Jasper Fellows discovers how Mhairi-Ann Troup aims to bring more women into the sport she loves
A mi Hedgecock, Lucy Hall, Ellie Seward; the current crop of up-and-coming women’s talent is perhaps unrivalled in the history of the sport. We are at the beginning of a true renaissance in British Ladies shooting. One that has been triggered by the headstrong, uncompromising women that have broken new ground over the past 20 years. Women like Becky McKenzie, whose unflinching training regime leaves the competition in the dust, or Abbey Ling who married into a family of legendary shooters seemingly just to give them some real competition for once.
Of all of the great British shooting ladies helping to inspire the next generation, Mhairi-Ann Troup is undoubtedly one of the most passionate when it comes to getting new ladies onto the stands for the very first time. Last year she launched her Dynamic Ladies Shooting Club which, despite launching in the middle of a pandemic, has already seen interest from thousands of women both home and abroad and brought to the sport more new talent than even Mhairi-Ann thought possible.
Although the club is a relatively new venture, don’t be fooled into thinking Mhairi-Ann is new to the sport herself, far from it. She’s been swinging shotguns, rifles and even pistols since before she’d even left junior school. “My father, Fraser Troup, first introduced me to shooting,” she explains. “I started off with a BSA Mercury air rifle when I was just eight years old, before moving onto a Webley pistol then finally a Shadow 12-gauge shotgun.”
With a family of passionate shooters around her, Mhairi-Ann soon became enamoured with clay shooting and went looking for competitions to hone her skills and show the world, or at least Scotland, what she was made of. “As a youngster the idea of shooting was so exciting. Unfortunately, in Scotland at that time the sport was very male dominated. Ladies events were few and far between.”
Far from letting a lack of women’s competitions get in the way of her passions, Mhairi-Ann decided to throw in with the boys, and beat them. “If anything, I used the lack of women’s competitions as motivation and found myself competing successfully against the boys at local competitions from a young age.”
While Mhairi-Ann could have made shooting her career, she headed down an entirely different route
