You get the rough with the smooth in this game and it is always ref specific some good, some bad.
I shot a true pair where a song bird came into view momentarily distracting me, I managed to hit the pair and miss the song bird. After breaking my gun, the ref said if you had missed that I’d have given you a baulk which I thought was good refereeing.
The polar opposite was a lad who I know actually attended a CPSA referee’s course the day before at the club in question. The clay was fired from floor height with plenty of spring straight in front rising smashing into trees, a pretty rubbish target with no time to shoot it. The fist issue was people shooting just as the clay hit the tree and the argument that ensued. Therefore, I set up to shoot it early, first 2 killed no argument. Then the on the 3rd the clay never came near my hold point let alone my kill point, it went left and down smashing into the floor.
Now here is the thing, my exact words where “was that a no bird?” and instead he must have heard something about me questioning his parentage, I guess due to the number of complaints about shooting it in the tree had got his back up. However, his response was an aggressive tirade of how he’s was a qualified ref I should know the rules, it was wind affected.
Now if he was polite, I wouldn’t have bitten and responded but my take on it was we were shooting in woods and no leaves or branches were being blown about, my hold point was about 5ft off the ground and the target never made that height, it went left and down, however, the 2nd report target a lot higher was unaffected.
The wind rule in my opinion is to cover a target that is being consistently altered, you can quite clearly see the target is being altered, maybe not every one but at least a few. In my case the 5 shooters before me had the same regular target, I had 3 of them and the shooter behind had all 4.
Out of 27 times that I saw the clay thrown only 1 was irregular.
Therefore, regardless of wind or not this should be covered under the no bird rule of i) The target zigzags, or its initial speed is insufficient or if its trajectory is irregular. The fact there was no sodding wind just made it worse.
I can’t stand bullying, but I’m a stocky 6ft 2” bloke and have been told I can be intimidating when I don’t actually mean to be, therefore I always bear that in mind when in a dispute, stand back be polite etc. but I don’t think I shouldn’t be able question peoples decision just because of my size. And yes I did reply to the aforementioned referee in the same manner he replied to me so anyone catching the tail end would probably think I was a dick. To be fair to him he stuck to his guns and to be fair to me I just said my piece with no intention of re shooting just more miffed at how he had spoken to me so had to respond.
Referees aren’t gods and they do get it wrong, just as us shooters do and cordial discussions are always the best resolution. I’ve also seen Good refereeing on this where he said the target is wind affected be warned, if it is too bad I’ll call a no bird, but be ready for anything and unless I call it the target stands. As I knew where I stood before I shot I had no complaints.
