Garlands Shooting Ground - Saturday 14th March, not safe!

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Cosmicblue

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 3, 2012
Messages
406
Location
Warwickshire
Safety is something we are all responsible for at a shooting ground and thankfully because we all observe the greatest of care in the use of lethal weapons to pursue our chosen sport the activity is unlikely to result in accidents.

With 4 shooting friends we decided on a trip to Garlands shooting ground yesterday for a round of Sporting, its 4 stands of 5 pairs so 40 targets in total for £10.75 payable in advance.

Each of the 4 stands is manned with a scorer which is great to see. 

The downside of the ground was the extremely poor positioning of the traps, in one instance it seemed that the second target from Stand One, if shot late could have put some shooters on a layout further down the ground and out of our visible sight, at risk. We were all horrified to walk past the adjacent layout and discover how close the next party of shooters actually were.

On approaching Stand 3 we discovered that the path went past a low breeze block built building containing a trap throwing a blaze target overhead, the danger being that the target wasn't travelling much more than 7ft above the path and when one of our party is 6'4" tall that isn't exactly much margin for error.   A clay breaking on launch is going to hit everyone walking past too.  No signage advising of potential danger either. 

For Stand 4, the first target was a near vertical Teal, great,  however in the tree thicket containing the trap, maybe 30 yards away was another bunch of shooters, OK, maybe they were 20 yards to the left of the trap but still at risk. 

And finally we found the scorer (a young lad, barely 20 years old I suspect) for stands 3 & 4 had no eye protection despite broken clay debris falling at out feet or was wearing ear defenders - he had passive cans but said he couldn't hear shooters calling for the targets (the poor lad is probably partially deaf already) so couldn't wear them - no excuse, just needed the right kit for the job.   On return to the freezing cold club house and coffee at £1 a cup one of our guys registered his unhappiness with the setup and the plight of the scorer with the office.

We will never, ever, go there again.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I know this is an old topic but when google threw up a title ‘garlands shooting accident’ thought I’d click. 

The situation described above is familiar from many visits to garlands when I was a regular, the concrete hut and trap placement brought it all back. 

The last time I shot a registered ESP at Garlands was in the Clay Shooting Company era and the situation remained. 

The route to the stand was ambiguous, shooters could wander past the trap, of course you dont want to and know it’s not safe but few people speak up. 

Im not shooting much these days but have been surprised that Garlands haven’t stepped up their game re trappers wearing ear and eye protection. 

But on this note, last time I shot West Midlands Shooting Ground, most shooters weren’t wearing eye protection and trappers (including a lass who appeared to be the daughter of the owners?) 

The minor inconvenience of wearing glasses or taping off a trap is nothing compared to the monumental problems when accidents occur. 

 
Hi 

the situation above is nothing like what you describe above !!!!

the accident at garlands involved my best mate who was working with me for the day on a 100 reg sporting shoot , it was purely a case the wrong place at the wrong time  . Please get your facts sorted before opening your mouth on something you don't nknow about 

we had a full investigation from the Police and the H +S exec and both came to the same conclusion , an industrial accident .

steve 

 
Not a great believer in an accident being wrong place wrong time, there should be measures to prevent someone being in the wrong place and getting injured. We can never be complacent about injuries within clay shooting the press just love to report them to give the sport a bad name and claim the owners are irresponsible.

There used to be a CPSA poster that said “Good Shooting is NO Accident “ 

 
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