North Cornwall Gun Club Championship 2023 - North Cornwall Shooting Ground 17/6/23

It was back to the local circuit today after the grand occasion of Bywell last week.

North Cornwall were holding the Cornwall DTL Championship, and running their own Gun Club Championship alongside it.

I wasn't eligible to win the county trophy (because I live on the other side of the Tamar ;)), but I was quite keen to see how much of the form I had at Bywell was left, and have a crack at the club trophy.

It turns out that winning your first major championship has a rather positive effect on your shooting, more-so than making it into the England team.

Suddenly, there are no more questions about whether what you do and how you go about it is good enough to get the job done at the big events.

My skills have now been undeniably proven against the best in the business, and that has been so valuable and liberating for me.

When I walked out to shoot this morning, I was completely clear in my mind about what I was going to do, and no longer had doubts about any aspect of my shooting.

The only question was, would I be able to leave the Bywell targets behind, and adapt quickly to the slightly stronger ones at NCSG.

My first round was a 25/75, and it felt very routine and straightforward, so that answered that.

The second round brought an unexpected miss (that could have been two, except that I didn't hear the referee call change - I shot at and missed exactly the same target in the same way! Good job it didn't count!), and a second barrel.

The cause was a visual distraction.

After a week back at work, I knew that I didn't have the levels of concentration that I possessed at Bywell, and that meant that my focus could be more easily disrupted - particularly by something that was highlighted to me very recently.

A friend of mine had questioned the red bead on the gun, saying that for him, as the gun approached the target, his eye would be drawn more to the bead and cause him problems.

I've always believed that a red bead would help me know where the gun was, and guard against eye dominance issues that can surface under certain physiological conditions.

But today, on that one target, I found myself measuring the gap between the two red things - and there was no way I would have hit it doing that!

This isn't the first time this has happened.

Being made aware of the potential issue helped me to see it, and swiftly change my thinking on coloured beads!

The red one had to go.

Luckily, my Krieghoff has a Hi-Viz sight pipe attachment on it, and it's very easy to remove and change the insert, which I did between shots on peg 3.

One of two Hi-Viz sight attachments available from Krieghoff for the K80 barrels.

Instant improvement!

With nothing in the holder I'm still aware of where the gun is, but able to stay locked on to the target much better, so issue solved.

Rounds three and four were both 25/74s, both barrels caused by other small unrelated errors, and I finished on 99/294.

I wasn't aware of it at the time, but I was actually two points behind Nick Shadrick going into the last round.

Nick was shooting really well, and apart from one miss in round two, he'd hit everything else first barrel.

Amazingly, he ended up dropping two whole targets in his last 25 of the day (which he wasn't best pleased about!), and finished behind me with a 97/291 - which meant that I won the Gun Club trophy!

That just goes to show that every point matters, and it isn't over until the last shot is fired!

The Cornwall County Championship came down to a shoot-off for overall winner between Simon Ede and Dave Sleeman, who both scored 98/289.

The contest only went one round, Simon emerging as the victor with 25/74, and Dave scoring 24/72.

The Cornwall DTL Championship 2023 shoot-off card.

Well shot Simon, and everyone else who took home class winnings from today!

And while all that was going on, there was an ABT competition running today as well.

North Cornwall has a reputation for challenging ABT targets, and nobody has ever shot 100 straight there.

Ian Moore, not long returned from an intense and gruelling time in Slovenia shooting UT for team GB, got as close as it's possible to get and put a very impressive 99 on the scoreboard.

That's something that not many people have done.

Well shot Ian - I know you'd rather have the full house, but it's still a brilliant score!

He was closely followed by Paul Westaway on 97, and Duane McCulloch on 95.

Next week I'll be at Bradford for the second Devon DTL Selection shoot, and I'll be working hard to improve on my current 3rd place standings!