Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2020 i Clay Shooting

India could host a major shooting event around the time of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, with medals counting towards the overall Commonwealth Games table. That’s one of the options that is being considered after India threatened to pull out of the Games entirely after shooting was dropped from the Birmingham 2022 programme, according to the website insidethegames.biz In an exclusive story on the website, Liam Morgan says that the proposal has support of the International Shooting Sport Federation and the National Rifle Association of India. “Talks on the proposal are at a very early stage, however, and no formal decision has been made by the Commonwealth Games Federation,” he writes. Shooting is not a compulsory part of the Commonwealth Games, but has been part of every event but one…

Southdown Gun Club’s Talent Pool competition is back for 2020 – and so the hunt is on for an enthusiastic, talented individual who will become the Talent Pool Champion 2020 and be the official ambassador of Southdown Gun Club, Blaser and Eley Hawk. The Champion that is chosen at the end of the process will win a fantastic prize that includes a Blaser F3 shotgun on loan for a year, 5,000 Eley Hawk cartridges, and complimentary one-on-one coaching and mentoring with Southdown’s head coach and CPSA Coach of the Year, Simon Arbuckle. To top off this prize, which is worth over £10,000, the winner will receive branded apparel, accessories, CPSA membership and selected competition entry fees. The ground say that the competition is back following a delay due to sponsorship…

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It’s an appealing idea, to be able to record your shooting and play it back afterwards – whether that’s to analyse your performance and perhaps brush up your technique, or simply to share with other shooters via Facebook or YouTube. Capturing anything worth watching, however, is quite a challenge. One of the first commercial offerings was the Shotkam, which is great for understanding lead and swing, but doesn’t show the shooter’s whole field of view, or the view along the rib. Enter the Aimcam, which has taken a completely different approach to the problem. It’s based on a pair of shooting glasses, with a tiny camera mounted just above the aiming eye. That means the camera records the view almost exactly as the shooter sees it, looking down the rib…

The cartridges put through their paces this month are the lighter shot load versions of the Rio 28 gram Target Load cartridges we reviewed last year. Offering lighter recoil and budget pricing, they are well presented in the same sturdy, bright blue cartons of 25. As we will discover, the shot load may be less, but these are certainly no slouches in the velocity department! We’re looking at the fibre and plastic wad types. Both are loaded into the same bright blue parallel tube plastic and lightly ribbed Maxam cases, with 12mm high brass plated steel heads, as in the 28gram version. One difference is that the case length is reduced to 67mm (from 70mm) for the fibre wad load. Shot load weight, case length and velocity are all clearly…

Hannah Gibson is easily one of the country’s most impressive female shooters. She is a multi-discipline powerhouse who has travelled the globe to fill her trophy cabinet with solo and team trophies in Sporting, Olympic Skeet and Sportrap. Her impressive credentials, combined with her passion for introducing new shots, is inspiring the next generation of clay shooters and is something we could all learn from. Hannah’s career started in a way familiar to most of us, following her dad around at the local shooting ground. “I first started clay shooting when I was 12 years old, at our local club Northall CPC,” explains Hannah. “My father had been shooting at Northall for a while, so as a family we would go up there for the member’s social events. These events…

BEDFORDSHIRE Chicksands Clay Target Club Shefford, CPSAAffiliated Disciplines: ESP, DTL, STR Open alternate Sundays and Wednesdays over Summer. Contact for competition details. Practice and coaching available Telephone: www.facebook.com/charlelister Email: info@chicksandsclaytarget.co.uk Web: www.chicksandsclaytarget.co.uk Maulden Gun Club Clophill Road, Maulden, CPSAAffiliated Disciplines: ESP Competition alternate Sundays. Practice and coaching for members only. Fibre wad only Telephone: 07951 651051 Web: www.mauldengunclub.com Shillington Clay Club Shillington, CPSAAffiliated Disciplines: ESP Shooting every other Sunday Telephone: 07860 940362 Email carol@hcduk.com Sporting Targets Ltd Riseley, CPSA Premier Ground Disciplines: DTL, ESK, ESP, FSP, DR, SB, STR, Fitasc Open 9am-6pm weekdays and Saturdays, 9am-2pm Sundays. Regular competitions. Practice all hours. Pre-booked coaching. Telephone: 01234 708893 Email: reception@sportingtargets.co.uk Web: www.sportingtargets.co.uk Tythe Farm Gun Club Disciplines: ESK, OSK Some OSK competitions & practice. Coaching available by arrangement. Telephone: 07719 329094…

