Salopian

Adverts in most shooting mags for Cyprus holidays.And many people have been to Villamoura in Portugal

When are cartridges going to come down in price? The answer could well be never, old chap, hard cheese etc., But I do think the manufacturers have got a nerve (if not a cartel?). Oil is now a third of what it has been this year, Lead and other metals are now a third, at least ,of their peak price. Diesel is now 99.9 a litre, so when oh when are prices of cartridges going to fall? I was speaking to a Gentleman this week who says that the Victory importer and Victory themselves in Cyprus are stuffed to the rafters with stock. So, Mr Victory reduce your prices to around the £100 per thousand mark and watch them fly out the door. It's your call.

Psyxologos, What a nice man you are, do you want the H&H Royal, Boss O/U, Woodward or Purdey? Please make payment to my Cayman Island account @ A/C Bernie Ecclestone, NatWest, Hole in the Wall, Orleans St., Cayman. Near Smethwick.

Psychologo? Why? You have Insurance from House Insurance and now BASC, why would you want to join CPSA? Obviously the credit crunch will not affect you. If you are interested I have a number of guns for sale ranging from £54,000 upwards, and some cut price cartridges @ £25 a box.

It is unusual for clayshooters to tut tut when a novice is struggling.If this happens I do find that a smack in the gob usually focusses their attention (only joking) David may I suggest that if anyone 'disses' your good lady again, you should hang back and see how they fair, if they hit all of them, congratulate them and ask them where she was going wrong.As likely as not they will miss a few.Where upon you say "Difficult stand this one isn't it?" their face is normally a picture.

9,s for skeet, 8,s for Sporting. 7,s for Trap. BUT 7 1/2,s for Everything, if you just shoot 7 1/2,s you will be able to hit and break everything.Use 1/4 & 1/2 choke whilst you are learning and Maybe ,use 1/2 & 3/4 for distant birds like you get at tough shooting grounds.This is really psychological because frankly you will break most targets with 1/4 & 1/2.Remember if you hit ALL the easy targets and miss just a few hard ones you will win.

Eley have had a problem with primers for some time now.They have done their best to rectify this, but when you consider how many they produce per day it is inevitable some will be stuck on a gunshop shelf just awaiting you or I to purchase them. Patrick is carrying out the correct procedure, box them up return to vendor and await action from manufacturer. If none is forthcoming you know what to do. When clayshooting have a look at what brand of shell case is the most common lying on the floor or in the bin. That speaks volumes, are they the cheapest, best, sponsored or used by the groundowner for corporate work?They probably break the clays, and that is what we are all there for. The bitter taste of poor quality lingers far longer than the memory of the price.

All training devices have a place.I do think the Dryfire is expensive but if you can afford it or have the use of one, use it. There is no doubt that the best value for money is structured real practice preferably with a competent mentor, and that need not be expensive.

Paulos, It is the negativity shown by yourself that is the bain of the shooting community. If you bothered to read the link in full, and tried to understand. I recommended a day membership to encourage non-members to enter and participate, therebye possibly encouraging them to become full members. If they were confident they were of sufficient ability to win, their classification would not be an issue. Also you should realise that we all have to be classified at the top level until we have shot enough registered shoots to be correctly classified. If I was travelling the length of the country to compete in the premier event of my sport, an extra £20 on top of the entry fee would be reasonable. Side events such as Pool shoots, claysnooker, Compak, Fivestand, Prize raffles could all be organised by the CPSA HQ, County members of the host County, other County Committee volunteers and this would literally bring in thousands of £'s to the CPSA and show them to be a fantastic organisation to belong to. If you doubt all of this, hark back to The White Gold Cup, Gamebore's flagship event. I organised that each year ( not on my own of course) but I did do all the spade work. If there was anything wrong with that event, let me know. I would be happy to do that amount of work for the CPSA or BASC. They or you only have to ask.

No, www.claysporting.com is a website for people who are disallusioned with the CPSA, have a lot to say, but do ****** all about changing things by getting organised and voting for change. A bit like me I suppose.

