A friendly clay shoot at the Beretta World Shooting Championships turns into a competitive afternoon as the question remains - did he really hit that clay?
A friendly clay pigeon shoot is like a game of golf – everyone acts in a gentlemanly (or gentlewomanly) manner until it comes to the act of competitive scoring.
Sure, the most important thing is the day out, with good company and competing against one’s self.
The Beretta World Sporting Championships 2014 starts today and I, with some wonderful company, had the opportunity to shoot the beautiful course the day before the championships started at The Hollywell Estate, home of the Earl and Countess of Clarendon.
Sporting Shooter is a proud sponsor each year for one of the UK’s largest sporting clay shooting competitions, renowned for its challenging and original courses, therefore I was ecstatic to hit 44 of the 90 birds flown at me and to be the top gun in my squad of 6, which contained a couple of excellent shooters – I would normally hit 40 out of 50 in a local shoot. Not to boast.
How good you are against some shooters is irrelevant, it really is the taking part that counts, but you surely must be honest with yourself and your own score if you are to agree with the opening sentences of this article and here is where we need some help with Sporting Shooter’s publishing director – Peter Timperley.
New to clay shooting, a double digit self target was set from the outset, and his scorecard did indeed read 10 at the end – however, there were two questionable birds that as luck would have it, we happened to have caught on film.
We shot three pairs and at the trap in question, one of the clays had a brilliantly cunning flight to it. A green, standard clay flying low towards you, against the leafy green backdrop of the wood, around a corner – landing 10 yards in front of the trap where it duly shattered.
Beretta World employs the service of a professional referee, unfortunately we didn’t warrant one so we need you to review the video below and let us know if our Sporting Shooter publishing director actually blasted two of the six...you’ll have to look and listen very carefully – and we know he missed all three of the upper clays.
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