Clay Shooting July 2020

There is light at the end of the tunnel! As I write this, we are still in full lockdown across the UK, with the only shooting permitted being essential pest control. However we appear to be past the peak of the pandemic, and there is talk of how restrictions might be eased gradually so that we can start to return to some sort of normality. We will have to wait and see. Our regular writers have kept busy at home, finding inventive ways to keep mind and body active, and maintain the muscle memory and focus we’ll need when we get back to shooting real targets! We even reached out across the Pond and spoke to USA junior shooter Tom Seay. Big names in shooting offer their advice on gun…

Britain’s shooting organisations lobbied to have Covid-19 restrictions on clay shooting relaxed as early as possible. As the government was formulating its own plans on how to ease the lockdown, the CPSA were in touch with the Secretary for Culture, Media & Sport, suggesting that “shooting be considered along with golf courses and fishing locations where there is little or no spectator involvement in normal day to day operations”. The association added “Our CEO Iain Parker is also working with the British Shooting Sports Council to produce a paper to the government regarding shooting and how we can start up again with some social distancing guidelines in the hopefully near future. Rest assured that we are working to get clay shooting open again as soon as practically and safely as…

Clay shooting continued in Sweden while most of the world has been in lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. In early May Rhys Plum spoke to Håkan Dahlby, a Swedish Trap shooter who took silver at the London 2012 Olympic Games, coming runner up to our own Peter Wilson. “Sweden is for open business as usual,” Håkan told Rhys. “The government has not put any lockdown restrictions in place, as they fear the effect that this would have on our economy. We wash our hands, keep our distance and carry on. Most shooting grounds, and other businesses, are open as normal. All ranges are open at my ground to our members. It is easy to social distance with the shooting positions for Trap being set three metres apart, and…

“Modern gun barrel steel offers remarkable performance, but nothing captures the intricate beauty of Damascus” Think of Damascus steel and you think of the classic side-by-side game guns of the 19th Century. When James Purdey began his apprenticeship in 1798, best London gunmakers forged their Damascus barrels out of nails from old horseshoes, which were thought to have been toughened by the heavy wear they’d endured. They were heated up, hammered into strips, and then beaten around rods known as mandrels to form the basic barrel shape. This process remained in use until the beginning of the 20th Century, even though Sir Joseph Whitworth had produced his fluid-pressed steel at the end of the 1870s. The origins of Damascus steel date back to ancient Syria, where the many layered, beautifully…

We all knew it was inevitable, but it was still a bitter blow when the announcement came that the CPSA World English Sporting and Sportrap Championships were postponed until 2021. Rob Fenwick and his team at EJ Churchill were gutted. They were well advanced with their preparations for what would be a truly outstanding celebration of shooting. “They were set to be some of our biggest events of all time, with over 1,572 competitors signed up to take part, 20 percent of them coming in from abroad.,” he says. “We had planned our entire summer around the Worlds. There’s so much forward planning that has to go into putting on a world-class event with so many entrants. Take the traps for example; Promatic have to have a plan in place…

Now that we’re stuck at home, we all want to continue as best we can with our training, and emerge from lockdown raring to pick up where we left off. There are numerous ways we can do this which are still engaging and effective, without even having to pull the trigger. Let’s look at a few ideas that I’ve been using at home myself, and sharing with friends and fellow shooters via social media. I’ve also been keeping on top of my workouts – that is another way I’m trying to stay on track and focused on my end goal, and I’ve found it’s really benefitting my mental wellbeing whilst in lockdown. In fact I’m now really looking forward to my workouts each day! Dry Mounting This is the process…