For goodness sake.How long is this controversy over the Olympic Ground going to rumble on? I personally brought this to the CPSA's attention more than 2 years ago that Woolwich was unsuitable ( see Dennis's site) Boakes did write to the Olympic Committee in his role for the BICTSF but frankly if you were on the Committee you would have expected the letter to have been written in crayon by a challenged person. It is all there for you all to read about Woolwich being unsuitable, for the following reasons that need to be addressed.Military Hospital would have to be closed for the duration of the games, shot fall out over a major 'A' road, shot fall out onto a housing estate, site having to be cleared after the games , leaving no legacy for shooters, one of the core remits of Olympiads. Dartford is no better due to certain disgraced ex CPSA officials having a vested interest in Dartford SG (allegedly). This whole affair smacks of incompetence. But look on the bright side, with the recession it will probably give the Building industry a shot in the arm when some one gets of their **** and makes a sensible decision. There is no doubt in my mind that the complex at Bisley needs a massive injection of cash and to build a state of the art shooting complex in that area or nearby if the land were available is exactly what British shooting requires right now. We need to use the Olympic funding and Lottery money wisely and give British shooting the lift it so richly deserves. Wake up.We are the best in the World at Sporting but the Yanks are catching us fast due to their obsession with being good.We were good at the Olympic disciplines but we are slipping, and we do have poor facilities.

The CPSA AGM would be the place once and for all to put the CPSA on a firm footing. There is no doubt at all in my mind that as an organisation they have been very poorly managed recently. The CEO has shown that he is not up to the job and I feel he does need to be replaced. Interestingly enough I noticed recently that none of the coaching team are original and there does not seem to be any continuity there at all.What has happened to Sam Grice, Roger Silcock etc.,? Do the CPSA still do coaching?

Twenty five years ago I used to shoot at a clayground in South Australia near Victor Harbour.It was closed down by environmental officer due to lead polluting a watercourse.This seriously peed me off.I used the young scientists from Adelaide Uni to PROVE that the toxicity came from natural lead deposits upstream from the ground, and the actual contamination from the ground was increasing the water pollution an insignificant amount. As I have said if you are going to use science make sure your figures are not flawed. What about the water carrying pipes underneath our cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester etc., have all the lead pipes been replaced? Are you sure? But enough of this, I will now bow out gracefully. Good shooting everyone, may your powder stay dry, your eye stay clear and your aim stay straight. and lead sphericals to all of you.Merry Christmas from the Salopian.

David is a very nice bloke who will listen to a reasonable debate.He is toeing the party line because their facts are the only ones available to him. I respect that, but we do all need to have an open mind in any argument. No One has ever shown me hard evidence to ban lead, and on numerous occassions , the statistics shown in scientific papers have been shown to be flawed or speculative. Many of my friends are water bailliffs and river keepers and none of them have ever found a bird dead from lead pollution. I was surprised at an earlier posters observations where he has found them.I would loved to have witnessed that for myself, but I haven't. But please, before promoting the use of steel, carry out a risk assessment.Is there a risk of ricochets? Is there a possibility of damage to grassland or timber?

Blaser, Exactly, spot on. As I said earlier "Value for Money".

David, Ask your Midland office to get you a copyof the CPSA advice from Doveridge, it is posted on their noticeboard. Sorry but Steel is not a viable alternative to lead. Steel is now banned in some Scandinavian countries in woodland shoots due to damage to chainsaws in the forestry business. Steel cartridges are also noisier and give more perceived recoil. Possibly leading to more issues with noise pollution and recoil related injuries, muscle strains, flinching etc., Latest papers in the US sight that possibly their findings with Condor fatalaties were not due to ingestion of lead as at first thought. Also there is another paper out about lead in food not being as bad as first thought. I am sure Tom Roster can furnish you with the papers. If not ask on Doublegunshop.com or shootingsportsman.com they will give you the links. I am sorry to say that I am not happy with the performance of soft iron shot when used for live quarry shooting, and will continue to use lead and tungsten matrix.

It is a fact that everyone is entitled to their opinion. My opinion is that the CPSA do nothing to promote clayshooting and actually alienate more shooters than they enrol.I would think that nearly every ground owner has had issues with CPSA HQ management.Especially when it comes to organising a National event.They show an admirable level of incompetence. The point I was making about day membership was in reply to the gentleman who said there were many people in the North who he thought may have the measure of Faulds & Digweed. A true Open championship should truly be that, open to anyone to compete.I realise also that you can't compete in the Open golf championship without qualifying.This is where clayshooting is a real leveller, you can enter without qualifying, all you have to do at the moment is join the CPSA and then pay a grossly inflated entrance fee to a normal 100 birder to pay for HQ's staff accomodation and meals/ travel expenses. It certainly doesn't go into the prize fund. As for trying to get anything done at the AGM. You have to be joking. There are many moaners but no activists. So I will vote with my feet and lapse my membership.

