Took a trip round the M25 to Caterham today, my first time there - but I had CleverSC3, Phil W, and Clever_Dad for wisdom and experience as we tried the first part of a double header. We bumped into George Digweed in the car park who was on the 2nd shoot of the day already - and still went onto Horne afterwards!
Bit of queue to book on, but moved quite quickly so we were out to the stands within 10/15 minutes. Overall a pretty busy shoot, and we had a few waits on the way round - but very few trap problems and some quick efficient scorers meant that everything moved quite nicely. I'll put a full review of the ground on the main site later.
Targets today were interesting, good variety made a little more challenging by some gusty breezes. The start of the course had a following pair of right to lefts on stand one and then a long incomer o/r with a flattish teal for stand 2 where the scorer decided to give me a sim pair rather than an o/r - pair killed, so no complaints from me as I straighted the stand!. Stand 3 was a blaze g/a followed by a high incomer, and then down through the woods to a beautiful open valley section which was lovely to shoot - we had a looper o/r flat crosser and a sim pair of dropping incomers which were interesting to say the least.
At the far end of the valley - there were two stands of high birds a sim pair of l/r crosser and r/l crosser which really swirled in the wind and made kill pictures tricky and another stand of sim l/r midi's which needed a touch of leeeed and some good judgement in the wind. We worked our way back through the woods with a couple of driven stands, another following pair of driven and a driven midi with a sim crow.
Our final stand was stand one, in the car park - which was a quick rising bird from will below your feet - another following pair which I screwed a little for 4x8.
I finished on 78, which is a new PB for me, and put me three shots clear in c-class when I left. We had some great scores in our squad - I think CleverSC3 was leading A-class when we left - and at £100 for a class win there, I hope we have a return trip to pick up envelopes!
Great first part of the day - part 2 to follow.
Bit of queue to book on, but moved quite quickly so we were out to the stands within 10/15 minutes. Overall a pretty busy shoot, and we had a few waits on the way round - but very few trap problems and some quick efficient scorers meant that everything moved quite nicely. I'll put a full review of the ground on the main site later.
Targets today were interesting, good variety made a little more challenging by some gusty breezes. The start of the course had a following pair of right to lefts on stand one and then a long incomer o/r with a flattish teal for stand 2 where the scorer decided to give me a sim pair rather than an o/r - pair killed, so no complaints from me as I straighted the stand!. Stand 3 was a blaze g/a followed by a high incomer, and then down through the woods to a beautiful open valley section which was lovely to shoot - we had a looper o/r flat crosser and a sim pair of dropping incomers which were interesting to say the least.
At the far end of the valley - there were two stands of high birds a sim pair of l/r crosser and r/l crosser which really swirled in the wind and made kill pictures tricky and another stand of sim l/r midi's which needed a touch of leeeed and some good judgement in the wind. We worked our way back through the woods with a couple of driven stands, another following pair of driven and a driven midi with a sim crow.
Our final stand was stand one, in the car park - which was a quick rising bird from will below your feet - another following pair which I screwed a little for 4x8.
I finished on 78, which is a new PB for me, and put me three shots clear in c-class when I left. We had some great scores in our squad - I think CleverSC3 was leading A-class when we left - and at £100 for a class win there, I hope we have a return trip to pick up envelopes!
Great first part of the day - part 2 to follow.
