Poor Shot

The consultation is now live. Act now - BASC As a membership I think it could be a good idea to start a response repository where the more informed can place their responses for others to add upon where they see fit or alternatively use as a part of their own response to the consultation. While any response is a good response, it would be great if we could utterly overwhelm them with comprehensive, fact based responses. I'm happy to add my responses to these pages as a start but as I do not work in gamebird release, they are little more than emotion based ramblings with a touch of anti big-government thrown in. @Conor O'Gorman Will BASC be offering any kind of guidance on the responses to the consultation?

Well you're clearly doing something incorrectly as an organisation if recruitment is an issue. What is it that you are recruiting for? It would be unreasonable to expect an applicant to show up in smart clothing if you were advertising jobs driving forklifts in builders merchants yard or people work in a stables for example. You also need to look at the resource pool your advertising in. I wouldn't ever consider making vacancies open via the local job centre if I didn't want long term unemployed and benefit scammers throwing in applications just to keep their JSA allowance going.

You need to pay more then. Part of the issue today is employers offering the bare minimum and expecting that people will bite their hands off for it. I'll make some assumptions and say it was minimum wage (or close to it) factory or warehouse work that you were offering?

Complete ****. Just because people aren't have to re-sole their shoes with cardboard or wear socks as gloves or whatever does not mean that there isn't the same level of poverty today its just that the standard of what we consider poverty has changed. I grew up in an ex-mining village in SW valleys in the 90's and 00's. I can assure you that there are still a lot of people who exist in comparative poverty. Families having to rely on charitable handouts and food banks to get along. The issues run deeper than people making the choice between shopping for the week or iPhone 11 or whatever egregious comments people tend to make when discussing this topic.

Jesus ****, the boomers are out in force. "When I were a lad we had no central heating. The only warmth to be found on a cold winters eve was that found when we all huddled around old dad's hairy ********" The past wasn't necessarily better than the present but the youth of today aren't struggling because they like to buy a greggs pasty on the way into work rather than home made sandwiches or have a relatively new car rather than an old ****box that needed a new box and 8 hours of welding to pass each MOT like many of you may have had. They're struggling because its generally **** (same as its always been) and they are facing real issues. TLDR: It was **** back then and its still **** now but only the things that were **** back then are different to things that are **** today.

1 this morning from the garden that has been wrecking the bird feeders over the last few weeks. I caught him red handed this morning and he paid the price. Seasoned male. New total = 594

Mork shooting club in St Braivels was around £16 for 60 birds last time I shot there, probably around 6 months ago. No doubt its up around £20 these days.

Waun Uchaf shooting ground in Coelbren, Neath. A but far from Chepstow unfortunately😄

One thing to consider if you're using the post to lock in a vehicle desirable to thieves is that they will not hesitate to become intruders and come for you for the keys to the post lock. It may deter your average opportunistic scumbag or help prevent the careless from reversing into your drive but if you have something valuable like a range rover and it's being stolen to order then they are likely going to be tooled up to break in and take the keys by force. Just one of those things that is better dealt with by the insurance Co after the fact than yourself at 2:30AM with a steel pipe across the face. At the very least leave the keys near the front door where they any intruder can take them without having to fight for them.

That's a valid point. The importer would likely sell them at whatever the going rate is per thousand minus £20 and pocket the rest. Shame really as I'd have no issue blasting thousands of dirt cheap cartridges if I could get them at a reasonable rate.

Maybe an infiltration of cheap chinese cartridges into the UK market would be a good thing. It would certainly send a rocket up the *** of the UKs embedded suppliers and encourage them to stop ripping us off. They can't be any worse than Eley Selects..

Universal trap was a good cartridge at £220 - £230 a thousand but I can't stand to pay nearly £265 for them now when there are better options at that price point. Like superfarts.. Smart strikes now around £300 a thousand..

I doubt it. Steel will rise in the same manner to be kept above lead. Caledonian used to sell a steel clay cartridge, a 28g 7 shot at £48 per slab. Overnight, without any prior warning they increased the price to £78 per slab. A £30 increase for seemingly no reason. Today they are £84 per slab. The price has near enough doubled in under 12 months. I can only assume that they were eating into the sales of their lead cartridges or there's just too much temptation to sell steel as an exotic and therefore more cost demanding alternative. Shame really as they were very good cartridges. A bit punchy but fast with a tight pattern and good breaks at distance.

My local Sunday shoot has been relatively quiet for the last 5-6 weeks or post Christmas break really. They would normally have circa 20-25 shooters on even the wet and cold Sundays but we they've been down around the 8-12 mark lately. Those attending are either young, without families and/or spending commotments or the relatively well off retired. At £10 for 50 clays which is just about the cheapest around there isnt much else in the way of competition. A lot of the older faces have not been seen for a while and quite a few others are limiting themselves to once a month due to the costs and increases in their everyday spend. I'm quite fortunate that I do well enough and don't have children or a family to support but if I did then shooting would be a non starter. Now that the game season has ended and the weather is starting to improve I would normally plan to shoot a registered comp most weekends with 100 bird practice on Saturdays and Thursdays. I may need to take a look at that this year. It seems a bit off to be spending £90 a week on entry fees and another £80 - £100 on cartridges and more on fuel, coffees etc. This time last year it would have been £75 on entry with £60 at most on cartridges. Only a £35 a week increase but it adds up over the course of a summers clay shooting. I've had two separate email advertisements this week from just cartridges regarding new (rebadged existing) gamebore cartridges. Black Gold Onyx which, as far as I can tell, are just a rebranded Black Gold and the Rose Gold which are the discontinued White Gold cartridges. It goes without saying that both have been launched with a significant increase in cost. The Onyx starting at £449 per thousand. I wonder if this is the start of manufacturers discontinuing existing product lines to mask the cost increases by giving us nothing to compare today's pricing to. I remember Fiocchi litespeed being less than £190 per thousand and now they are over £240 at a local RFD. Eley Selects and Express English sporting have both also seen similar increases in this time. This summer will be the third year of my first SGC cert to give an idea of timescale.

