CLAY NEWS
WITH DON BRUNTPICTURES:
DON BRUNT
The English Open Sporting saw 1,230 shooters
take part over the five days of the event, shooting
120 targets across 15 stands. Held at West
Midlands Shooting Ground, the course itself was
relatively friendly... well, it was until stand 15,
where a ‘card wrecker’ proceeded to do just that
to shooters from across the classes.
Tom Jones of WMSG has for some time been
wanting to put on a ‘yoyo’ stand, with a quick
dropping target followed by a fast vertical teal.
He enlisted the help of Promatic, who built a
trap especially for the event that fired clays
under power vertically downwards. According to
Tom, the teal that they initially wanted to use
was too susceptible to the wind, and might have
ended up landing in the cage, so instead he put
on a low going-away teal that was pretty tough
in its own right. With nobody having any
reference for this type of target, it was a steep
learning curve – and too steep for the majority.
The downward target needed a simply huge gap
but the teal needed a very steady gun, so thetransition between the two was very hard. In
hindsight, perhaps a slightly easier report bird
might have allowed most people to salvage a
50% score on the stand, but as it was there
were plenty of zeros, and the ref must have got
very bored of repeating “pair lost”
Eventually, the six shooters who had made
the Super Final on the last day were ready to
compete for the win: Ben Husthwaite, Richard
Faulds, Chris Childerhouse (all on 111), Richard
Bunning (112), and Sam Green and Mark
Winser, who had qualified on 113. Tom and his
team put on some extreme targets for the
30-bird final, but the standard of shooting was
truly inspiring; it looked like all six men would
find it tough going, but Mark Winser was on a
different planet to his peers that day. He
dropped just five of the 30 targets to see him
finish on 138. That score gave him an enormous
winning margin of six targets to second placed
Richard Bunning, while Sam Green finished third
on 131.ENGLISH OPEN RESULTS
AAA Class
1st Chris Childerhouse 111
2nd Ben Husthwaite 111
3rd Richard Faulds 111
Ladies
1st Cheryl Hall 105
2nd Lucy Pitt 99
3rd Hannah Gibson 97
Junior
1st James Bradley-Day 111
2nd Billy Greenwood 107
3rd Thomas Woodcock
Lady Junior
1st Amy Easeman 94
2nd Annalise Evans 83
3rd Chloe Applin 75
Veterans
1st John Bidwell 108
2nd Robert Gray 108
3rd Steve Brightwell 106
Colt
1st Daniel King 96
2nd Darcy McBride 96
3rd Tristan Hockey 96English Lessons
Mark Winser
won the event
by a margin of
six targetsThe event was powered by Promatic trapsThe shoot-off drew a great crowd