Club News

2022 News

11th Dec Not the Turkey Shoot at Popham

The club ran the second ever Not The Turkey Shoot, weather was a freezing -5C, leading to a few equipment and people failures. Tim won the FT and Peter the HFT

None Standard scoring codes are as follows - FF = Fingers Failure : EF = Equipment Failure : YAAM = You Are All Mad

4th Dec The Turkey Shoot at The Walled Garden

The club ran our annual walled garden Turkey Shoot,

Congrats to all who took part and especially the winners

20th Nov : Club held another 25 yard Benchrest shoot

Shooting off a rifle rest at a sturdy bench sat down on a chair at a paper target ONLY 25 yards away .. dead easy right ? Turns out not to be so easy as many club members imagined. The aimed at centre bull is just 2mm in diameter with our 10 score ring being 8mm in diameter.

The club shoots are much simpler than the regional or national benchrest ones, and while our target is based of the National target, ie using a best edge (inward) scoring system. Our Max score is 80 plus 8X as we only shoot 8 targets and run a scoring system each ring scoring one higher than the national system. Our Target also only has 2 sighting targets.

Todays Scores where

And as always with a club shoots some pics which because of safety are a lot of backs of heads on concentrating shooters

13th Nov : BARPC Hosts Rd2 of CSFTA HFT WL

All the competing teams in the CSFTA WL offer up to host one round and today it was our Event. The set up team spent Saturday Morning in Popham checking for tree damage obscuring targets, changing them around, painting the plates and paddles, checking strings. Once the new course was set the targets hit zone sizes and distance from the firing line where double checked to ensure compliance with the CSFT HFT rules. Then every target was double checked again for compliance to any visibility / line of sight requirements. The mandatory plink was set up and targets again painted. This all is simply prep for the main event on Sunday. The BARPC Marshal and event team started to arrive at Popham at 6:30 am to again double check no trees / branches down overnight, re check the signage and set up the check in area so that when shooters arrived it was all slick and professional. The weather was looking very favorable, misty start at around 10C but forecast to get sunny and up to 16C with little to no wind. Shooters started to arrive around 8:30 and the burger van was soon in full production of some pretty amazing Bacon butties and warm cups of tea and coffee. The safety briefing started at the required 9:30 and shooting commenced at 10am. The event was 65 shooters all looked after by 5 BARPC Marshals / Volunteers. As shooting started the mist lifted and we had beautiful blue and sunny skies and as promised no wind. Perfect conditions for a shoot.

As the say a picture paints a thousand words, so 200 plus pictures must be even better. We added in a gallery of the day available here. These pictures have been reduced to 800 * 600 on the website, however if any of the competing clubs or shooters want a copy of the original higher definition photos they can contact BARPC and request them

I pulled out a few pictures of some of the club members involved

9th Sept 2022

BARPC's HFT shooters competed in round 1 of the CSFTA Winter League at Bisley

Sept 2022

Congratulations to our indoor team for coming 3rd in Division 1 in this years NSRA 10m Pistol summer league.

8th Sept - 26th Sept

During the Official Mourning period of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the BARPC website respectfully displayed our members thoughts

George Wedge Commemorative Shoot 14th August

The club was extremely happy to get our first post pandemic charity shoot held today at the Walled Garden.  George Wedge was a very long standing club member who sadly died from cancer. He was probably one of the most friendly people you could meet and had his own special seat on the range, spending hours plinking using mostly custom finished rifles. The George Wedge Commemorative Shoot is an event which will allow the club to remember both George as well as many other 'serving' members whose names also appear on the trophy in memory.

A number of member braved the Met Office Extreme Heat Warning, to take part in the shoot and great fun was had by all .. The course setters excelled them selves with a fun but challenging course for us.

Congratulations to Simon Barker on his win and he will be joining the previous winners in the masters for next years shoot. Sue Davison took second place and Saif Ahmad 3rd after a shoot off with John Puddick

Previous winners of the shoot, compete only against them selves and Dave Godwin, yet again won the masters. Congratulations to all the winners and a massive thanks to all who competed.

Andy does have a PCP

Targets hidden in the grass

More Short Ones

Ohhh and Long ones

Cones, Round the Bend, Match Sticks, Polo's

Cone Zone !

John in his shoot off

Saif in his shoot off

New Members Induction 9th July

The club was pleased to be able to hold their first new members induction of 2022 today. Busy session as 15 potential members attended and all joined. Due to being so busy the club volunteers running the session for got to take pictures

BARPC and Old Basing Scout and Guides Centenary Fete 18th June

The 3rd Saturday in June usually see’s the club helping out the Old Basing Carnival by running a have a go shoot at the recreation ground in Old Basing during which we promote the club and target shooting in general. Sadly, the carnival and procession hasn’t gone ahead this year following the two years of COVID although plans are in place for next year.

