A bumper crop of ten shooters threw their cash into the hat today, including two guests
Chris and Kevin, experienced BRUK shooters who had come to see what we get up to at East Devon.All the regulars were in attendance, Jeremy, Julian and Eddy as well as myself with National shooters Phil, Justin, Gary and of course the maestro Tom, plus our two guests as already mentioned.This meant four details today, two with three shooters and two with two.The weather was forecast to get downright blummin hot, but with the tree cover of the ED ground, it stayed very pleasant for the whole competitions. What wasn’t pleasant was the constantly changing breeze, which was mostly right to left but occasionally and without warning left to right or even absolutely nothing… just for the briefest of moments but more than long enough to spoil a good score when an aimed off pellet flew dead straight!On the plus side, conditions remained pretty much the same for the whole shoot and we thankfully avoided the worst of the thermal lift which the guys practicing on Thursday said was an absolute menace.I was using my new ETS wind flappy thing in combination with my shiny wind flag, and the combination certainly gave me a fair old clue as to what the wind was mostly up to, my first card starting out in fine form with a string of 10’s and X’s. But benchrest never lets you get away with that sort of thing for long and an inexplicable nine soon showed up to poop on my party. By the moans groans and shaken heads of my fellow competitors, I was not alone in puzzling the complexities of pellet flight. My second card was shot in pretty similar conditions to the first, maybe a little warmer. We were all starting to get used to what today was feeling like and there were some highly competitive and very close scores being laid down. This is made more interesting when looking at the various competitors to see Julian using his S400 resting on a couple of neoprene bags and at the other end of the scale, the shooters who compete in the National series with highly specialised stocks, scopes and rests, but all are welcome and on any given day no one has a clear advantage… well other than Tom, but that’s just the nature of shooting, some people are just very very good at it.My last detail and I was watching my windicators like a hawk and timing my shots as carefully as I could. I still ended up with a couple of unwelcome visits to the nine ring, but overall, it seemed to go OK and turned out to be my highest score of the day. Meanwhile ‘cool head’ Eddy was quietly putting in his best competition score to date and everyone else was snapping at one anothers heels.Then all of a sudden, Tom and Justin, shooting the last detail, were done, flags and cards were being hauled in and it was time for the totals. Unfortunately Eddy, Jeremy and our two guests had already departed, so Eddy will have to receive his just deserts later.Scores were 1st: Tom 743 25x. 2nd: Me 732 16x. 3rd: Eddy 728 18x. 4th: Kev 725 18x 5th: Chris 725 17x. 6th: Justin 724 17x. 7th: Julian 723 17x. 8th: Gary 719 22x 9th: Jeremy 707 7x. and 10th Phil 701 13x.I’m going to sound like a cracked record (youngsters, ask your Gran what that means) but another really fun / challenging / frustrating / enjoyable shoot, ably run by Tom, assisted with thanks by Kev and Chris.I am told we could have another shooter or two joining us in August which would be excellent, as more always makes things merrier. If you fancy a go, please come along and we will assist you to become addicted to accuracy.Next round is on August 15th. 9.00 am start
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