Well i chose this shoot as my first sporting registered in 11 years and first and foremost i really enjoyed it and that is important to say right up front.
There were a few things that niggled me such as:-
The poor young girl on the food counter was hugely flustered and really needed some help. Waiting over 20 mins for a bacon and mushroom roll with a cup of tea was a test of patience. Especially as the hot water ran out which with a simple fix of a couple of big electric tea urns would have solved.
I could even appreciate the que to book on as it was clearly a popular shoot. I was a little bit taken back at the £41 birds only entry fee as this is a full 6p per target MORE than i am used to paying (yes i appreciate more referees / staff / traps etc) but for me a couple of quid more than i expected maybe advance publication of the price would help avoid the "oh ok" thought i had.
Upon getting out to the shoot things really improved and credit to the location and the targets. There was only one target i did not touch all day (low pink target on stand 6) so they were all there to be had and i only used IMP SKT choke all day.
So my score of 84 was just clumsy doing stuff like pair hit, pair hit, hit / lost, hit / lost which is just silly but in my defence it was the first time in a long time i needed more than 4ft of leed.
I saw the nice side too..... on stand 3 (low driven) was two young lad referees. They were clearly struggling with the radio release of the traps and also stood where the bits were likely to land on them. A couple of the shooters stopped things and moved them to the other side of the cut out which was slightly higher up and they could see the first trap release and also were away from the shower of bits from the low driven so did not need to duck on every shot that was broken. Good on whoever did that!
I seemingly managed to avoid the que's for the most part but i was in no hurry to get round talking to people i have not seen in a while. Stand 12 was the only place had a real wait and i understand that was due to a break down.
Overall a good day which i enjoyed. Sure i will shoot another again but would prefer a straight 100 target event.
Thanks for you comments and we do appreciate you saying up front that you enjoyed it all. Constructive criticism is how we've built our business and kept the conversations open (we hope!)
Just to address a couple of points though.... firstly the poor girl in the kitchen was, bless her, out of her depth on such a busy day! Our normal lady for the kitchen couldn't work yesterday so Amy stood in very bravely but we hadn't anticipated it being quite so manic and as we run off a generator sadly electric tea urns aren't possible so we have a 20ltr gas one running but even this was struggling along with the kettle! Our apologies, I'm sure many would attest to the fact that most food and drink is normally hot, fresh and in your hands with a cuppa within minutes! Hopefully at the next one you'll get to see how it normally happens
Two of our regulars stepped in early doors and helped wash and dry up plus fill the urn and hot pots - very very much appreciated Kevin and Mike!!
As for the entries - at 8am we realised the laptop we run from had a virus (courtesy of our 13 year old on the internet games the night before I suspect!), it wouldn't open the shoot program and leave it open, just kept typing in the alphabet and then shutting things down!! It was a massive manoeuvre between 8am and 9am to get an alternative setup that firstly had the program installed and secondly had the up to date data on it. This meant opening entries on manual, catching up later and the result was slowing the entries down. Even without this 'glitch' there would have been a queue as we had 100 people before 10.10am!! Lovely but stressful! You can probably imagine that our teenager kept a low profile for a while!
As for price, our 100 bird shoot is 33p per clay, the 120 bird shoot is 34p per clay reflecting the £1660 prize pot we are GUARANTEEING and the additional set up and running costs of the day. £1.20 overall on the cost, an increase yes but should we end up with only 100 shooters paying into the pot at £4 per head that's still over £1000 we are putting in ourselves. A modest contribution we felt but your opinion is noted.
So in summary, everything was stretched to the max, overall I think we all survived but sad to say it wasn't as smoothly run 'in the barn' as we always hope. We live and learn. We now have a contingency plan for a broken/virus infected laptop and we know that we need extra help and hot water in the kitchen next time :slow:
Hope to see you again!
Steve and Ally
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