Annie Get Your Gun!

Devon lady guns is a group of female sharpshooters with their sights set on attracting new members and encouraging more women to take up the pastime. Sharon goble got fired up to meet them.

- Sharon Goble

CURIOSITY DROVE ME to accept an invitation to attend a meeting of Devon Lady Guns. I wasn’t sure quite what to expect from a group of women shooters. Would they be no nonsense ‘don’t-mess-with-me’ kind of gals?

As I headed towards our rendezvous near Tiverton, then waited for a 4x4 to take me down a steep track into a valley echoing with the sound of gun shots, I mentally prepared to meet the West Country’s equivalent of Annie Oakley or Calamity Jane. Of course, my imagination had got the better of me. They turned out to be a perfectly ordinary bunch of women of different ages and from different walks of life, who simply enjoy meeting up for a popular country pursuit and a spot of socialising.

I needn’t have worried about a dead rabbit or pheasant being laid at my feet either. This was a clay pigeon shoot, and the only perturbing thing was how deafening the gun fire was up close. A pair of ear plugs did the trick.