At home on the range

Charlotte Peters, Sporting Gun’'s digital editor, tears herself away from her screen to take part in an introduction to rifles course at the West London Shooting School

- Charlotte Peters

If you want a useful team member for a pub quiz, I’m your woman. As an editor, you read thousands of words and along the way amass a mine of general knowledge. Everything from knowing the capital of Burkina Faso (Ouagadougou) to when Lego was invented (1932).

However, I’ve always felt my knowledge fell down when it came to the finer points of rifle shooting. I’ve been puzzled by the sheer amount of different calibres available and the different names given to rounds in Europe, England and the US. So when I was invited to review an introduction to rifles course at the West London Shooting School (WLSS) it took me about 30 seconds to email back, “Yes, please.”

Arriving at the WLSS, you are greeted by an atmosphere of purposeful activity,tradition, lived-in comfort and a couple of spaniels pottering about the large hallway.

I was shown upstairs to the Purdey room, which was set out as a classroom, with a large screen at the front – good for the longsighted – and an array of rifles laid out, with different sizes of bullets.

The course leader, Paul Gendall, introduced himself and his colleague Mark Vesey-Thompson, of sporting agency Glorious Game.

Any questions

There were six of us on the course and Paul asked us what we wanted to learn from the day and whether we had any background in rifle shooting.

We ranged from a participant who had shot with the air cadets, an American who wanted to go out hunting with his father and a brother and sister keen to take up target shooting. To be fair, she was a somewhat unwilling participant and said she had been “dragged along”, but more of that later.