Cosmicblue
Well-known member
Safety is something we are all responsible for at a shooting ground and thankfully because we all observe the greatest of care in the use of lethal weapons to pursue our chosen sport the activity is unlikely to result in accidents.
With 4 shooting friends we decided on a trip to Garlands shooting ground yesterday for a round of Sporting, its 4 stands of 5 pairs so 40 targets in total for £10.75 payable in advance.
Each of the 4 stands is manned with a scorer which is great to see.
The downside of the ground was the extremely poor positioning of the traps, in one instance it seemed that the second target from Stand One, if shot late could have put some shooters on a layout further down the ground and out of our visible sight, at risk. We were all horrified to walk past the adjacent layout and discover how close the next party of shooters actually were.
On approaching Stand 3 we discovered that the path went past a low breeze block built building containing a trap throwing a blaze target overhead, the danger being that the target wasn't travelling much more than 7ft above the path and when one of our party is 6'4" tall that isn't exactly much margin for error. A clay breaking on launch is going to hit everyone walking past too. No signage advising of potential danger either.
For Stand 4, the first target was a near vertical Teal, great, however in the tree thicket containing the trap, maybe 30 yards away was another bunch of shooters, OK, maybe they were 20 yards to the left of the trap but still at risk.
And finally we found the scorer (a young lad, barely 20 years old I suspect) for stands 3 & 4 had no eye protection despite broken clay debris falling at out feet or was wearing ear defenders - he had passive cans but said he couldn't hear shooters calling for the targets (the poor lad is probably partially deaf already) so couldn't wear them - no excuse, just needed the right kit for the job. On return to the freezing cold club house and coffee at £1 a cup one of our guys registered his unhappiness with the setup and the plight of the scorer with the office.
We will never, ever, go there again.
With 4 shooting friends we decided on a trip to Garlands shooting ground yesterday for a round of Sporting, its 4 stands of 5 pairs so 40 targets in total for £10.75 payable in advance.
Each of the 4 stands is manned with a scorer which is great to see.
The downside of the ground was the extremely poor positioning of the traps, in one instance it seemed that the second target from Stand One, if shot late could have put some shooters on a layout further down the ground and out of our visible sight, at risk. We were all horrified to walk past the adjacent layout and discover how close the next party of shooters actually were.
On approaching Stand 3 we discovered that the path went past a low breeze block built building containing a trap throwing a blaze target overhead, the danger being that the target wasn't travelling much more than 7ft above the path and when one of our party is 6'4" tall that isn't exactly much margin for error. A clay breaking on launch is going to hit everyone walking past too. No signage advising of potential danger either.
For Stand 4, the first target was a near vertical Teal, great, however in the tree thicket containing the trap, maybe 30 yards away was another bunch of shooters, OK, maybe they were 20 yards to the left of the trap but still at risk.
And finally we found the scorer (a young lad, barely 20 years old I suspect) for stands 3 & 4 had no eye protection despite broken clay debris falling at out feet or was wearing ear defenders - he had passive cans but said he couldn't hear shooters calling for the targets (the poor lad is probably partially deaf already) so couldn't wear them - no excuse, just needed the right kit for the job. On return to the freezing cold club house and coffee at £1 a cup one of our guys registered his unhappiness with the setup and the plight of the scorer with the office.
We will never, ever, go there again.
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