Aspirations for 2015

Hello again Air Gun World reader,

It’s become a tradition in my household that one evening every month my friends descend upon my home for a movie and pizza evening, on this particular evening before the picture show started we all broke into discussion about the year which is coming to an end and what we have achieved or failed to achieved. One of my friends spoke about their new car, my other friend told us about their new fitted kitchen, for me as always it was all about (I think you’ve all guessed it) air gunning! Now a couple of my friends told me they thought that I have an unhealthy gun fetish, so I used this opportunity to explain to them about how it’s almost a spiritual thing for me. I know all you hunters out there understand where I’m coming from with this, to be out in the early hours of the morning in wild places can make me feel so connected to what’s real and not these urban concrete jungles most of us live in today. Now I live on a typical modern housing estate, like most of you good people reading this do, so when I can find time to get out into our beautiful British countryside I’m out there and cherishing every millisecond. One of the things I’ve started doing over the last few months which has really made a massive improvement for my hunting forays is testing different pellet brands through my rifles. Now I was sceptical that this would really make much difference, but I can assure you people when you set some target cards out at 25 yards and try some different brands through your rifle, it’s amazing how the variation in pattern size becomes. So I’ve learnt now that each of my rifles has its own preferred pellet. I’ve also started washing and dabbing lube over my pellets before use and putting these two tasks together I can say has improved my groups no end. Now I must confess that since I’ve started shooting, when it’s come to the delicate business of fitting a scope and mounts to my rifles I’ve always played on the “ But I’m just a girl, can you do it for me?” card, and I’ve always had one of my shooting buddies come and do this highly scientific surgical procedure to my rifles on my behalf , but I’m willing to stand on my kitchen stool these days and shout to the world with huge pride that the last two scopes fitted to my rifles I did all on my lonesome. So now if I miss, it really is my fault and I can’t call a friend and say “it’s your fault I missed today because of the way you bodged my scope”. It’s all on me! I am also going to learning this coming year all the technical side of how a rifle or pistol is put together, I’ve always been interested in learning, but I’ve never taken that step to learning the scientific parts. God help my poor guns, but you have to learn somewhere.

One of the big decisions I had to make this year was trying to find an even more compact air rifle for my pigeon decoying. I’d been using an FX Verminator MK1 which has been a truly fantastic rifle to me but even though this is a really compact rifle I still occasionally found myself getting tangled up in my hide net at a crucial moment. So after many hours spent trolling the internet and going through all my back issues of Air gun World and Air gunner magazine I finally decided upon an Evanix Rainstorm and so far it’s proving to be a wise choice, my days of getting tangled have at last come to an end! Little did I know that buying this gun would also unlock a door of opportunity for me… Now I decided to buy the Rainstorm from the fantastic guys at Solware of Tamworth through recommendation, unbeknown to me the guys were already aware of the Trigger Happy community facebook page, so I was blown away when Carl and Tye made an incredible offer of allowing me to review some of the fantastic range of pistols and rifles these guys stock! Talk about having to pinch myself to make sure this wasn’t a dream come true. If the reviewing for Solware wasn’t incredible enough, just to make my year even more full of excitement, I was then offered the opportunity by Terry Doe to write a piece for Air Gun World magazine. Talk about feeling honoured!! But trust me, there’s not a second that goes by that I don’t appreciate everything that’s happened to me.

Going into this New Year something I will definitely be doing is joining a club. Having a place I can go to, to draw off everybody’s knowledge to improve my own shooting is an absolute must! I’ve been narrowing down the clubs by friendliness, approachability and distance, I think at last (and it really hasn’t been easy) I think I have found a club that is going to fit the bill perfectly so that is something I’m really excited about this coming year. Seeing all this new night vision technology that’s become available and more affordable over the last few years has got me interested in another avenue of shooting I would like to explore. I bought this up on the Trigger Happy page and the guys from NVUK (night vision UK) have given me the opportunity to go along and try some of this new technology at a night time shoot being held by FieldShott shooting range Of Kingsbury. One of the other events I’ve been invited to, which took me by huge surprise, was an invite to Bisley shooting ground to have a whole day shooting with Terry Doe. This is something that I never believed would happen to me, to be able to learn from who I see to be the greatest teacher of all time, I was sat gobsmacked for about an hour before being snapped back into reality. So along with three of my trustworthy Trigger Happy members, I will be eagerly waiting upon this day to arrive as we are all super excited to be not only be spending the day with such a legend in our eyes, but to be learning and taking in as much as possible to help us improve our shooting skills and set us up for the rest of our shooting days.

Another thing I would like to achieve in the New Year when spring hits us, and this is something I’ve mentioned before, I will be setting up shooting days on one of my permissions to those who have been unsuccessful at retrieving land to shoot on. I am very lucky enough to have somewhere to be able to shoot and never take it granted, I can understand how difficult it can be to obtain a permission which is why I will be inviting selected shooters out there to come along and have a days shooting experience. I am hoping this will be a good turnout and that I and those selected can learn from each other. For those who are unable to travel or already have their own permission, who would like the opportunity to have a day shooting and getting together, we have had several offers to host some Trigger Happy shooting days at various ranges across the UK, this is something we will be looking into in the New year to get us all together mingling and doing the one thing we are all so passionate about. As you guys may already know, I love my back garden plinking, it’s so much fun and I can’t help myself when boredom hits, I take out my pistols and get some fun practice in, but something I would like to improve this year is building a bigger back garden air pistol fun gun range, which I will update you all with once that has been built!

There are other topics I’ll be dabbling my toes in, but these are under wraps right now, so you guys will have to be patient and stay tuned to our webpage for these updates.

I have to say, although my year has been incredible and full of opportunities, when I do find the time to get out there when the sun is rising and the rest of the world are just waking, while I’m lay in a field awaiting my bunny friends… nothing beats that feeling of freedom and peace! After all, it was this feeling which had me hooked to our sport in the first place. The feedback, the support, discussions, participating in our competitions, watching our reviews and reading our stories… well, it’s absolutely amazing and I appreciate every single one of you for joining my online community and helping us to help spread just how brilliant our sport it! If you’re interested in taking part, don’t forget to check out my facebook page and I can steer you in the right direction.

Thanks for taking the time to read, You all stay safe! Happy shooting.

Published by Airgun World