughout the rankings since we started in 2023, and this year should be no different. Our key targets were the World Championship qualifiers in both Centerfire and Rimfire but we decided to include some variation to it and go more abroad and maybe not always competing.
The world championships in the UK were ofcourse in the plan since we both qualified for the Open class.
The hopes were high.

Highlights and lowlights

We did a shitload of competing as usual, we are probably very high on the list of who shoots most competitions per year in Sweden, but this year brought more than just PRS. Let’s list a few of the events that were out of the ordinary:

Easter Boomstick
During the easter weekend we arranged a two day competition in a huge gravel pit near our home town. We did a rimfire match on Saturday and a centerfire match on Sunday. We managed to build som really nice stages with good opportunity for distance, complexity and a good deal of angles. It may sound simple to outsiders but getting 500+ meters in south of Sweden is more than a challenge. Here Sander shot his first match alone, a good preparation for the World championships in the autumn. He also managed to land a fourth place against quite qualified competition.

The Stihl stage at Easter Boomstick

PRS UK Rimfire series West Midlands UK
In may we flew over to Manchester to shoot a match in the UK Rimfire PRS series as a preparation for the Worlds (that was shot in the same venue). We both love the UK, not only for shooting but also for the relaxed pub culture and, believe it or not, the great pub food. We wrote about and recorded this trip in detail previously both here in the blog and on Youtube. See here https://kikarskytt.se/blogg/west-midlands/ and here https://youtu.be/wUnT0vyxVAA
We didn’t have our rifle permits in order so we got to borrow a rifle to share. Sander managed exceptionally and brought home a 6th place overall, a 2nd in International and top Junior. Quite a weekend!

Botnia Long Range
We’ve been to Botnia Long Range a few times, but this year we decided to join as RO/Spotter. The idea behind it was simple: To learn as much as possible about wind and to see how people adopted to the changing conditions. It was a great opportunity to meet all the competitors, both Swedish and a large group of international competitors. Henrik did the ROing and Sander did the spotting which wound up being extremely useful in coming competitions. Unfortunately the non existent communication between the rimfire and centerfire factions of the WC qualifiers meant that there was a last minute Rimfire qualifier announced the same weekend which we had to skip and miss valuable points. But a promise is a promise….

Preparations for the World Championship
The whole journey towards the World Rimfire Championships were a rollercoaster. We both had issues with the equipment and the overall feeling was just not there. We both ended up way below where we were supposed to and…. meh, next page please.

Summary of the year from Sander, top 3 learnings
How important the mental aspect is: Staying calm after a bad stage can improve the next one. If you dwell on the same stage for the rest of the day, the remaining stages will suffer. It’s better to try to stay positive even if things went badly—then the next stage will automatically go better.

How important a good routine is: train every week (at least once). Having one training day per week where you do different things and work on different aspects helps a lot with nerves and performance in competitions. Not only having a solid training routine, but also a personal routine that you know works for you—eating and drinking the same kinds of food you know you like and that work well for you as a person.

Always think long-term, not short-term: At the beginning of 2025, I was close to quitting shooting entirely because my rifle kept having issues and my results got worse. But instead of thinking short-term, I always thought, “This can be solved, it’s not over.” I didn’t think, “Damn, what a terrible result, I’m never doing this again.” Instead, I stayed objetively critical and focused on what I could do better next time. This mindset has helped me achieve better results and, more importantly, much more consistent results. (Yes, I did switch rifles—and with the new rifle I have a 100% podium rate—but still, I never gave up.)

Summary fo the year from Henrik
In my New Years resolution from 2024 I stated that I wanted to make the same journey in 2025 that Sander did in 2024 (which is no small feat, I promise you!). Instead somthing happened, or maybe nothing happened, I don’t really know. I started the year with a 3rd place in a minor competition and it all went downwards from there. Maybe my standards were too high but I had way too many disappointing results over the year.
I got to a point where I started blaming the equipment and thought, maybe if I buy that new fancy Anschütz everything will be good. Then I shot a match with Sanders gun and still only managed a 7th place. In a match where Sander ended up 2nd with the same rifle in the same squad. So, the fault was clearly mine.
So to sum things up I managed to go backwards in 2025 and that sucks. Does it make me want to give up? Hell no, I’ll get back in 2026, you just wait and see!

Conclusion
2025 was a good year, even though there were a few issues. That’s the great part of competing as father and son, we have twice as many chances to be happy. If Henke wins, we’re happy, if Sander wins, we’re happy. Sander got to walk away with wins in the junior class in both Swedish Rimfire and Centerfire championships and a first and second place in the qualifiers for the 2027 rimfire world championships. Henke….has room for improvement 🙂

Final words
This year we kind of went from being loners to actually enjoying talking to all our great co-competitors. We want to extend a great thank you to all of our fellow competitors who made this year great! Kurwa and have a great new year!
Henke and Sander, team Kikarskytt