Devon Double Rise Championship 2022 – Two Counties 11/9/22

Ah, Double Rise. One of those disciplines that I hardly get to shoot, perhaps once or twice a year (if that) at the County and Regional Championships.

Not many places set it up because it requires two extreme angle DTL targets thrown at the same time. You need either two traps firing simultaneously, or one trap that can throw two targets, like we had at Two Counties yesterday.

There’s a rythm to it, and you have to shoot the first target as soon as you reasonably can, to give yourself time to shoot the second one before it starts dropping.

I’m no expert at it, but somehow I’ve ended up in AA Class!

This Championship is another one that has eluded me so far, and is usually won by someone with much more experience of shooting the discipline.

This year was no different!

Instead of 50 pairs making up the usual 100 targets, we had it more like Double Rise used to be – 2 rounds of 30 pairs, 60 targets in all, with 3 pairs on each peg.

Despite one of my best results in terms of percentage, I was pipped to the win by 1 target!

The goal for the day was really to use up some odds and ends from my cartridge supply. Not taking it too seriously, but still going out to shoot as well as I could, and see what I ended up with.

26 in the first round and 25 in the second brought me 51/60, which was a nice surprise. Only 1 pair got away from me completely, but when all was said and done, I wished I’d hit one of them!

Richard Chapple, the man who can shoot any discipline pretty well, finished up with 52/60, but I’m not sure I could have matched him in a shoot-off! It would have been fun to try though!

Richard is also AA Class, so as there weren’t enough entries to provide a High Gun prize, he took 1st in AA and the trophy.

A Class went to Andy Heywood with 45/60, and C Class to Stuart Taylor with 40/60.

Well shot chaps, and congrats to Richard on getting his name on the trophy yet again. The last 6 or so years have been a bit “copy and paste”!

We also had a 100 DTL competition running alongside for those who didn’t want to shoot the Double Rise. Some people decided to shoot both! But not me. I used the time to get more familiar with the new CPSA shoot scoring program, which is improving!

The results were all very close.

1st in AA Class, with the top score on the board, was Dave Sleeman with 98/290. Pete Bugler was the only one who could catch him, but 2 second barrels in his last round dropped him to 2nd in AA with 98/289. Pete also shot 45 at Double Rise, so he handled moving between two disciplines pretty well!

1st in A Class went to Stuart Taylor, who added to his C class win on the Doubles with a 96/285 on the DTL. In another close finish, John Bradnam was chasing him down but just came up short. He took 2nd in A with 96/284.

Andy Heywood also had a good day. Like Stuart, he added to his Doubles A Class win with the B Class win on DTL with a 96/283. Darren Vicary wasn’t far behind him, finishing 2nd in A with 96/278.

Rob Northey topped C class with an 88/256, with Steve Keyte taking 2nd with 87/254.

Well shot everyone!