Sporting Shoots; where- and how was it? (2018)

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My exploration of the clay grounds of the Western half of the UK continues! South Wales 2000 SG on Sunday for a reg 100. 

I was towing a very wide, very low vehicle trailer, having delivered my wife's car down south and Ford's sat nav system seems to have a penchant for picking the tiniest lanes to go down. At one point I was dragging grass and soil out of both hedges at once! :)  650 miles round trip this weekend. :(  

The ground is tucked away almost at the top of a hill about 6 miles North West of Newport with views away over towards the Brecon Beacons. lovely. Cracking weather for it again this weekend! Excellent facilities and a well laid out ground. Lots of trap based stuff but all converted to sporting for the shoot and no reliance on using the trap machines as sporting targets. The pool shoot was a hoot with scores in single digits out of 15

Not a disgraceful 75/100 and i think I'm settling in to the new gun. A couple of stand straights means we are heading in the right direction though! I need to have a chat with Brent again as there is definitely a 'bug' in my shooting, either my mount or the left eye getting involved as I'll suddenly go from mullering everything to missing 3 or 4 in a row, not by a narrow margin but a country mile! Stepping in to a stand and hitting the first 4 or 5 birds that previous guys have missed is great but then spoilt by missing the next couple. Missing the first bird but then clearing the rest of the stand means that I'm reading the birds right and correcting things.

Hitting 9 straight and then missing the 10th is purely mental. :)  

Ho Hum ...... so goes this sport! :)

 
My exploration of the clay grounds of the Western half of the UK continues! South Wales 2000 SG on Sunday for a reg 100. 

I was towing a very wide, very low vehicle trailer, having delivered my wife's car down south and Ford's sat nav system seems to have a penchant for picking the tiniest lanes to go down. At one point I was dragging grass and soil out of both hedges at once! :)  650 miles round trip this weekend. :(  

The ground is tucked away almost at the top of a hill about 6 miles North West of Newport with views away over towards the Brecon Beacons. lovely. Cracking weather for it again this weekend! Excellent facilities and a well laid out ground. Lots of trap based stuff but all converted to sporting for the shoot and no reliance on using the trap machines as sporting targets. The pool shoot was a hoot with scores in single digits out of 15

Not a disgraceful 75/100 and i think I'm settling in to the new gun. A couple of stand straights means we are heading in the right direction though! I need to have a chat with Brent again as there is definitely a 'bug' in my shooting, either my mount or the left eye getting involved as I'll suddenly go from mullering everything to missing 3 or 4 in a row, not by a narrow margin but a country mile! Stepping in to a stand and hitting the first 4 or 5 birds that previous guys have missed is great but then spoilt by missing the next couple. Missing the first bird but then clearing the rest of the stand means that I'm reading the birds right and correcting things.

Hitting 9 straight and then missing the 10th is purely mental. :)  

Ho Hum ...... so goes this sport! :)
Did you enjoy one of Sian's breakfasts at SW2000?  Yummy.

 
Well done Will! I was the ref on stand 14 who had to call the "no bird". Looking at your card, I realised something special was going on and sympathised with you. very well shot Mr Hewland !
Many thanks! Ha ha yes, that wasn’t good timing. “Breathe..”

 
Popped in to West Midlands Shooting Ground ( Hodnet ) for their late evening ( to 21:00 ) shoot. 50 Sporting and a few rounds of Compact. Lovely grounds and great facilities. ( just wish my satnav didn't take me to the back of the ground! )

Nice little sporting layout with some good targets on. One dropping off a cliff had me beat though. Gave it far, far too much! :(   A quick practice afterwards and I halved what I was giving it! :(  

Good compact layout too!

 
College Farm for me on Wednesday. It really is a great shoot, very boutique with one squad on the ground at a time. A great mix of targets and definitely some good longer ones included. Had several weak moments and avoided a sparkling score, but enjoyed it.