Richard Faulds is top of the tree in both English and Compak Sporting. He ranked No.1 in both disciplines in the CPSA’s list of top 20 shots for 2019, achieving an absolutely phenomenal 95.197% average in English Sporting with 2,418 hits scored out of 2,540 registered targets shot. Close behind him was Martin Myers, who hit an average of 94.382% over a total of 8,242 targets – that’s a lot of shooting! Cheryl Hall topped English Sporting ladies with an average of 85.563%, and she also came first in ladies for Fitasc Sporting and Compak Sporting. Elsewhere in the English Sporting list, Tristan Hockey was No.1 in colts, James Bradley-Day led juniors, and Steve Brightwell was first in veterans. Austin Coxhead took first in DTL, with an impressive 98.9111 average…

Ron was still 16 when he won, and had only been shooting for just under 12 months. “The car’s the big prize and I’m so happy I’ve won it,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a bigger prize in the country. Next week I’ll be 17 so it’s perfect timing. I’ll be doing my theory and practical tests and hope to be driving my new car in a few months.” Ron, who shoots a Browning XS Pro, says “I’ve been shooting for just under a year, so it’s been quite a short time, but I wouldn’t have been here without the help I’ve had from people like Chris Bullock who has really taken me to where I needed to be with my shooting. I’ve been practising a lot and I’ve…

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There are many great reasons to take up shooting. It gets you outdoors in the fresh air. It develops new skills and knowledge. There’s the companionship of a great community of people. It provides a new challenge, with a clear measure of progress as you develop your technique. There’s the chance to pit your skill against others at your level, as well as stretching yourself to compete at a higher level. And in young people, shooting can encourage positive traits such as self-discipline, responsibility and sportsmanship. And before this all sounds far too serious – it’s also great fun! As one young female shooter remarked to me recently, “Nothing beats that feeling when you hit a clay target and it smashes into dust!” Don’t let age or anything else put…

Opening a shooting ground can a daunting experience. Staff need to be hired, clubhouses built, kitchens filled, coaches found, grounds prepared and traps loaded – the list goes on. But Stuart and father Nigel Smith have succeeded in creating a world-class venue in just a few years. “Dad and I were looking for a new challenge, following the sudden passing of my stepmother in 2012,” says Stuart. “When we heard about the possibility of a shooting ground being available for lease, we jumped at the opportunity. We finally agreed terms and moved onto the site in January 2015, opening our doors four months later.” Though four months might seem short, Stuart and his father had been preparing for a long time. “We have both been shooting for about 15 years,”…

Some 35 years ago, I decided I wanted to be a shooting instructor. I had already been shooting since I was a kid on my grandma’s farm in Kent, at various target clubs and at Bisley. I learnt serious shotgunnery in my teens at the Boss Shooting Grounds with Bill Lees, then with Michael (and later Alan) Rose at West London. Both meant saving up the pennies and long treks on the underground from my central London home. I continued shooting in the Army, where I shot in both pistol and clay teams at Sandhurst. In the Army, QMSI Jim Cairns, a Commonwealth Games pistol medalist, taught me a lot about competition as well as physical technique. With his help I was awarded ‘Colours’ for shooting at the RMAS –…

