The weekend was a busy one for OURC, with four different competitions taking place amid the first properly warm weather of our season in Bisley. At 8am on Saturday morning a team of six were on the range at Century for the Astor County Heats, while on the hill several members of OURC had a slightly more relaxed start to the day as they joined the North London Rifle Club for a match rifle competition being overseen by alumna and former secretary Hattie Mansell (fresh from placing third in the Spring Meeting the week before). With very little wind it was a day for high scores, and the club delivered: Thomas Nightingale and Jiwoo Won both shot possibles at 1000 yards, as did George Twinn at 1100 (after switching from back gunning to a front gun), while on Century some very efficient team drills meant that the club was not only first off the point at every distance but that their scores were strong, with Russell Woodger putting in 50.4 and 50.6 at 300 and 600 yards respectively. Last year’s winners, Ricochet, were vanquished, and OURC came second overall, a very respectable position. In the afternoon the teams went through a slight change, as Jonny Page joined the Lions for training, and George and Chloe Jacklin swapped places: Chloe recovered from some initial teething problems with a new load of ammunition to shoot very well in MR at 1200 yards while George joined the TR shooters for a match against the NLRC and SLRC. Final scores were close, with the SLRC team of six beating the NLRC’s six by one point and their team of four beating OURC’s four by six points. Afterwards, the TR shooters headed to the South for a delicious tea, while the match riflemen were similarly entertained in the North.
The evening saw OURC taking a stray CURA member (their Secretary no less) under our wing as we headed out to a Chinese restaurant for supper — hopefully we didn’t scare Katherine too much. The next day we were on Stickledown again, but this time with target rifles. After practice at 900 yards, during which Michael Horrell declared his shoot of fifteen to count to feel like one of the worst of his life, only to be told by his coach that he had shot 75.11, a score he promptly followed up with 75.9 (‘you dropped six… vs’), we fell back to 1000 yards, where we were joined by Jo Dickson, Roseanne Furniss and Henry Lee of OCRA. Despite Jo managing to randomly select our three lower scorers for the competition, OURC established a good lead, which was reduced but not overcome at 500 yards after lunch. OCRA left mid-afternoon, their friendly presence replaced by that of the ice cream van, and OURC finished the day with some further practice at 600 yards. With very impressive butt marking, we were able to rattle through quickly, and put in some more good shooting. Our thanks to the NLRC, SLRC, OCRA and the other Oxfordshire clubs for arranging the matches and being such good competitors: till next year!