Pilford again this morning. Wipers on twice during the short drive to the ground, but rainwear not required as it happens.
This was one of those days when I knew it was going to be dodgy - at 4.00 this morning I was digging contact lenses out of my dry eyes having forgotten to take them out last night.
But it was OK when I started. The chap in front of me had a lot of trouble with the rabbit - for him it bounced violently (almost enough to be termed a looper rather than a rabbit , then rolled to a standstill, remaining vertical. Fortunately my rabbits were all smooth and predictable. I was quite satisfied with myself until stand 2 which presented a simultaneous pair of left to right loopers, one high and one low. People in front of me tried both ways, without clearly demonstrating which go tackle first and I chose low then high. I dropped three on that stand, dammit, but I strongly suspect that two of those were actually broken (well, chipped!) but below the tree line, which meant the half blind chum who was scoring failed to register them as kills. If that had been a registered competition with an eagle eyed young scorer I might have had those... Another two I dropped through just plain bad concentration - an area upon which I must, er, concentrate.
A plus point is that I am getting on famously with my Beretta Outlander. I've been using this gun since January with no complaints or problems at all. Not a single misfeed, no failures to extract or eject, it has several thousand cartridges through it now. It's an easy gun to clean and is wearing well apart from the expected and understandable dinks on the woodwork (which isn't exactly exhibition grade walnut anyway) from ejected cartridge cases bouncing off cage walls and of course a little of the black anodised finish wearing from inside the receiver aperture.
My small gang (four of us chaps and one lady who carries cartridges and is referred to by her partner as his "Sherpa") prefer to shoot in our own order; we go to the stand that has the fewer people queuing, so there's little waiting time. Today that wasn't really necessary as there wasn't the large attendance I had expected. I have explained to my dear wife that carrying cartridges/surplus coats/gunslip is no more than normal wifelike duty but for some reason she has failed to embrace the concept.
But all in all I had fun, and ended up with 35 - or was it 36? - 37 even?
The bacon baps are good at Pilford, never any trouble parking, and the people running the event are lovely without exception. The other shooters are a great bunch, and I thoroughly enjoy it.
Purbeck Shooting School next Tuesday for another Old Gits Outing. There are some extraordinarily difficult targets there at the moment, at least four of which defy all my attempts to hit them.