What a pleasure it was to watch the top 20-odd young shots compete at the TSC Grand Final at the Oxford Gun Company in December! You can read my report on the event on page 14. In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that I’ve been involved with the TSC for the past five years and more, filming and producing their YouTube videos. But biased or not, you couldn’t fail to be impressed – by the standard of shooting, the shooters’ behaviour and sportsmanship, the dedication of supporting parents, the organisation, the level of sponsorship, the list goes on. Anyone who worries about ‘kids’ being granted shotgun certificates really needs to come and see one of these TSC events. It couldn’t be more different from the anti-gun…

There are new rules for shooters under 18 about how their shotguns or firearms are stored. New regulations come in to force on 12 December 2019. Adults must have responsibility for the secure storage of guns held on the young person’s certificate. Police licensing departments will be contacting certificate holders under 18, to advise them on how they can comply. An adult who takes responsibility for the secure storage can either be a parent or guardian of the certificate holder, or someone who holds a shotgun certificate – or in the case of rifles, a firearm certificate for the firearms and ammunition in question. Regulations are unclear if a parent or guardian will need to have an appropriate certificate. A two-key cabinet could be split between the minor and the…

My jaw dropped when I saw these photos. It’s not easy to take good photos of shooting – even professionals struggle to take a really striking shot. These were on a whole different level to any shooting photography I’d seen before. So I set out to discover who had taken them, the story behind them – and as a semi-pro myself I wanted to know what kit and techniques had made them possible. Through Facebook, I tracked down Thomas Morel, a Dutchman and full-time professional photographer living in Bergen in Norway. He specialises in high speed photography, freezing motion that is too fast for the human eye to see. As it happens, he’s also a keen hunter and Skeet shooter who says “Being an active skeet shooter myself, I have…

I‘ve been shooting pretty seriously for the past few years, to the point where I’ve been arranging my overseas holidays to coincide with competitions so that I can shoot while on holiday. I think it would be more truthful to say that my trips have become shooting trips with some holiday time, rather than holidays with some shooting time. The more shooting I did the more I wanted to explore the great shooting grounds we have in the UK. Living near Manchester gives me access to some excellent shooting grounds but in every shooting magazine I read, I saw articles about UK competitions being held at grounds I’d never visited. My curiosity was starting to get the better of me. I have a few friends who are semi-interested in shooting,…

I’ll be fine as long as I don’t get called to shoot just before Jason. If I miss one in front of him then it’s over. I may as well pack up and go home.” This was whispered to me at a recent Skeet championship by one of the UK’s finest shots. He was voicing his concern at performing with a close competitor breathing down his neck. The name has been changed to protect the innocent, but it demonstrates that even the very best have to endure an unwelcome level of mental pressure during the heat of competition. Another challenge for many shots is the strain of remaining attentive during multi-day events, when mental fatigue and even boredom start to take hold. It’s tempting to concentrate all our efforts on…

Harper Adams University’s clay shooting team travelled to West Midlands Shooting Ground with one aim in mind, to retain their BUCS Clay Pigeon Shooting Champions title – and they did it in style, taking the top three positions as well as the team trophy. HAU’s Tom McGregor shot a tremendous score of 90 ex-100 to win the student high gun prize, closely followed by teammates George Cheer in second with 89 and Jacob Groom on 81, taking third place on countback. The Harper Adams men finished first with an impressive score of 340 ex-400, followed by Nottingham in second with 291, with Oxford Brookes taking third place with 284. Archie Evans, chairman of the Harper Adams shooting club, was keen to thanks the club’s sponsors – Fiocchi, Promatic Traps and…

I enjoy Skeet because I think it sharpens you up, providing targets at all angles. Station 8, where it appears, is a proper sharpener! I am not interested in grinding out 100-straights because my attention span is woefully short, so I can’t concentrate hard enough to actually achieve it, but it is a lot of fun and generally good practice for a variety of other shooting scenarios. With that in mind, don’t forget that a Skeet shell with about a million pellets in it is absolutely ideal for those closer-in targets encountered at Sporting or Fitasc. The different Skeet disciplines mean that there is a mind boggling array of cartridges. This list will give you a taste throughout the spectrum. English Skeet is the most popular of the skeet disciplines,…