Air rifle and pistol shooting has been around for many, many years, but great improvements in air weapon design has made airgun shooting vary accurate and very popular. Open shoots are held all over the country, some indoor at paper targets, others outdoor at metal knock down targets. !0 metre leagues flourish and there are also 6 yard bell target leagues. The above club, at Wells Next The Sea, is a field target shooting club, which meets on a Thursday evening, during the summer and every Sunday morning all year round. For more details contact Dave, the club secretary, on 01328710791
The shooting is held in an old lime quarry, which is a conservation area and treated as such, the high walls of the quarry making sure that no stray shot leave the site. All the air weapon safety rules are enforced and on the site red warning flags are flown plus there are also warning notices on display, these ensure that there is no chance of the general public wandering onto the site.
As can be seen, from the pictures on the left, there is plenty of parking space for shooters vehicles. At the moment the club does not shoot in any leagues, but in house competitions are held. In the bottom picture you can see one of the white quarry walls, which make an excellent back stop for any stray shots, these wall cover three sides of the shooting area.
The centre picture shows three of the members eyeing up the field course which is laid out with knock down targets. The knock downs consist of crows, rats, squirrels, rabbits and magpies. All the knock down targets are made to a very high standard and will give a life time of hard use. The knock downs that the club uses are manufactured by "Nockover", a link to their page can be found at the bottom.
Six shooting lanes are available and targets are spaced out in each lane at approximately 10 metre intervals, the farthest targets can go out to just over 60 metre's, the bottom picture shows one of the members, in a standing position, have a go at the long distance target.
There is a mixture of weapons, the modern pneumatic does not rule as there are also shooters who use springer's. There are also a couple of shooters who enjoy pistol shooting at 10 metre's, but this does depend very much on the weather as pistol shooting does tend to be an indoor sport. Targets used in 10 metre pistol shooting are the regular 10 metre paper targets and pistols used in 10 metre competition have to be .177. The skill of the shooters in 10 metre became so good that instead of five shots per target it was cut down to one as this made scoring easier.
Three more pictures of shooters on the field site
The top picture shows a walled in area which is approximately 30 metre's long and consists of 4 lanes. This area is mainly used for zeroing the scope to the rifle, but the area is also used for casual plinking. Once again, like the field, this is an excellent and safe shooting ground.
The remaining two pictures are just general views of the area.
For greater accuracy the pneumatic rifle seems to lead the field. Once charged a rifle shooting .177 pellets will usually give at least 60 good shots. Rifles using .22 pellets will get around 80 shots.
Although pre air charged weapons have been around for a long, long time, some of which are now collector's pieces, the modern pneumatic is a superb piece of engineering. Valves are built into the charging cylinder to control each shot and to stop the weapon being over charged. The triggers are built to excellent standards, gone are the two piece triggers, they are now multi piece and can be safely set to work at a few grams pull. Older shooters will remember the days when a trigger pull could be two or three lbs.
Most stocks now come with a cheek piece which keeps the head in a much better position for looking through the scope, these come in left or right hand. The modern scope just gets better and better, the engineering matching that of the rifles that they are fitted to. As pneumatic rifles are recoilless there is now no such thing as scope creep.
One of the draw backs with pneumatic rifles is using a pump to charge them, again the pumps are made to a high standard but there is a certain amount of effort on the shooters behalf to work it. Many shooters have now turned to bottled air. Bottles that are used by divers can be purchased and when fitted with the correct gauges and hose can safely be used to charge up the rifles cylinder.
The above picture is of knock down targets, as I have said before, these are made by the company "Nockover" The aim of these targets is that the shooter tries to hit the disc in the centre of the body, once he/she does then that disc will drop down out of sight, to reset it the disc at the bottom of the knock down has to be hit. The disc on the clubs targets are 40mm in size, but there are other sizes available.
The most popular rifles that are used at the club seem to be manufactured by Air Arms, to view some of their models click on the link below.
Below are are couple of pictures of pistols that are used by members. The first picture is of the Russian made Baikal IZH46. This pistol has been fitted with custom grips made by Steve Corcoran, to view Steve's web site click on the link below. The IZH 46 is an excellent target pistol and has returned top scores in pistol shooting competitions. The action is single stroke pnuematic with an excellent fully adjustable trigger.
The above picture is a Rohm Twinmaster Trainer, this is an 8 shot Co2 pistol. The trainer has an excellent trigger when used as single shot with the hammer cocked manually. There are a choice of grips, either combat ambi or wood as shown in the above picture. The Twinmaster is also produced in full match pistol versions.
Just after the club was formed, and had found its feet, a large container unit was purchased. This container unit acts as a store for shooting tables and chairs etc, there is also an area where a welcome brew can be made on a small portable gas stove. In bad weather two large steel doors can be opened and there is room for three shooters to sit side by side and shoot down the walled in range, this range can be seen in one of the above pictures. No weapons, pellets or anything of value is every left in the unit, the club insists that all such items go home with their owners after each shooting session.