The informal spontaneous clay bash.

[fortune]

I have a friend who is a gun/shooting fanatic. A lovely bloke. On Sunday one of the son in laws and myself went to give him some time to repair one of his tractors and give advice on the repair of a timber trailer. If we get near this place and the man, you can say goodbye to the whole day. He always ends the invitation call with "if you come up, don't come without a gun or two, and a load of lead". "I will be offended if you don't bring a gun". It is fatal to tell the wife that we are only going to be a couple of hours. This never happens and we get the look and a load of grief when we get back to our respective homes at the end of the day. No because we've been out enjoying ourselves but because we said that we'd only be a couple of hours when we knew full well that we would be all day or two or three. Its likely that he will say something like,"come on get loaded up we're going of to xyz shooting", and not come back for a couple of days. I now just say,"you'll see me when I get back.

Well we did the job and coffee was issued. A motor trap was dragged out and a battery fitted clays were loaded and another box hauled up a tower. S.i.law and myself shot off several boxes of carts whilst more coffee was made. Then we set up a bench table and some targets. They shot their 17hmrs zeroing up. s.i.law then zeroed his 223 and tried out some 55grn soft points that I had loaded for him to try. Then it was back to bashing the clays again. The wind was blowing hard and he had a load of battue clays along with standards and midis up the tower. He was just throwing them in any order that came to hand. They were being launched directly into the wind and they were unbelievabley unpredictable. It was not long before we had half a barrow full of cartridges and we called a halt because we were frozen solid by the wind. So another day of pleasant company and shooting was done. We wait for warmer weather and longer days,more clays, cartridges and targets to shoot at. Pure pleasure. Roll on global warming. I'm not keen on the battue clays they were all over the place in the strong gusty wind that made them veer up vertical and then twist on edge and then dive nearly vertically down and back to the base of the trap. No natural target flies like that.

[buze]

Sounds like a hell of a great time! And well done on the battues. I shoot in Wales a lot, and on a windy day, some clays are picked up by the wind and just *whooosh* 1/4 miles down the valley before you can shoulder the gun. Always a good laugh :-)

Just take you're revenge on the next one!

[fortune]

It went down the Valleeyy.