As the carnival date was left vacant, the various local Scouts and Guide’s, Cubs and Brownies etc groups decided to put on a fete to both celebrate 100 years of scouting and guiding in Old Basing and to help raise money towards the new Scout/Guide hut.

Members of the fund raising and support team contacted me to see if we could run a air rifle have a go stand and after Bryn and I visited to check the area and safety aspects, we agreed to lend our support.

Saturday morning saw club members putting out an acceptable (animal/bird shaped targets are not allowed to be shot at under scouting rules) “reactive” target course at the end of the Scout huts grounds and camping field and included Nockover targets, lollipop targets, spinners and a couple of bells out to 35 yards.

A few light showers didn’t appear to put many off and we had a stream of participants young and old from midday when the fete opened, right through to the 4.00pm close with many coming back for numerous goes. We even had a club member have a go who hit the furthest target on his last shot (well done Matt) and saved a ribbing from the rest of us!

It was great to see Tony back at a club event, who helped by signing people in and reliving them of their pocket change for the cause. In the end we tallied a round £100, beating my wife Jackie on the tombola takings by some £20.00, not that we were in competition.

The money has been donated to the Scouts and Guides hut fund and Andy and Graham and the other organiser’s wish to offer their since thanks to the club and members for helping make the day a huge success. For our part, we had the opportunity to promote sporting air rifle target shooting and the club in a highly positive and constructive light including to Dame Maria Miller our local MP who has visited the club previously and our “Have a Go Stand” at the carnival

None of this would have been possible though without the help of the following members, Bryn, Simon, Richard M. John P, Tony, Stewart, Andy and Gary and Cooper. I thank you for your help gents. Bob




Popham 1st May

Lovely shoot at Popham today, Bob Ward grabbed some more pictures of the excellent bluebell and Primroses. This year has been one of the best for the flowers.

Bluebells and Primroses

Bluebells and Primroses

Couple of FT shooters in the Bluebells

Sea of Colour

27th April Walled Garden Repaint

This morning 3 club volunteers (Richard Newcombe, John Puddick and Bryn Jones) arranged to met at the walled Garden and give our safety wall a spring clean and repaint. They cleared growth away from the front lower edge and gave the lower section a number of coats of paint to cover the various splat marks which occurred over the last few years since the complete rebuild we did in 2020, then gave the whole wall a couple of coats to make it look "as good as new".  Bryn has informed us that any one missing targets and hitting the back wall wil be fined £25 a miss from now on..  perhaps an excellent motivation to hit the targets.  As always a few pictures tell the tale

John and Bryn

Any Guess's what Bryn is Doing ?

Foreman Richard checking on progress

Foreman Richard showing us the wall

The Finished wall, cracking job team.

Looks like Bryn decided either (a) to help develop a new UK Army Camouflage scheme or (b) He could use his coat better than a brush to paint with


17th April Popham Bluebells

One of the most amazing sights regular spring time shooters at Popham look forward to is the amazing blanket of Bluebells on the wood floor




Popham Course Setting : An insight into the Art Form of Peter Chaffé

The club is really lucky to have many experienced and skilled people that work in the background making things happen for the members. One special skill is that of our FT/HFT course setters. The club recently asked one of our most experienced course setters to share with us some of the magic that is the artform.

Peter has been shooting with BARPC for around 27 years, having started with his eldest son who is 40 this year! That was a time when springer rifles were prevalent and course setting was "get it set up as quickly as possible, because I've got to help the missus with shopping later". Hunter Field Target (HFT) didn't even exist, just the Field Target (FT) discipline.

How things have changed - and course setting has almost become an art form! For ease of reading this topic, Peter has split all the information into the relevant disciplines.

HFT
Whilst in theory our course could consist of any distances, any kill zone size, etc., we try to comply with Central Southern Field Target Association (CSFTA) rules - especially as BARPC host a round of the CSFTA Club Winter League each year.

It's important to space out the 20 lanes (which involves 40 pegs, two per lane) within the allocated space for the overall course. There's no point setting up lanes 1-15 (30 pegs), only to find you've got 7 yards left to fit in the final 5 lanes and 10 pegs! So we initially walk the course, laying pegs 1 and 2 on the ground at the start, pegs 20 and 21 in the middle and pegs 39 and 40 at the end. It's then a case of filling in the gaps, laying each peg where we believe a target can be sited, with a recommended 5 yards minimum between each lane. Pegs aren't banged into the ground at this stage.

