South West DTL Inter-counties 2023 - Two Counties Shooting Ground 24/9/23

The stage 3 scores are missing, but the final totals are right!

About two weeks ago, I was Devon Team Captain at the South West Single Barrel Inter-counties at North Cornwall.

And today, I was leading the county team again for the South West Down the Line Inter-counties at Two Counties Shooting Ground.

Personally, I was quite keen to pay Somerset back for shooting so well and deservedly taking home the Single Barrel trophy, but as always in shooting, you never know what will happen.

On the way down, I prayed that what everyone had told me (with a small amount of glee I might add) about the heavy rain coming through was wrong.

I hate getting the gun wet if I can avoid it, and mercifully, apart from a smattering of rain that I drove through near Plymouth and a few raindrops before we started shooting, it stayed dry.

Devon, Cornwall, and Somerset all fielded two Senior teams of five (both A and B teams), and some of those shooters were also entered in Veteran teams of three, two teams from Somerset, and one each from Devon and Cornwall.

Once again we had zero representation from the remaining counties in the South West.

Somerset were also the only county able to enter a Ladies team, and it's a sad reflection on the state of our sport that not only could Devon and Cornwall not follow suit, but no county could enter any Junior teams at all.

In fact, the only Junior present at the shoot was Matt Rowland from Cornwall.

I've written about this in my competition reports before, and I don't know what the answer is.

But something will have to be done in the not too distant future if we want to safeguard the future of all shooting in the UK, not just trap.

OK conditions at first, and the targets were showing up like beacons against the green trees (but you won’t see one in the photo - this was taken before kick-off!

Anyway, back to the day, and with the start that the Devon A team had, I was feeling pretty optimistic about our chances.

Four of us shot 25 straights, with myself and Andy Vanstone getting the maximum 75 points, Richard Ryan two points away on 73, Richard Chapple on 71, and Chris Smyth (who doesn't seem to be on his usual blistering form at the moment) not far adrift on 24/70.

That was easily the best scoring round of the whole day out of all the squads on the board, and if we continued like that then the rest would find it very difficult to catch us.

But as I said, anything can happen, and things outside your control can easily and suddenly make it tough for you.

Just as the first rotation was finishing, the wind arrived.

Not in gentle puffs that wafted through and did little more than keep you cool on a warm summers day.

It meant business, blowing the targets all over the place.

Some went high, some went low, and one of mine turned into the worst target I think I've ever had on a DTL layout.

It came out of the trap and went straight up like a springing teal - I was nowhere near it with my first shot, and when I pulled the trigger again, it was so high up that the referees couldn't see it above the roof of the layout!

I didn't see anything come off it (the bright grey sky made it hard to see clearly), so I had to say it was a loss.

Plenty of people would have argued that it was a no-bird, but I'm completely fine with it not being called as one, because that's fair to everybody.

Start calling no-birds for wind affected targets, and where do you draw the line?

You're relying on the individual judgement of many different referees, and that can (and has before) changed the course of a competition.

I must admit, that target rocked me a little mentally, and I was lucky that the two second barrels that I had soon after were not more full misses, before I was able to refocus properly.

The rest of the team fared slightly worse than me but battled through it, and at half way we were still 12 points in the lead on 703/750.

The rest of the field looked like this;

2nd - Devon B (Andy Hill, Paul Gorrett, Morley Yeandle, Andy Heywood, Mike Webber) on 691/750;

3rd - Somerset A (Tony Dore, Martin Howe, Gerrald Sweet, John Bradnam, Malcolm Brown) on 683/750;

4th - Somerset B (Martin Taylor, Geoff Eltham, Brian Prettejohn, Mark Baker, Phil Stott) on 666/750.

5th - Cornwall B (Barny Jackson, Jason Dyer, Rob Northey, Jason Reskelly, Matt Rowland) on 647/750;

6th - Cornwall A (Simon Ede, Ben Keightley, Dave Sleeman, Keith Woolcock, Colin Chidley) on 547/750;

Windy gusts were hampering everybody, and some of the lower class shooters were finding it pretty rough.

Round three was just as tricky, and some luck and dogged determination brought me another 25 straight with only one second barrel.

My teammates had very similar, if ever so slightly worse, results than in round two, but we were still out in front.

However, our margin had all but vanished as Somerset A knuckled down and found an extra gear.

Going into round four, we were only three points ahead, although at the time we didn't know it was that tight - perhaps that was a good thing!

By this time, I was finding it a challenge to maintain full focus and concentration, and my 23/67 was very disappointing - I felt I left 5 or 6 points out there just through small mistakes.

Not how I wanted to finish the day.

I was even more disappointed with myself when I found out that despite the others in the squad making a good effort to finish solidly, Somerset A had managed to leapfrog us and clinch the team win by just three points!

Very strong back 50 straights from Gerrald Sweet and John Bradnam, and a last round performance from Malcolm Brown, had given them the momentum they needed to get the job done.

“Who’s won it then!?”

And not only did Somerset claim the team win, but they also won the Veterans team, and the Ladies by default!

Well shot to all of them, to Simon Ede for his High Gun winning performance, and to all the class winners from the day too!

The list of prize winners. (We checked all the Veteran team scores, but didn’t note down lower than 2nd due to time pressures.)

My next shoot will be Bradford Shooting Ground Championship this coming weekend, and I'm determined to get back in the 290s - there's an England selection process next year that I want to be ready for!