Bisley Shooting Ground day with Terry Doe

In my latest article based on Strengths and weaknesses, I mentioned I would be attending Bisley shooting ground with our very own Terry Doe and Phil Price, here – as promised- is my update on some of the tweaks I have made to improve my shooting skills and these skills I will use in the field with me while out on hunting trips.

So the first thing I would like to discuss is hotels. I had never stayed in a hotel before in my life, until the evening before the ‘legendary learning day’, so if I wasn’t anxious enough – I was away from my cosy house, in a strange place that I’d never been before and totally full of nerves thinking about how hard Terry would be on us - and I soon found out I had every reason to be terrified!! Bisley was a lot bigger than I’d expected it to be, although I was reading directions on where to go, I’m not the best navigator in the world, my friend and I ended up getting lost. Nothing a quick phone call won’t sort though, so after a quick “help, Terry we’re lost” phone call - we were found and Terry took us under his wing for the day. When Terry first approached us my first impression was, he’s so HUGE! I’m so little. I’d heard that he was a friendly giant but I never imagined the height difference between myself and Terry would be so amusing. With a massive hug I was welcomed to Bisley and felt like we were all a big happy family. Then I met the Trigger Happy team for the first time in person, just how I imagined us all to be, like we’d known each other for years. I was so excited and proud to be stood amongst an amazing group of guys.

After signing in and getting our gear together, there was no going back; we were all set to go. I and my Team of Trigger Happy Admin were taken to a small section of Bisley and we had our very own 55 yard range! We all stood freezing and thinking ‘how on earth are we going to survive this day ahead’ – all except for Taz, who was an hour late and managed to miss the safety talk from Terry, didn’t escape too easily though as when the traffic decided to be kind to him and he eventually showed up, Phill Price gave Taz his very own safety talk. Speaking of which, first port of call we had a discussion on safety. Now we all think we know our safety and we all think we’re the safest of shooters, but really, when it comes to being out in that field or at the shooting range we can get easily distracted and forget sometimes to put our safety in order. BUT It is an absolute MUST that you remember your safety techniques and there are no excuses when it comes to handling our airguns. So- we were told these 3 ongoing phrases which we all no doubt hear quite often… “It’s okay – it’s only an air rifle”, “It’s okay – it’s not loaded” and “It’s okay – the safety is on”. We all know that an air rifle can do serious damage, maybe not as much damage as say, a shotgun, but it can still do damage if you take a shot to the body!! It is NOT okay to think that it’s acceptable to forget our safety rules when it comes to an air rifle. Nor is it okay to point your rifle in any direction you choose just because it’s not loaded, at one point, it may well be and would you really like to take the risk?! So we need to get into the habit of keeping our rifles facing downwards as to not cause any unwanted accidents in the future. The one that got me was “It’s okay – the safety is on!” as I have heard this many times before. Whoever walks around with a loaded magazine or a loaded springer, and thinks that its okay to suddenly pull that safety off to fire, I feel is playing with fire. I will have a loaded magazine on me at all times while hunting, but can honestly say, my magazine isn’t loaded until I’m set up and ready to shoot. I won’t ever load my rifle and decide to walk around relying on a teeny tiny safety catch which could easily get knocked off. All it takes is 10 seconds to load that magazine into your rifle or to load a springer with a pellet. So taking the lazy option and walking around loaded, just remember that if any mechanical faults were to occur or you unwillingly knock that safety catch, you’re at risk along with anyone who you’re out shooting with. Now I wouldn’t want to be in the position where a friend of mine is pointing a loaded airgun at me which is all ready to be fired with the flick of a catch. Would you? I do hope not! All being said, we came away knowing that we can all now confidently put those safety points across to other people and hopefully correct those who think its “okay” to practice any of these bad habits whilst out with their airguns.

So after our much needed discussion on safety, we were then taken into the ‘stance’ lessons. I truly believe that we are all the same out there when it comes to hunting, we all have our bad days and that will always happen. This can be down to weather conditions, it could simply be that our game is hiding away that day and we come home with nothing, but we all have those days and I would love to find a single person who begs to differ. One thing we were taught during our ‘stance’ lesson is that no matter what your trip is turning out to be like, we never fail as we are always learning and practicing our skills whilst out in the field or at the range. The first thing I personally learnt – which is something I’ve always beaten myself up over- is all about wobble. I thought being a smaller build and having ridiculously weak arms, was the reason I was so wobbly when in the standing position. I was relieved to know that even the best shooters out there struggle with ‘wobble’ but there are ways to improve (not remove) this very annoying thing, and that is all down to your breathing and calmness. We were given a fantastic demonstration by Terry on breathing technique, how to hold our air rifles to the best of our ability and to calmly take a shot whilst remembering to breathe steadily. This is something we can all forget to do, it is so easy to rush into a shot when it’s right there in front of you, but we were taught that to be calm and collective would help us to hopefully not miss a shot. We were all doing so well with our standing stance and breathing technique (except for myself as I didn’t fit my rifle very well – but that will be sorted very soon) that we were all hitting out to 55 yards and feeling a little cocky! The next position we were taught was almost torturous and one that I couldn’t do at all! We were given an example of how to sit, all bunched up cuddling our knees, and using our own body to support the weight of our air rifles. It looked so easy when Terry demonstrated and it was totally unfair that he used Peter, a friend of Terry’s, to demonstrate with him as he was the most flexible out of us all. We all thought it looked easy, it really wasn’t. I for one, along with James, struggled to get my legs up far enough to support the rifle; we put it down to needing to lose a few of those unwanted pounds we gained at Christmas and Taz struggled with his bad back, so it seemed that Peter, Sean and Matt were the ones who suited this stance down to the ground and they used this stance to their advantage, they did fantastic at hitting those long range targets even if their bottoms were hanging out their trousers! I actually got stuck in my position and needed a few hands up to get me off the ground. Old before my time perhaps? I think so. The next stance we learnt was a kneeling position; I particularly enjoyed this one, as did the rest of the team. We found that it was a very comfortable and easy position to use and can really help you with that ‘wobble’ problem I was talking about earlier, again – we were hitting those longer range targets.

During our stance lesson we were also reminded about following through with our shots and in around 5 seconds we were to find our target, take a big deep breath in and back out, pull the trigger once on target and follow through until we’ve hit our target before taking our eyes away from our scopes. We were all absolutely gob-smacked when Terry asked us to set our scopes to full magnification but it made complete sense as once you see your mistakes, you can rectify them, but you can only rectify them if you see your shot all the way through! This helped us a lot on the day and since then has helped us all whilst out hunting. To find out exactly what we have done since and what we have learnt from our Learning day – but more importantly who won the shooting competition, make sure you purchase the next edition of Airgun World and you may be able to take some great tips from our learning day into your own hunting expeditions. Stay safe and Happy hunting!