English, Scots and Welsh Spring Meeting - Bisley 2012

A good turnout of eleven Scots attended the first of the year’s major shoots. Turnout was somewhat greater than in recent years, possibly influenced by the Woomera squad practice on the preceding day. Conditions were fine with some interesting winds, particularly on Sunday. But good conditions for evaluating the experimentation with new bullets and powders which appeared widespread.

On Saturday a chill headwind, angling, deceptively took the edge off scores, only two possibles being recorded at 1000 yards.Overall leader by two points was A Gent on 217. Leading Scot was Jim McAllister on 214.

It was perhaps the general atmosphere of innovation which prompted the English Eight Club to introduce a novel diversion in the form of a helicopter descent into the Danger Area during the final part of Saturday’s shooting. This, (actually a misguided response by police and air ambulance to an incident just outside the DA), resulted in the loss of most of the final 1200 yards detail. As a consequence the evening was enlivened by energetic debate around what to do about the missing scores.

On the English side it was decided that for those who had been unable to finish their shoot (barely started in some cases) Sunday’s 1200 stage scores would be doubled for the missing shots. However the consensus among Scots was that, particularly if Sunday’s conditions were significantly different, this could result in trophies being won on the strength of ‘imaginary’ shots. Better to discount the whole of the unfinished 1200 stage and award the Scottish trophies on the five properly completed ranges, although this would mean discounting some excellent scores made by competitors in the earlier 1200 details.

On Sunday conditions were indeed quite different. The initial dead calm soon progressing to a brisk South-Westerly with sudden large variations in strength, some in excess of five minutes, and almost impossible to read accurately. Few broke 70 at 1100 and only one, Colin Hayes, at 1200 with a magnificant 71, to win our Ranken Cup for the truncated 1200 Aggregate. Notably, adding this score to an excellent 69 made on the previous day, produces a total which would have been a winning one by English reckoning too.

Top scorer on Sunday was Nick Tremlett on 213 with Tim Kidner placed third, one point behind, as high Scot. Overall winner for the week-end was Nick on 426; Jim McAllister was third on 422.

Detailed results can be found on englishviii.org.uk. In the event the destinations of our two trophies were unaffected by our decision to discount the unfinished range, but for the record the full corrected results for the Scottish VIII Cup are appended below.

Scotland Winning Team 1930