UKAHFT Rounds 3 and 4

Gary Chillingworth brings us up to date with the competition news

The first double-header of the year, shooting on Saturday and Sunday, Maldon and District (M.A.D) has a reputation for being the party round. Shooters come from all over the country and camp, their cars jam-packed with large bottles of elderberry wine and cans of superstrength lemonade, they turn up en masse on Thursday and Friday to start the weekend early, and for 2017, we even had some overseas travellers from Holland.

Maldon has some of the finest shooters in the country and these reprobates not only know how to shoot, but they also know how to lay on a course that will bewitch and beguile, challenge and test the rest of the shooting fraternity. This year, the course setters were Richard Woods, Jean Greatrex and Steve Edmonson and I think that they put on two of the most challenging courses I have ever shot.

Richard is the current UKAHFT champion and he set out a course that was so good that he crashed and burned on it. He made an excuse that he had stubbed his toe before shooting it, but we all knew that this wasn’t true. Rich had spent nearly two weeks setting a course that was both long and technical. The hill, which formed part of it, is well known for striking fear into the HFT world, and this year was no different. I will give you a ‘for instance’: I approached the peg at the top of the hill and held the string in my hand – the target was 40 yards away and high in a tree – and as I looked at the string, the first 15 yards of it was bending right to left, the next 15 was left to right, and the final bit seemed to be going up and down. So, how on earth do you read the wind with information like that?