Smoke & Hope is the fastest stage in the sport and the one where the peak times sound impossible until you look at the layout. Four big rectangles, all close, all wide, and a stop plate straight up the middle. The name is not a joke — it is a description of the failure mode.
Four 18″×24″ rectangles and one 12-inch stop plate. One 3′×3′ box. Five strings, best four counted.
Our own scale plan of SC-103 · Smoke & Hope, drawn from the dimensions published in Appendix B of the SCSA Competition Rules, edition 2026-03. Seen from above, shooting box at the left.
| Target | Size | Distance from the box | Offset from center | Height to top |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18″×24″ rectangle | 18 x 24 inches | 21 ft | 14 ft left | 5 ft 6 in |
| 18″×24″ rectangle | 18 x 24 inches | 21 ft | 14 ft right | 5 ft 6 in |
| 18″×24″ rectangle | 18 x 24 inches | 27 ft | 9 ft left | 5 ft 6 in |
| 18″×24″ rectangle | 18 x 24 inches | 27 ft | 9 ft right | 5 ft 6 in |
| 12″ stop plate | 12 inches | 42 ft | on the center line | 5 ft |
The stage peak is the aggregate of your 4 counted strings. Divide it by 4 and you get a par time you can set on a shot timer today.
| Division | Stage peak | Per string |
|---|---|---|
| Rimfire Rifle Optics | 7 s | 1.75 s |
| Rimfire Pistol Optics | 7 s | 1.75 s |
| PCC Optics | 7 s | 1.75 s |
| Open | 8.5 s | 2.12 s |
| Carry Optics | 10 s | 2.50 s |
| Production | 10 s | 2.50 s |
| Single Stack | 10.25 s | 2.56 s |
| Iron Sight Revolver | 10.5 s | 2.62 s |
Peak times verified against SCSA’s live classification system on September 8, 2026. The full 16-division table is on our peak times page.
Every standard target is an 18-by-24-inch rectangle inside 27 feet. In Rimfire Rifle Optics and PCC Optics the stage peak is 7.00 seconds for four counted strings — 1.75 seconds per string, five targets. That is not a typo and it is not reserved for the national champion; it is the benchmark that a 100% run is measured against.
The targets are so forgiving that the stage stops being a shooting problem and becomes a pure gun-handling problem. Nothing here rewards a careful sight picture. Everything here rewards how fast your eyes get to the next target and how little the gun overshoots when it follows them.
Same five targets, eight different problems. The full set, plus the data behind them:
Sources
SCSA Competition Rules, edition 2026-03, effective March 1, 2026 — Appendix B (stage diagrams), rule 2.1 (target height) and the chapters cited inline. Peak times from SCSA’s live classification system, retrieved September 8, 2026. The diagram above is our own drawing made from the published dimensions. If a measurement here does not match the stage as your club sets it, the rulebook and your match director are the authority — and we would like to know about it.
The date under the headline is the last time we checked this page against its sources — not the day it was first written. Rulebooks get amended, regulations change and season dates move, so we review these guides on a regular cycle and re-stamp the date whenever we revise one. If you find something here that has changed before we caught it, email [email protected] or tell us at the counter; we will verify it against the source and correct it.
We write these because people ask us at the counter. Everything in them we either sell, service, or shoot ourselves — and if you'd rather talk it through than read about it, come in.
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