Some national competition, coupled with home range advantage, is bringing out the best in Yukon participants at this year's Canadian National Rifle Silhouette Championships.

After three highlight-filled days, the smallbore standard and hunter categories came to a close on Tuesday.

The championships' high-power categories, however, will begin today today at the Whitehorse Rifle and Pistol Club. The high-power class is also three days, wrapping up on Saturday.

The standard class features guns that can be custom built, while hunter is basically right off the shelf from a sporting goods store and is a lighter weight group.

It has been a memorable competition for Yukon shooting coach Ken Speiss.

"I have been to several across Canada and this was as good or better than any of them," he said. "We had a good group of volunteers that helped put this on and it was a real success. The Yukoners are fortunately doing very well."

Speiss, who is also shooting in the AAA category, singled out some of the territory's junior competitors, including Nich Rittel, Ethan Robinson and Adrian Wheeler.

"It shows the results of a lot of hard work," he said.

Speiss said he expected a good showing from Rittel, who finished as the high junior in both the standard and hunter class. Rittel competed in the AAA category.

"Nich is just about ready to break out and go into masters," he said. "He has been very active for the longest of all of these kids. You don't need to encourage him to work at it, that's what he wants to do. Adrian and Ethan, they surprised me, that was quite unexpected."

Rittel finished with 88 points in the hunter class and 90 points in the standard category.

Wheeler also did very well, finishing with the top hunter score in the A group. He totalled 66 points, while posting 30 points in the standard class.

Robinson also competed in the A division, accumulating 60 points in the hunter class.

The different shooting levels include a masters, AAA, AA, A and B category.

This isn't the first time Whitehorse has hosted a national silhouette championship.

The previous one was held 11 years ago.

In preparation for the nationals, the club's range was increased in size, a project that began last summer and finished in the spring.