It's then a case of siting one target per lane, so that one shot can be taken with a part of your body being able to touch each of the two pegs for that lane. That could mean shooting prone, kneeling, or standing, depending on the target position - and remembering that there are left-handed people, youngsters, etc., who must similarly be able to find a safe route through any obstacle to the target. Sometimes it's tricky getting an accessible shot from both pegs - first peg fine, second peg there's a tree in the way! So a lot of clearing usually takes place!

HFT is based on hunting. In other words, the 'target' wouldn't normally be sitting in an open field, in clear sight. They would be partially hidden, up a tree, behind a bush, etc., so it's up to the shooter to find that clear shot through any 'crap' that might be in the way. Setting up our metal targets is based on that hunting tradition. Some are obscured, some are clearer but out much further, some are right in front of you but a smaller kill zone. Over the whole course, it's finding a balance between difficulty and not putting people off by making it too hard. I personally love to find that 'challenging' target position that makes the shooter think outside the box, whilst ensuring a good mix of prone and kneeling shots to enhance shooting skills. On our course, standing shots are thankfully few and far between!

I've mentioned kill zone size - well once you've chosen a potential target site, you have a choice of target to use. I can't think of an easy way to explain the complexities, other than bulleting each type together with their restrictions:

Target with 40mm kill zone

Target with 25mm reduced kill zone

Target with 15mm reduced kill zone

Distances are measured from the peg. In competitions there is also a firing line (which your trigger finger must never go over), approximately 1 yard in front of the pegs. Obstacles cannot be nearer than 8 yards from the pegs for ricochet safety purposes.

So… once you've chosen your target type for that lane, sited the distance and where it can go, checked there's an accessible shot from both pegs for right & left-handed people and youngsters - you can actually put the target up and bang the pegs into the ground. Of course putting up targets could be on a bracket, attached directly onto a tree, banged on a spike into the ground, etc.

And once you've done all that, there's another 19 lanes to go!

FT
The biggest difference in FT course setting, is that all targets must be unobscured allowing the shooter a clear shot from that shooting position (sitting, kneeling or standing). We still walk the course, laying road pins at the beginning, middle and end, then filling in the gaps. While the HFT course closely follows the latest CSFTA & British Field Target Association (BFTA) rules, the club has made a decision that for our club FT league we will deviate occasionally from the rules. Therefore, in our course, "the code is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules".

Like HFT, there are certain complexities governing the type of targets and distances used:

Like HFT, the FT course is a balance of distance, shooting position, kill zone size and difficulty. Targets are fixed on a bracket, attached directly onto a tree, banged on a spike into the ground, etc.

Ongoing Maintenance
Obviously there's a lot of ongoing work involved to ensure the courses remain fit for purpose. Before each shoot, targets must be spray painted and strings pulled out. We also check that nothing has fallen in the way since the last shoot - a perennial problem in Popham Woods! After each shoot, strings are wound in and targets checked that they're still firmly in position.

There's also regular 'tweaking' of both courses, to ensure boredom doesn't set in and people don't get too cocky! For example, finding new challenging target positions, changing a 40mm target for a 25mm reducer, making an HFT prone shot into a forced kneeler by placing an obstacle in front, etc. Simple changes to a few lanes can alter the course make-up in a huge way.

Peter Chaffé

20th Feb 2022 - A first timer at Popham Woods.

I’m a new member and joined the club in November 2021 and I’ve enjoyed shooting at the walled garden for the last few months. I am completely new to shooting - a raw beginner. I’d read on the club website about shooting at Popham Woods and I’d heard people talking about it on a Wednesday. But I just couldn’t picture what it was like - whether I’d be good enough without completely embarrassing myself! I had no idea what to expect.

BBut I decided to book and to go along. I couldn’t have picked a worse day, weather wise, for my first visit, as heavy rain was forecast. As it happens, it was only light drizzle and it didn’t affect me at all. I was met at the gate by the clubs Outdoor Secretary, Phil Cosham, who walked me through the woods to where we would be based, and he explained the layout of the woods and that there is a course of targets which you progress around. It’s very different from sitting on a comfortable chair at a table in the walled garden! In the woods, you make do with a cushion to sit on, or a mat to lie on, and it felt like shooting in the raw.

The woods are really beautiful and the shooting positions are set along a winding path. The targets are spread among the trees, and vary in shape, elevation and distance. It’s very interesting and also challenging. It was very nice to have range officers and more experienced shooters to talk to, who took an interest in how I was doing and gave me guidance.

The whole morning was incredibly relaxed and friendly and at no point did I feel, even as a beginner, that I was holding up anyone or was in anyone’s way. I could move along the course at my own pace. If you’ve never been to Popham Woods, whether a beginner or a long term shooter, I can’t recommend it enough.

Stewart.

© Copyright BARPC 2012 -