I've signed that previously to this thread. Quite frankly takes the ****. With all going on in the UK at current that Welsh government can even consider directing resources to this sort of ********. It's the child smacking ban all over again. That wasted so much government time and money at a time when it could have been better spent ensuring that the fundamental root cause of kids being walloped are addressed like effective schooling, parental education and engagement etc.

Wood burning stoves are possibly the only remaining method of providing yourself with warmth that is completely free to use and free from external interference. Government doesn't like that as there isn't a way in which they can insert control or an easy method of squeezing tax out of it. You can burn as much or as little as you like and nobody can really do anything about it. (Some smoke control areas etc accepted) At this time of energy insecurity a multi fuel stove is (IMO) a life essential piece of kit. No amount of Government twittery and mismanagement of energy policy will see you go cold in the event of a south Africa style energy rationing timetable being enforced.

I kind of feel you there.. I'd be pretty ****** if I'd paid £100's or possibly £1000's for a day and all I had over me all day were birds that were so close you could touch the tail feathers or micro dots in the sky. You're paying for a day's sport so it's up to the keeper to put sporting birds over you. If they can't then you certainly need to be asking questions when it comes to handing over the money at the end of the day. I'm sure your interpretation of what is considered too low or too high will become a little fogged through frustration and some birds may be shot a little closer or further than what's traditional. Fortunately I've not been in that situation to date and most keepers IME will bend over backwards to accommodate anyone who hasn't had their fair share of shots.

The arrogance on this one eh? An almost unique English quality that you just can't get anywhere else. You asked What has Wales got that anyone wants /or is capable of exploitation, I answered.

Not that I support Independence or anything but doesn't Wales supply millions of gallons of water across the boarder every year to supply most of the Midlands? I can see massive issues should that supply be regulated and charged at a profitable rate. It would take years for the infrastructure to be updated in Liverpool, Cheshire, Birmingham etc to meet the demands and likely wouldn’t happen anyway. If I remember my secondary school history correctly, lots of vulnerable people were displaced by Westminster so they're homes could be demolished and the valleys flooded to create reservoirs to exclusively serve those areas over the boarder. If that's not exploitation then?

Wales will never achieve independence. In doing so they (Welsh government) would be killing thier one and only hostage. If they can't blame England for their shortfalls then even their country will turn to them for answers which they have not and will not ever have. These past few years Welsh government have shown even more incompetence than Westminster and yet they'll do what they've always done, blame the English. Then come voting time they'll sail home on a wave of labour support and begin another 4 years of driving Wales further into the dark ages.

I would guess its a combination of all of the above but mainly taking shots too close with too much cartridge. I used a 28 Bore for some of my shooting this year and having not used a 28 bore before it took some working out on appropriate ranges etc. First bird I took was a 20-25 yard crossing bird which I thought would have been about the ideal range for a small calibre with 24g of Eley 6 shot and 1/2 choke. Completely inedible, looked as if I'd shot it with a slug. Caught the bird centre pattern and centre mass. I've since patterned the gun on a 30 yard plate and the pattern Is indeed very tight. Most of the shot within a football with a few flyers dotted around. I normally carry a few different cartridges to suit the range of the different drives we do. Some are perfect for small calibres or 28g of 7's etc. Some need a good load of 5's as the birds are up there.

Quite a poor season here. Very warm and unseasonal weather at the start meant there wasn't much in the way of migratory birds arriving and what did arrive stayed inland on the reens and dykes. November and December seemed to be the best weatherwise but due to work and/or game shooting commitments I didn't really get a chance to go out. End of January and all of February unusually calm and very poor fowling conditions. I did get a few days out with one of this years probationary members and naturally let him take most of any birds that presented themselves. Hopefully he will have enjoyed his days out and rejoin next year as a result. No geese spotted this year other than a resident flock of Canadas which never presented themselves. Managed 1 x Teal which fell onto open sea and kept diving away from the dog so wasn't picked. Must do better next year.

That's good to hear. It will be the longest 4 weeks of your life..

Name to remain CPSA according to today's newsletter. Makes sense to me. Changing the name would have cost an extraordinary amount of money at a time where it could be better spent supporting the development of the sport, developing up and coming grounds and ensuring that we still have an affordable and enjoyable sport in 10 years time. Not one single **** would be given to a name change by anyone of the mentality to oppose the sport because the alludes to a past of live pigeon shooting. Same goes for potantial advertisers etc. The best thing CPSA and other associations could do right now is to work with a manufacturer like Empire Cartridges (or other small UK owned and run) and do whatever they can to help increase their output and decrease costs. Very few people will still be shooting clays recreationally in 10 years time if the cheapest cartridges available are over £400 a thousand. Gamebore, Hull, Eley etc are taking us for a ride and it's about time someone filled the gap to provide a cheap and cost effective alternative that those thousands of weekend club shooters can use and not have to forgo the months mortgage to afford. An investment into a small UK manufacturer to provide them with the facility to produce cases, shot, wads and prehaps even powder in the UK would go a lot further toward securing the sport than a rebrand to remove the word pigeon from the name of the sports central association.

They make convenient distractions from real, everyday issues. USA is currently dealing with a near chernobyl level chemical disaster due to a train derailment in Ohio but all you see in the US media is those ******* balloons.