They may be hard to find, but there are positive stories as shooting looks beyond the covid pandemic, Simon James reports
At the time of writing, just weeks into the third lockdown, more than 91 million cases of Covid-19 have been recorded worldwide, resulting in almost 2 million deaths. Thousands of businesses have gone under and millions have lost their livelihoods. What justification is there for claiming that any good has come of this?
Never has the phrase ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ felt so inadequate and in such poor taste. Yet, some people have discovered opportunities during the enforced breaks to tackle tasks, both big and small, that they wouldn’t ordinarily have had time to consider. Work that will help to cement our enjoyment of clay shooting well into the future. What’s more, many of us began re-evaluating what was really important to us.
Read on to discover just a tiny selection of positive stories from the world of clay shooting.
Sport shows great resilience
Despite having to cancel four major championships in 2020, the CPSA still managed to host most of its major championships – the DTL Weekend, English Open ABT, British Open English Skeet, and the British Open English Sporting and Sportrap.
Attendance actually dropped very little across those that went ahead, with only 130 less shooters booked compared to 2019. Just short of 2,500 entries were able to go ahead.
Most encouraging was the renewed interest in the CPSA National Inter-Counties Championships. The National Inter-Counties All Round at Northampton Shooting Ground saw nearly double the contestants compared to 2019, while the National Inter-Counties English Skeet (also at Northampton) was so popular that the ground opened it up for two days instead of one.
CPSA Chairman John Martin attended many of these, noting at the ABT championship that: “It’s a fantastic turnout all across the board for the last four National Inter-Counties compared with previous years, so everybody is getting out shooting while they have a chance – which is great!”
Living the dream
We accept that’s an odd heading under the circumstances but we’ve heard plenty of anecdotal reports from gun brands and gunrooms that sales of ‘dream guns’ have remained
