Sunday 27th January

The morning of Sunday 27th January brought the beginning of the individual competition at Seddon range at Trentham, with the Wellington Rifle Association Championships, or the “WRA” for short.
After the range gave us a taste of its fearsome reputation yesterday, the team were hoping for an easier start to the individual shooting (or at least some of them!). We arrived with overcast skies, a calm wind and light drizzle – something which helped the more homesick members of the team!

The WRA is a day’s competition in entirety, with 2 sighting shots and 7 to count at 300, 600, 800 and 1000 yards. The morning, as mentioned, was more akin to a calm day at Bisley – so the team could focus on solid positions and good shooting at 300 and 600 yards. New Zealand individual competition is done in a string format, with each shooter firing by themselves, before working a scoreboard as a “check scorer”, then finally register keeping for the shooter 2 after they fired. Very different to Bisley –  many of the team have done it before, but not for at least a year in competition!After lunch, the skies cleared and “classic Trentham” conditions started to come forth from over the left shoulder, with lovely sunshine to boot. After a hearty lunch the team tackled 800 yards, with conditions constantly becoming trickier as time went on.

1000 yards had the wind in full action, swinging through zero with strong gusts. Featuring firing on ICFRA targets, with shooters easily being pushed for a magpie (3 out of 5) or worse, it was still considered only a 4/10 in terms of how difficult this range can be. The team began their final shoot with a great sense of excitement/determination/dread and, after the dust had settled, retired to the clubhouse area for a celebratory beer/soft drink alternative.

Even with a tricky 1000 yard detail, 3 of the team managed to score 137/140 and Bruce Winney and Parag Patel shared the spoils with a 137.15, but Bruce took it on countback, finishing in 14th overall, with Parag 15th. Tom Drysdale was 3rd in the team, 19th overall, only 1 V bull behind. The winning score was a 139.17 by Andre Du Toit of South Africa, with Chris Schwebel and Duncan Davies of Australia in 2nd and 3rd, 1 and 3 V bulls back.The evening was spent going out for dinner, and with target teams preparing for the New Zealand match tomorrow.