Somerley yesterday. It was a bit too warm, one of those rare days that make me wish I had bought one of those string vest type shooting vests, but I shouldn't complain.
This fifty bird layout is a firm favourite with myself and the gang with which I shoot. It's 25 simultaneous pairs, which pushes the shooters through a bit quicker and it makes me think hard about which one to shoot first. I get it wrong on with depressing frequency, but yesterday I was doing Ok and feeling good about my general performance. After five stands I had managed to drop 2 birds, irritatingly simple targets where sloppiness got the better of me.
Then we had a stand where two right-to-left crossers appeared from the crown of the right hand trees and sped off into the left hand tree. The first bird to appear was the last bird to disappear, but I had immense difficulty remembering that in the heat of the moment, so dropped a couple there.
The penultimate stand looked easy-peasy, with a pair of high and quite distant lazy left-to-right crossers which sort of fainted half way across the clearing and plummetted to earth. It was the transition from graceful to plummet that had me fooled, it wasn't very predictable and I dropped four on that stand, which was a bit disappointing. The next shooter had it all sorted, and presented with three pairs that intersected each other twice - once while being graceful and the next time while plumetting - he managed all six with an apparent lack of effort that was the hallmark of simply showing off. He's off my Christmas Card list, of course.
I ended up with a 41 ex 50 which I had hoped until the fifth stand would be considerably healthier. It appears that others had similar troubles and when I left I wasn't too far down the board.
Sadly after 32 years Somerley will cease to operate as a clay shoot. October's shoot will be the last as the landowners have decided to seek greater income from other activities. I will miss this popular venue, they do it right.