Bywell 2022 – Dougall Memorial DTL 11/6/22
Click here for the full results from the CPSA website.
The Dougall Memorial then, perhaps the oldest trophy still shot for in DTL. By my reckoning, which involved a quick Google search and a little bit of maths, this year is the 126th time this competition has been held.
At the end of yesterdays post, I said that today was forecast to be cloudy and windier. Those weather people earned their pay because they were absolutely right!
I don’t know what the wind speed was, but when I shot a practice round first thing in the morning, not only were the targets going all over the place more than yesterday, but the odd gust had a good go at blowing you off the peg!
Yep... it was windy...
About halfway through, I was about to set up and shoot my target when I saw some movement in front and to the left of the layout – and a big orange bucket, one of the ones placed next to each shooting peg to hold the spent cartridges, came rolling around the partition fence and headed towards us!
We finished our set of 5, and had to wait while one of the ground staff jogged over and returned it to where it came from!
The practice went well, a nice 23/69, the two misses simply being horrible targets that were severely wind affected. Everything else was obliterated.
The staff at Bywell had actually done a decent job of setting them up for the conditions because, although all of them were affected by the wind in one way or another, a good portion of them stayed up at a decent height, even if they were varying significantly.
Perfect shooting conditions - apart from the wind!
The ones that didn’t were a real challenge to get, and there were more than a few of them! All the more amazing then that Ellis Jones went out in the morning wave on the new layouts, right down at the far end of the ground, and shot a 100/299, getting all the way to his 98th target before needing his second barrel!
Nobody was able to match that. The nearest was Paul Chaplow who had a 100/297, followed closely by Tom Robinson on 100/295.
After that, the scores dropped away quickly. A few notable names were sat on 290 and above, but the first big group were all around the mid to upper 280s.
My result was a massive improvement on yesterday – a very solid 98/286 which included a perfect 25/75 to start with. Many of my first barrel kills were absolutely shredded, and there’s no way you would ever put those targets back together again.
I ended up in good company on the scoreboard, and I’m very happy with the comeback, even if the result wasn’t quite as impressive.
The only shoot-offs required were to decide 3rd in Veterans, and 1st and 2nd in Juniors. Gordon Shankland prevailed to secure 3rd in Veterans with a 25/74, and Iwan Mills (25/73) triumphed over Hamish Munro (24/71) to secure the Juniors win.
A 4-way shoot-off to decide 3rd in Veterans.
Iwan Mills and Hamish Munro going head to head to decide the Juniors win.
Well shot to everyone who placed overall, and in class and category, especially to Ellis on an awesome performance in seriously tough conditions.
I’ll be doing exactly the same thing tomorrow – going out to cause those targets as much pain as possible, and striving to get my name somewhere near the top of that scoreboard!