 
Court Farm today, haven’t been for quite a while. I told myself it was fiddly and has deceptive targets needing little lead, but failed to follow my own advice enough. Not a great card at all with 83. It was already messy then I dropped 6 on the stand in the corner. Fiddly stuff. 

 
Went to 4C. Didnt even realise it was on until i saw them post on FB. Was a stiff breeze and fairly cool. Shot well enough other than stands 9 and 11 but at least worked out where I was on those getting the final pairs. Finished on 86 which I was happy enough with.

 
Court Farm and Dartford for me.

Court Farm I did OK at, just sloppy in places and annoyingly by trigger freeze issue popped up again on four occasions (managed to recover on one and hit the target, but the others were done).  Was doing OK in the corner, hit the first pair and managed to stay on the white one, dropping the last pair when the finger rebelled for a 5.  Effed up the sim pair of l-r crossers, just coudn't get on the second bird (think I hit it once).  Finished on 71.

Dartford I got off to a fairly good start and felt that I was shooting better than I did at Court Farm, dropped a few on Stands 6 and 7 then really lost the plot on 8.  Sim pair of teal / steep away targets.  Hit the first bird then nothing else.  Rallied on the rest, but dropping 7 on a single stand it was never going to be a great card.  Finished on 68.

 
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Bad eyes day for me hay fever and my neighbour decided to turn her music up last night at 11pm just as I was off to bed and kept it going until 3pm and I had to get up at 6am.  Barrow Sporting Clays first which was a good shoot, the first half of which I had double vision, extremely offputting, went so badly I didn’t even count my card as I knew it was over before this fat lady sang.  Then on to Eriswell for the Sportrap and sporting.  Sportrap second layout I lost the plot completely and scored 11 but the last layout scored a 25 which helped me save my card 20, 11, 19, 25.  There were some very tricky sim pairs I thought.   Sporting ups and downs just not on it by this time and finished on a 73.   

 
Greenfeilds Guns Open always a great shoot in a lovely little valley meaning most targets are up the bank,some great and deceptive target presentations.

A big incoming quartering Battue which i didn't find at all in 2 rounds to my shame,don't think watching 10 or so people miss it before i got in helped and a pair of card killer crows that i just couldn't seem to pair having watched a AAA shot in front of me miss 6 i then missed 4 wrecking a class winning chance,it really should have been straight at them as they were no more than 15m away.

I think it was the culmination of 200 targets and 7.5 hours on my feet that finally got to me,thoroughly enjoyed the day a shoot i look forward to each year  :biggrin:

 
Nothing registered for me this weekend. Taking a slight break from comps as my form has been poor of late. Instead I went out and shot 175 practice on Saturday at a mixture of Skeet, DTL and sporting. Then a further 100 sporting practice on Sunday.

Made a little tweak to the gun and it seemed to help so i'm looking forward to next shoot to see if it's helped for real!

 
Beverley CTC for north region shoot, ended up being cancelled at about lunchtime for some serious safety issues and refunds for all.

 
Can you expand on "serious safety issues"?
In the six stands i shot the same groundsman appeared at the traps to refill then while shooting was in progress on two separate occasions that i saw, Beverley is a a trap dominated ground so the general layout is cages on the layout end and traps downrange in view of several stands, this was an ESP shoot, second time the bird was descending and heading  in a direction so as to place grounds man in line of shot from that stand perhaps 40 yards away, ref and shooter spot this bloke in time to avoid incident, This referee goes to speak with him and on his return declares he is no longer willing to continue citing danger to life, perhaps not the first time?  All shooter at our stand prob 8 agreed and we went to the clubhouse to see about a refund. I believe the shoot was short of referees from the start so in some areas 1 ref was covering 2 or more stands,Shoot was well attended and the traps are of the type with short low capacity carousels so refilling is a pressure job , I dont know if the groundsman was new reckless or untrained. Last year was not without incident either.

 
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