As the second half of our tour gets underway we found ourselves at a significant milestone; today we finally started shooting at Borden. Spirits were high as many had performed very well in Quebec, but we all knew as we headed down the range that things were about to get more serious.

Legions of grasshoppers fled our approach as we got into position, and we were warned during the safety briefing that we needed to be careful with our rubbish in case black bears came to investigate. We were told that shooting might stop mid afternoon due to the heat and the fact that it hasn’t rained here for over a month, in case the range caught fire – this didn’t happen and we didn’t have to stop as it would later turn out. In the end today brought a myriad of notable events, but overall despite the mercury climbing up to touch the thirties the GB team stepped up with a number of outstanding individual performances.

Simon Shouler won the Presidents Match with a 50.9 and no less than five team members were required for an eight way tie shoot at 500 yards, with Rich Stewart taking victory on the second shot of sudden death. It was fortunate that the tie shoot ended at this point as no one had been budgeting for tie shoots and neither he nor John Underwood had any ammunition left at this point. The team occupied a large part of the upper echelons of the leaderboard at days end.

As with any long, hot day on the range there were the inevitable small to medium sized errors; one of our gazebos was temporarily adopted by another team, Tom ended up taking Sasha’s rifle for a walk by accident, cross shots & overheating tablets rained down around us from other targets and we even managed to do a very respectable tie shoot whilst observing the wrong target.

All in all though a highly successful start, with more progress sure to be made, for now though an early night before another very hot day on the range tomorrow.

TB