Back shooting with avengance

Spring is in the air and although I have spent the winter shooting I have not been blogging about it as it has been cold, wet and mostly uneventful.

I have however been steadily progressing and in the last five competitions I have scored 66, 70,70, 73 and 73. These have been around the country, not just at sporting targets so I feel like I am definately improving.

A few weeks ago I had a lesson with Ed Solomons and I think I learnt lots from it. He had me attacking the clay a lot more and refined everything from my pick up point and where I start my gun through to how I actually perceive each target. The same afternoon I shot the winter series at Sporting Targets and did well, followed by two 100 birders on Sunday and three rounds of something quite tricky at the Royal Berkshire shooting ground, that included a 20 target flurrey which was a new experience for me!

In all I shot a 61, 65 and 66 during my three attempts which I was not too displeased with. It was a handicap competition and I was given a 20 handicap so my best score was 86, not far off the 93 needed to qualify for the finals!!

Westfield 100 bird registered competition

By Next month I will have to admit to having been a shooter for 12 months. This said I do believe that I should be able to shoot a 70/100 by now, which is what I set out to do at Westfield on Sunday.

It is never an easy shoot by all accounts but I felt it went ok. I didn't have any complete disaster stands and by the end thought I would be close to my target. As it is I shot a 64 which as we left the grount put me third in C class. Quite respectable for the first time at the ground, so I shouldn't be so hard on myself. I am still trying to find out the final results. It is easy to be spoilt at Sporting Targets, especially as they now have their Clay Pigeon Shooting live competition scoreboard on their website. You can even see the updated results on a mobile phone! This is technology being used for a practical purpose.

Sporting Targets 100 Bird Registered Competition August

I was certain that I could pull out a personal best and, inspired by the olympics shoot a 70+ for the first time. How wrong can you be?? The Sporting targets clay pigeon shoot was harder than anything I have shot recently. Having said that, I excelled myself on a couple of stands that I was not expecting to do well on, and I did feel I had improved a lot over where I was a few months ago.

I ended up with a 52.... my worst score for ages, and almost my lowest ever! I only really had one nightmare stand, which was a simo pair driven off the tower. The stand was set behind a tree so you only had limited time to aquire both targets...... not enough time as it transpires! I hit 1/8 which at least negated blanking the stand. I seemed to just drop one or two more than I should on each stand which was frustrating.

I will get my 70 on the next one.

Sporting Targets Newsletter 2-August-2008

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