A few facts need to be mentioned before this debate goes too far. The Lead shot ban was implemented in the USA, driven by Environmentalist Organisations who received vigorous opposition from the NRA who were unfortunately outnumbered.Modern research has recently been published in the US saying that maybe they got there numbers wrong and it now seems that lead pollution is not the problem that they thought it was. Eley conducted numerous tests with plastic wads before their introduction into the public domain, where they fed them in animal food to cows without adverse effect.Sheep use their lips and are selective what they eat, so I will safely say that plaswads are not as bad an environmental issue as some people believe (apart from the eyesore of plastic litter). Steel. The CPSA have issued a directive to claygrounds to not use steel shot if at all possible due to ricochet problems and the ferrous oxide reaction (rusting) causing soil pollution.Many grounds with farming interests are now banning the use of steel shot. Finally BASC stated they would support the phasing out of lead shot if a viable, economic alternative could be found. How long ago was that statement made David? What is the economical alternative?

I can understand why these people do not join the CPSA. But, if the CPSA were run by business men rather than an ignorant Carpenter and his cohorts, they would arrange day membership for these ace northern Digweed beaters and then it truly would be an English or British Open.But that of course would require the HQ staff having to earn their salaries.Perish the thought."Work for the benefit of members?" Never.

I believe the CPSA is a total waste of my membership fee and will probably not be renewing next year. The only REAL reason to be a member of CPSA is to be able to shoot at registered shoots and aspire to representative honours. As reported by other people in earlier replies, CPSA HQ do not manage members complaints sympathetically or efficiently if they even bother to address the issue at all. They have rules and policies and procedures to follow but if it suits them they will, and have, totally ignored procedure on numerous occassions. In these difficult financial times that are now facing all of us we all need to get value for money.Your money is best spent for this reason alone with BASC, who have a well organised team that can be accessed and will give guidance on all matters shooting.If you only want insurance specifically for countrysports the best value is with the NGO. CPSA = Can't Provide Sound Advice (apart from 'Save your money don't join us')

I would endorse Clayman's advise.You must have a consistent gun mount BEFORE spending money on getting your gun fitted, otherwise you will be WASTING your money. Michael Rose lives in Chippenham, he is possibly one of the finest gunfitters, he was formerly head coach at West London SS and chief fitter for Purdey.Email me for contact details. If anyone requires instruction or gunfit, they would be advised to contact a member of The Guild of Shooting Instructors. www.shootinginstructors.co.uk

I had a look and there does not seem to be any mention about the safety aspect when using steel shot for pigeon shooting. The CPSA have now advised shooting grounds AGAINST using steel shot!!!!!!! Many grounds are banning the use of steel shot. So please make yourself aware of the following issues:- Steel shot is liable to riccochet off hard surfaces such as stony or flint laiden ground or hardwood surfaces. Also the Farming community is frowning upon steel shot, especially where they are using chemicals to assist in crop propagation. SOMETIMES the steel reacts with chemicals and causes BAD things to happen to the earth. (You will have to shoot a hell of a lot of shells probably) But if any problems occur they will be YOUR problems. Finally do NOT believe ALL of Gamebore's advert, half choke is enough, and steel against steel at 1250 ft per second will scratch

Out yesterday from 6am raining most of the day never had a shot.Today sunny and bright, went out after lunch shot 37 coming in to an area that they had previously hammered. Out of interest as anyone been successful when it has rained allday?

Paul 223, A WEEK OR TWO?? Obviously you don't live in West Mercia. When I applied for my certificate I didn't need to shave.Now I have a beard.So much for Computer Technology speeding up the process.

If you google 'The Longest Shot' it will bring up a link that tells most of the truth about Rob's shot.How he and his 4 mates were hounded out of the Corps by allegations that made their life's hell.I can;t comment too much.I have a declared interest.Just remember British is Best.One day I'll perhaps tell you more.