Pilford this morning. Started out as a gloomy day with no rain, light breeze, and a muddy field where I got stuck after about five metres. Very red faced, but the ever helpful and cheerful lads got me reversed onto slightly firmer terra firma in short order. It really is embarrassing, but the saving grace was that being virtually first there very few people saw me. A cracking start.
Well filled bacon baps and a cup of coffee restored my good humour as the people started to arrive. There's always a good cross section of shooting folk at this one, with a healthy female attendance. English boxlocks mingling with Berettas and Brownings and Perazzis, with a surprising number of semi autos, all good stuff.
As we started (for somer reason the scorecard fairy always has me down to shoot first) the skies darkened a bit and the breeze got up a lot, but it didn't affect the first stand (we do them in reverse order for reasons that have long since disappeared) which was a quartering going away low bird with a trailing looper. But other stands were affected. One bird came straight from behind at a moderate height sinking towards the trees with the wind following it. At pretty much the spot where people wanted to kill it the breeze lofted it viciously (for me) or batted it downwards but let it continue (for others) and that one caught out quite a few. A left to right rabbit of the Kangaroo/Wallaby/ Harrier Jump Jet breed caused more than a few curses, and a bird on the No1 stand looped gracefully over the hedge whereupon it oscillated up and down as though it was on elastic. I was not alone in cursing that one.
Lots of fun, a few misses, came home with 36 x 40 which was a better end to the expedition than the stuck-in-the-mud-start had led me expect.
Everyone is friendly and cheerful at Pilford, Always interesting targets, I'm hoping to be there on the 28th.
