Bradford Shooting Ground 5/11/22
Today was one of those days when you find yourself asking, “What are we doing here?”
Somehow, we’ve been blessed with dry days on the shooting range for months and months, but as the saying goes, all good things come to an end. I should have known better than to hope against hope that the steady and persistent rain drumming on my window at 6am this morning, and that was a constant feature of my hour and a half drive to Bradford, would miraculously stop when I got there.
It didn’t. Nor did the wind. Winter weather is well and truly here, and it made sure we knew it!
Looks OK here - but it got worse!
Luckily, I am prepared for such things, and the full waterproof suit was pressed into service for the first time this year. And I had some spare footwear, just in case. Luckily, I didn’t need it.
I’ve always maintained that winter shooting is a must for any serious competition shooter, on the basis that you need to be used to challenging conditions. If you are away at an England Team selection or a big event, and the weather is bad, shooting doesn’t stop.
You’ll be absolutely nowhere if you aren’t accustomed to dealing with it, so the more you can prepare yourself through actually shooting in bad weather, the better. Your scores won’t be as high and that will hurt your average a bit, but caring too much about that will drastically limit your performance regardless.
One thing I do hate though is getting the gun wet!
In fact, I got two guns wet today. After last week at Brook Bank, the Krieghoff earned itself another outing, and I was all set to put in another big score despite the wind and rain. Not too far into the first round, I missed one completely and barrelled another which was frustrating, but soon after, “click!” Misfire on the first shot.
No problems on the second attempt, but the thought, “Will it happen again?” goes through the mind. As expected, it did. Second round, a few targets in, and “click!” again. And again, a few targets later.
The first assumption by shooters when this happens is that the cartridges are to blame. For some reason, Fiocchi’s appear to suffer from this more than other makes. I know from my own experience that on the odd cartridge or two, the primer seems to be sunk rather far into the brass, but it’s very difficult to say if this is the cause of the problem without being able to see exactly what’s happening inside the gun.
Today though, it wasn’t the fault of the Superblacks. The “dud” cartridges fired through both a DT11, and another Krieghoff, so I definitely need to send my K80 in and have it serviced, now that I have enough spare bank tokens.
I don’t normally carry a spare gun to local shoots (perhaps I should!), so there was no backup to switch to. That is until Malcolm Brown said, “I have a spare Miroku you can borrow.” A 3800 Grade 1 with a Monte-Carlo stock, 3/4 and Full fixed chokes, and some foam on the comb. Amazingly, the fit was practically the same as the gun consigned to the back seat of the car in disgrace that cost 5 times as much.
The first target out vanished in a ball of soot. The next one was hit almost as hard, and one of the tiny chips that survived received the second shot and ceased to exist. Now that I wasn’t playing the “Will it go off this time? Place your bets!” game, and using a platform that was very familiar to me, I was able to fully commit to turning targets inside out.
That was until one near the end, where I got a bit keen and moved before I saw it properly. Both shots were so close to it that it jumped up then down as the pellets went past, but nothing came off it (darn!). Apart from another that needed the second shot to break, the back 50 was a far cry from the front 50. 6 points better, in fact!
Is this trying to tell me something? I’m not sure.
My 98/286 was decent enough in the conditions, particularly with my issues early on and swapping guns half-way through, and it won me AA Class. But it wasn’t the top score today.
That honour goes to Paul Gorrett, fresh from winning a class trophy at Mayland Gun Club’s Grand Final Weekend last week in a shoot-off, and now really giving targets a bad day with his K80 and FBlack combo. He likes the 28g, size 8.5 shot loads, and boy are they destructive!
Paul didn’t have the best first and second round, but found his groove in his third and fourth, finishing on a 25/75, and a 98/288. The scoreboard says “B Class”, but he won’t be in that much longer!
Andy Hill, suffering a bit with bad hip pain at the moment, shot tidily to end up with 95/283 and the A Class win.
Darren Vicary, who matched Paul’s performance at Maylands and was one of his shoot-off opponents, didn’t have the best of days with a 94/274, but it was still good enough to win him 2nd in B Class.
Thank you to Matt and Iain at Bradford for putting on the shoot, and to everyone else who had the same bonkers idea to be cold and wet today – there wouldn’t be a shoot without shooters.
Next Sunday is the always exciting Peninsular Cup at Two Counties. Jethro designed this competition to be like a mini Inter-counties shoot between Devon, Cornwall, and Somerset, with a captain chosen for each county by him before the event.
The rest of the teams are chosen once everyone has shot 50 targets. The scores are ranked from highest to lowest, and the top however many required to keep the teams equal are picked. When everyone has finished, the team with the most points wins.
I had the honour of being Devon captain in 2019 when we won by a 76 point margin against what could be described as weakened opposition (some good shots weren’t there). Now that Richard Chapple has taken over Two Counties, he is very keen to keep the competition going, though we aren’t sure who’s going to be chosen as captains yet!
Let’s hope we know what the plan is before 11am on Sunday!