What's the population breakdown among bullseye classifications?

I don't know if they keep those stats but I'm curious what the general population breakdown is among Marksman, Sharpshooter, Expert, Master and High Master?

I would guess that if you combined Master and HM, it's less than 15%.  What's the largest group?

I would say Marksman, based on a inverse classification:population ratio. Maybe one of the moderators on this forum can look at the user profile classifications posted on this forum to get a general idea, ignoring the ones that are not precision pistol classifications, of course.

I bet the largest is expert. There are people shooting Master Scores but haven’t moved up and Sharpshooter scores that haven’t moved down

The 2019 Precision Pistol Sectional results have the following breakdown:
Master 187
Expert 246
Sharpshooter 187
Marksman 287

And from the 2019 NRA National Championships:

HM	48
MA	99
EX	193
SS	90
MK	71
MU	75

Doesn't mean a thing....subject to who decided to shoot that year.....e.g. lots of folks have indoor classifications with a 22 and don't participate in outdoor competitions

cdrt wrote:The 2019 Precision Pistol Sectional results have the following breakdown:
Master 187
Expert 246
Sharpshooter 187
Marksman 287

I'd say that's a pretty good representation.  I'd guess Marksman would be the most under reported because there are more of them that are just casual shooters that might not travel to a sectional.
- Dave

Marksman and sharpshooter are the two largest most often combined at matches.

It hasn’t changed much over the years either.  When I shot my last regional way back in the 80s. The Expert class had the most, Marksman was second, then Master then Sharpshooter.  There was no High Master in pistol back then.  It seemed that Sharpshooter was a way station for shooters moving up.  There were also a lot of “Experts” that shot Sharpshooter scores.

Depends on how you want to collect your data. Looking at the matches I shot this year, the HM/MA class is about the same size as the EX class (typically 3-7 shooters), trailed by SS/MK (typically 2-3 shooters). By my rough data more Experts and Masters than Sharpshooter and Marksmen. 

The biggest sources of bias in my data is location (welcome to Ohio) and it ignores the people who don't shoot matches but have classifications.

Don't forget that the NRA classification never goes down, unless you write your congressperson, or something.