England selection

[Will Hewland]

Seems like somebody missed the point with this shoot. By setting it really hard only really the hg will benefit. (0 points) .  (62% average. Last years english was tough and shot in appalling conditions was 68%) .

For a lot of shooters this will become their dropped score.  Thus making the shoot almost irrelevant.????

In essence they null and void their own shoot. Which seems a little counter productive. ???

AAA shooting in the 60's ,high gun 86 thats 20+ points.

Most that qualify wont get that many points from all the other shoots. Hmm. 

Dropper. Dropper. Dropper. 

Discuss.

Jasper. 

England points issues aside, a very tough shoot is demoralising. Partly it’s because we’re not used to shooting them, so it’s like a different game. As usual, lots of top shots say it’s the best shoot they done this year / ever etc but I do wonder how much bravado is at play. It’s just irritating when course setters hear the praise and think they’ve done a great job. They totally forget the 100+ customers who went home with a heavy heart and who probably won’t revisit the place for a good while. I have always thought that very tough events like this and maybe the majors should be declared as such (kinda like it’s a different discipline) and should certainly NOT count towards CPSA averages. The CPSA could easily list the results but void the scores from the system. 
 

I didn’t shoot this one, so can’t say whether or not is was “good-hard” or “unfair-hard” but either way it’s daft to register the scores IMO. Certainly just because a shoot is rock-hard doesn’t make it great. It’s not even difficult to set a tough course, so that’s no skill in itself. Finding a balance for a mass audience is the hard part.
 

In summary, the course needs to appeal to as many shooters as possible or the entry will be too low for financial practicality. It’s a bit different when suddenly a single shoot was very hard as nobody is quite expecting it.

The last brutally hard shoot I did was the inter counties FITASC at Southdown. 87 HG was amazing, but basically it was just a car park full of people left shaking their heads. Why oh why.. As has often been said, this should be entertainment. Personally I think sometimes course setters get confused with the notion that they are setting a course FOR the shooters, not AGAINST the shooters.

But hey ho. Bravado from a very few shooters will always be the loudest voice.

 

[Doug Pinnegar]

Personally a very tough shoot is demoralising. Partly it’s because we’re not used to shooting them, so it’s like a different game. As usual, lots of top shots say it’s the best shoot they done this year / ever etc but I do wonder how much bravado is at play. It’s just irritating when course setters hear the praise and think they’ve done a great job. They totally forget the 100+ customers who went home with a heavy heart and who probably won’t revisit the place for a good while. I have always thought that very tough events like this and maybe the majors should be declared as such (kinda like it’s a different discipline) and should certainly NOT count towards CPSA averages. The CPSA could easily list the results but void the scores from the system. 
 

I didn’t shoot this one, so can’t say whether or not is was “good-hard” or “unfair-hard” but either way it’s daft to register the scores IMO. Certainly just because a shoot is rock-hard doesn’t make it great. It’s not even difficult to set a tough course, so that’s no skill in itself. Finding a balance for a mass audience is the hard part.
 

In summary, the course needs to appeal to as many shooters as possible or the entry will be too low for financial practicality. It’s a bit different when suddenly a single shoot was very hard as nobody is quite expecting it.

The last brutally hard shoot I did was the inter counties FITASC at Southdown. 87 HG was amazing, but basically it was just a car park full of people left shaking their heads. Why oh why.. As has often been said, this should be entertainment. Personally I think sometimes course setters get confused with the notion that they are setting a course FOR the shooters, not AGAINST the shooters.

But hey ho. Bravado from a very few shooters will always be the loudest voice.

I shot it, and I think this fell in to the 'good-hard' camp. I'll caveat that and say I shot it on Sunday, and I think it was a bit windier on the Saturday? I enjoyed it, and I certainly didn't hit many 

In my mind the selection shoots are designed to separate the AAA shooters to allow meaningful points, they're not to entertain all classes, that's every other shoot. Maybe they should be unregistered, that's a valid point Will. Although if we changed our classification system from X/100 to distance from HG the difficulty would not matter as much.

 

[Will Hewland]

I shot it, and I think this fell in to the 'good-hard' camp. I'll caveat that and say I shot it on Sunday, and I think it was a bit windier on the Saturday? I enjoyed it, and I certainly didn't hit many 

In my mind the selection shoots are designed to separate the AAA shooters to allow meaningful points, they're not to entertain all classes, that's every other shoot. Maybe they should be unregistered, that's a valid point Will. Although if we changed our classification system from X/100 to distance from HG the difficulty would not matter as much.

I did write a system that takes care of classification issues by simply listing finishing positions, without number of clays hit being the blunt element. I don’t think reference to HG is a good barometer as it’s low data (1 shooter). Also when a shoot is really tough, the gap between scores widens, so another reason it’s inaccurate. I take your point though. 

 

[chesterse]

I didn’t shoot this either but there is what looks to be a useful statistic which the cpsa is now doing and that is the average score for the shoot. If this was factored in against every shoot it would take into account the variation due to the weather and if the level of difficulty of each shoot. 
Just a thought!

 

[jasper]

Yep but that average will dependant on the class split. So one would assume that a selection shoot will be top heavy in AA and AAA  . So sometimes the stat doesn't ring quite true. Something needs to be done and factoring that stat may be the best way. 

Jasper