July-August 2010 - New Zealand Clay Target Association

SPORTING CLAY OCEANIASixteen N.Z. shooters made it toRenmark-Berri (2½ hrs North-Eastfrom Adelaide) for the 22nd OceaniaSporting Clay tournament.NZ Junior Team takes 2nd placeNew Zealand Open Team 2ndNZ Super Veterans team takes 2nd placeFortunately to reach Renmark you haveto travel through (well near it anyway)the famous Barossa Valley and some of ustook full advantage of the wine tours andtasting for a few days preceding the event.Two soft practice fields, set purposely totrap the unwary, were set up for Friday withcompetition commencing on Saturday forthree days. The set up was eight (old style)par cours each one of 25 targets from fourshooting stands, Saturday and Sunday youshot three par cours each day, and Mondaytwo, totalling 200 targets. The openingceremony was a little disappointing forus as everyone of us was in No.1’s (severalwearing poppies as a mark of respectfor ANZAC weekend, appreciated bysome Aussies). After the superb Maoriwelcome and challenge in Rotorua forthe last Oceania, we thought the Aussieswould try to top that, no flags of nations,no national anthems and as is normal asmall gift to shooters was missing. Onecan only imagine they were still gettingover the incredible efforts they had put infor the World Champs last year and werestill recovering from all that work. On theother hand though they threw all mannerof targets at us and being a relatively flatground, employed towers, cherry pickers,high stands and speed. One stand had a 20meter cherry picker which was 76 metersfrom the stand, the target was on edgeand driven down landing 50 odd meters toyour right. Probably a 60 meter plus target.Most of the guys seemed to handle it ok,shooting three or four out of the menu. Ithink it was the ‘biggest’ target there, butevery trap was either tilted over, had thespring wound right up or had the targetsdoing a couple of things in the air, makingthem very tricky and hard to read. As usualwe were made to feel very welcome withthe usual banter and bull…. filling up thedown time, catering and refreshmentswere up to the normal Aussie standardand most probably put on a pound or two.Two of the N.Z. shooters departed from thenorm this year and had camper vans, oneunfortunately seemed to be in all sorts ofstrife most of the time, and poor Ian Swalehad erected his awning only to have the10 gunshot