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Shooting Disciplines

Currently, our main disciplines are airgun, rifle and shotgun shooting

 

Airgun Shooting

Both air pistol and air rifle shooting are an accessible way into the sport. Air gun calibres are either .177 or .22.

.177 is the most popular calibre for competitive target shooting. Both are shot from a standing position, usually at a range of 10 metres or 6 yards.

Rifle Shooting

We split rifle shooting into small-bore and full-bore shooting.

Small-bore shooting

Small-bore rifle shooting is the most popular form of rifle shooting in the UK. It involves using .22-rimfire calibre rifles, which are low-powered and suitable for indoor ranges. The National Small-bore Rifle Association (NSRA) governs small-bore competitions in the UK. Small-bore shooting is on the Olympic programme.

One of the advantages of small-bore shooting is that it can be done indoors, allowing for year-round competition.

We participate in two types of small-bore competition: ‘prone’ and ‘lightweight sporting rifle’.

Prone Rifle

 

Prone rifle is the traditional form of small-bore shooting. Shooters fire from a lying position at a target 25 yards away. The rifles used are typically specialised heavyweight target rifles with precision aperture sights. Despite the relatively short distance, the target is small, making even the slightest movement a significant challenge. Prone rifle is the foundation of rifle shooting in the UK.

Lightweight sporting rifle

Lightweight sporting rifle is a more recent addition to small-bore shooting, essentially replacing pistol shooting. Shooters use a sporting rifle, often a magazine-fed repeater, to fire at a target from a standing position. There are classes for rifles with iron sights or optical sights. Most of our members participate in lightweight sporting rifle competitions, which are held at local and national levels. We've had great success at the county level.

Full-bore shooting

This covers shooting with rifles using cartridges that are larger than the .22 rimfire cartridge (see Guns and Ammunition for the types of guns and cartridges we use). The National Rifle Association (NRA) governs this branch of the sport. As a club, we take part in two types of full-bore shooting: gallery rifle and full-bore rifle.

Gallery rifle

These fire centre-fire pistol cartridges. They are usually lever action repeating rifles of the Winchester or Marlin type. Because they shoot pistol cartridges, they are relatively low powered and can be shot at short range (25 metres) on indoor ranges. With these, we can take part in competitions just like the 'light weight sporting rifle'. We occasionally shoot them at 100 or 200 yards at the NRA's Bisley ranges, in Surrey.

Full-bore rifle

These fire high power centre-fire cartridges. They are usually shot at distances from 200 to 1200 yards; we shoot these rifles at Bisley ranges,  one of the world’s premiere shooting complexes. The NRA organises competitions for various classes of rifle, but the Club organises its shoots as 'F' class. This allows club members to shoot with any suitable rifle. The Club goes once a month to Bisley, at weekends. Often, members may shoot gallery rifles and muzzle loading pistols at 25 metres on covered ranges. There is also a clay shoot onsite on the Commonwealth Games layout.

Muzzle-loading pistol

In Britain the private ownership of pistols, and pistol shooting is prohibited. However, this excludes that are loaded from the muzzle (i.e. antique style pistols that were obsolete by the 1870s) from this prohibition. As such, you can still own and shoot a pistol if it is loaded with loose powder and a bullet through the muzzle. You can use a genuine antique, but the supply of good quality, shootable examples is limited, and continued use could see the destruction of valuable examples, so many choose to use replica black powder firing pistols. 

Shotgun shooting

Shotguns are used for clay shooting, which is the sport of shooting at flying clay targets. Actually, they are made of plaster, not clay, and they look like saucers, not pigeons. A shotgun is a smoothbore gun, (that is the barrels are not rifled with the grooves used in rifles that spin the bullet in flight to stabilise it) and it fires a cartridge that contains shot, rather than a single bullet. 'Shot' is tiny pellets of lead, usually less than a couple of millimetres in diameter. The cartridge is loaded with hundreds of these pellets. On firing, these pellets form a fast-moving cloud of particles flying towards the target. The trick is to get the cloud of pellets and the clay in the same place at the same time. As the clay can be travelling at up to 50 mph, this can be tricky. Because these pellets are very small, they are also very light and once having left the muzzle of the gun, they slow down rapidly, limiting the range of a shotgun. As such most clays are shot at less than 30 yards away, and rarely more than 50 yards. This means that it is easier to set up a clay-shooting layout than a rifle range, because the amount of danger area space required is far less.

The techniques for clay shooting are entirely different from rifle shooting - the target is moving, the gun is moving, and it has no sights in the conventional sense and it is not deliberately aimed. Clay shooting is about hand-to-eye co-ordination, instinct and reaction. The joy of clay shooting is that you either hit the target (in which case it usually explodes in a puff of dust), or you miss completely.