The weather this winter has been atrocious and we had to shut the shoot when storm Ciara hit. However, our group of stalwart members came out to the other shoots battling the winds of Storm Dennis and saying it was ‘interesting and fun’ shooting clays that were flying all over the place !!

We have had to cut a path through the woods to get to Stand 6 and 7 due to the state of the ground as we are resting certain areas of the shoot to allow the mud to dry out and the pathways to recover. We have for the month of March stopped Down the Line for this reason.

We have a great team of people who help us out. Dom and Chris are up at the shoot between shoots moving traps, maintaining them and also making sure the ground is clear. On the Saturday before the Shoot we have a team of 6 people who help put out the batteries, fill up the traps and generally make it ready for the shoot the next day. On the morning of the Shoot they turn up at 8am to connect the batteries, test the traps and go round marking the stands as to what each stand is set up as.

We ran a members Competition on Sunday 9th March. We have divided our members into Classes (not CPSA gradings) but just using their handicap scores to put them into three classes. The winners of each Class won a trophy . Two of our Junior Members shot very well and one of them won their Class and the other was runner up in his Class – shooting alongside the adults.

Our next members Competition is on 17th April.

As we are now into Spring we hope that the weather improves and we can start putting on more varied stands. The set up changes monthly but we have left it alone for the last two months due to the wind and rain and moving traps around in the mud was not feasible.

We have two students working with us at the moment …. one is a student from Plumpton College on work experience with us and another one is completing her Bronze Duke of Edinburgh award. They both work alongside us as they have to know how to set up and run a Clay Pigeon Shoot as well as the principles of handling a shotgun and safety surrounding both these subjects.