ehb102
Well-known member
On Saturday 2nd August I went on the "Introduction to Olympic Trap" day. Held by the Shotgun & Chelsea Bun Club at Nuthampstead Shooting Ground the day was hosted by Anita North.
As all good shooting days do, we kicked off with tea and bacon sandwiches. Top marks for Nuthampstead catering department for being able to provide brown bread! These little things make such a difference.
Martin Barker was our coach for the day and started us off with an introduction to the discipline. Then Anita talked us through how she came to love OT and how she became a Commonwealth Games gold medal winner. I had no idea that Anita has so many medals from World events. We had a very interesting introduction to the policies and processes of selection for national teams. Next we had a tour of Nuthampstead's impressive trap facilities, including a visit to the trap house. We had a basic introduction to the differences between actually shooting trap and shooting sporting - "Why are you all holding your guns? Save your arms, use the mat! It's what it's there for!"
We spent most of our shooting time on C layout, for those of you familiar with the ground. This is a picture of me waiting my turn to shoot.
See those purple filters? Those are custom tint lenses from Ed Lyons. Anita has a pair too, although hers look very different to mine, being custom-designed for her. Anyway, I've found these filters to be an amazing help on blaze clays at sporting and on skeet where blaze clays are used, but oh, my goodness! They make one heck of a difference at fast trap like OT. The day was overcast, the grass was pretty yellow from lack of water and there was unusually little contrast between the orange clays and the background, both sky and ground.These lenses though mean the clay is so easy to pick up and hang on to. Me having these lenses is a bit like giving me a £20,000 gun, the advantage would possibly be better spent on someone with more ability, but oh, boy! am I glad to have them. They confer more advantage that a cartridge ever could.
Speaking of cartridges, Martin is an RC fan. I can't argue with this. We had RC4s and they were lovely to shoot. I've had RC6s for pigeon and RC2s for gentle wimpiness and I might be converted giving the very good prices at Nuthampstead.
Martin Barker is an awesome coach. Coaching five people at once means a lot of walking, but he was on the ball for every one of us. I started out shooting over the top of clays going left, and in later sessions I was picked up for over-thinking. "You're thinking about it," said Martin. "Stop thinking about it and just shoot it." That actually works for OT.
After just a single round Martin had a lot of say about gun fit for several of us. New guns were produced for the after lunch session and scores went up. I have never met anyone as good as Martin a diagnosing what can be improved with your gun fit. I benefited from Martin's gun fit expertise earlier this year and things have been so much easier for me.
Lunch was excellent, but then Nuthampstead catering are pretty good. Marvellous pudding.
Another round after lunch and then we watched Anita shoot an exhibition round. We learned about the mental techniques used, which makes trap so different from sporting.
The final round was just for fun, with the occasional helpful bit of instruction. Tea and cake followed in Shotgun & Chelsea Bun Club style, and a lots of chatting. Brilliant stories from Martin.
We had a great time with Anita and Martin. It's so much easier to love a discipline when you can shoot it well, and it's so much easier to shoot something well if you have a truly great coach to help you. Martin produced incredible results from a group of novice shooters who had ill-fitting sporters and little or no experience.
Anita is the woman with pink hair, in case you didn't know.
As all good shooting days do, we kicked off with tea and bacon sandwiches. Top marks for Nuthampstead catering department for being able to provide brown bread! These little things make such a difference.
Martin Barker was our coach for the day and started us off with an introduction to the discipline. Then Anita talked us through how she came to love OT and how she became a Commonwealth Games gold medal winner. I had no idea that Anita has so many medals from World events. We had a very interesting introduction to the policies and processes of selection for national teams. Next we had a tour of Nuthampstead's impressive trap facilities, including a visit to the trap house. We had a basic introduction to the differences between actually shooting trap and shooting sporting - "Why are you all holding your guns? Save your arms, use the mat! It's what it's there for!"
We spent most of our shooting time on C layout, for those of you familiar with the ground. This is a picture of me waiting my turn to shoot.
See those purple filters? Those are custom tint lenses from Ed Lyons. Anita has a pair too, although hers look very different to mine, being custom-designed for her. Anyway, I've found these filters to be an amazing help on blaze clays at sporting and on skeet where blaze clays are used, but oh, my goodness! They make one heck of a difference at fast trap like OT. The day was overcast, the grass was pretty yellow from lack of water and there was unusually little contrast between the orange clays and the background, both sky and ground.These lenses though mean the clay is so easy to pick up and hang on to. Me having these lenses is a bit like giving me a £20,000 gun, the advantage would possibly be better spent on someone with more ability, but oh, boy! am I glad to have them. They confer more advantage that a cartridge ever could.
Speaking of cartridges, Martin is an RC fan. I can't argue with this. We had RC4s and they were lovely to shoot. I've had RC6s for pigeon and RC2s for gentle wimpiness and I might be converted giving the very good prices at Nuthampstead.
Martin Barker is an awesome coach. Coaching five people at once means a lot of walking, but he was on the ball for every one of us. I started out shooting over the top of clays going left, and in later sessions I was picked up for over-thinking. "You're thinking about it," said Martin. "Stop thinking about it and just shoot it." That actually works for OT.
After just a single round Martin had a lot of say about gun fit for several of us. New guns were produced for the after lunch session and scores went up. I have never met anyone as good as Martin a diagnosing what can be improved with your gun fit. I benefited from Martin's gun fit expertise earlier this year and things have been so much easier for me.
Lunch was excellent, but then Nuthampstead catering are pretty good. Marvellous pudding.
Another round after lunch and then we watched Anita shoot an exhibition round. We learned about the mental techniques used, which makes trap so different from sporting.
The final round was just for fun, with the occasional helpful bit of instruction. Tea and cake followed in Shotgun & Chelsea Bun Club style, and a lots of chatting. Brilliant stories from Martin.
We had a great time with Anita and Martin. It's so much easier to love a discipline when you can shoot it well, and it's so much easier to shoot something well if you have a truly great coach to help you. Martin produced incredible results from a group of novice shooters who had ill-fitting sporters and little or no experience.
Anita is the woman with pink hair, in case you didn't know.
