A week or so ago my niece Megan celebrated her 18th birthday with a family Clay Pigeon shoot, a most unusual event to celebrate ones coming-of-age, but a celebration of which I heartily approved. I spent a significant part of my youth avoiding parties (and indeed a significant part of my adult life) but if my friends had had the imagination to celebrate in this style, I would have been happy to have joined in to celebrate it with them.
The family, which in this case was Megan and her friend, my sister Pauline and brother-in-law Rob, Simon and Kate, and Chantal and of course me (Matthew was celebrating elsewhere at a stag weekend) met at Sibbertoft, not too far from any of us. The location was essentially a grown-ups playground, with quad biking, tracked vehicles, archery, hovercraft, and on this particular weekend a display of vintage commercial vehicles, as well as the clay pigeon shooting, which was tucked out of the way at the edge of some woods.
After signing in, we headed to the shooting area for instruction, and then spent a happy couple of hours (or in one or two cases happy once they had got over the stress of firing a real gun) firing at clays being launched from various directions after whoever was shooting had loudly commanded “Pull!”.
We each had 25 shots, taken 10 at a time. The first 10 were fired at clays launched diagonally across the field in front of the gun. For the second 10 shots the clay was ejected vertically from behind a grass bank, simulating a startled bird flying vertically upwards. The bird need not have worried – its chances of survival would have been pretty high. For the final 5 shots, the clay skimmed across in front of the gun, and had to be tracked before being shot.
None of us really disgraced ourselves, and Simon proved to be a natural, smashing quite a high proportion of the clays launched for him. The time went really quickly for all if us, and for me it interesting to see a professional set-up after many years of the annual New Year Shoot at my friend’s farm.
More photos in “Our Recent Photos”
Technically we live in Oaktree House, but sadly the tree had to go.
We now have a thriving Oakstump at the front of the house.
