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Bathurst Rifle Club Inc 28th May 2016 F A Wilde Trophy, 300yards

            The cool weather and the biting westerly winds have arrived such that the warmer climes of northern Australia and overseas won out over a day on the mound at the Bathurst Rifle Range. With a good number of members preferring the former, numbers were well down on the first day of the F A Wilde Trophy at 300 yards.

           The weather although cold did not appear to hold any fears for shooters with a brisk right breeze winding around the baffles of the SSAA range. However whatever was there was impossible to define and difficult to catch with the directional flags giving little assistance.

           The day produced a strange occurrence when all competitors shot 5 centre bull’s-eyes or in the case of F class, super centres. It did not however come down to centres to determine the winners as mistakes, missed opportunities and ammunition failures separated all competitors.

           Graeme Bright continued his resurgence with a day topping 95.05 but it was not the dominant performance we saw last week. Bright dropped regular points mostly at the end of his two stages. In fact all competitors seemed to run out of puff at the tail end of their shoots. Gordon Shepherd added a magpie three into his dropped point tally of 93.05 and John Coghill, 91.05, did the same, most of those points coming at the end of one or other of their stages. Dennis Lavelle who has had a drop-off after his B grade Championship win ran into ammunition trouble with his primers falling out of the cases causing much anguish on the mound. 

           In F class Geoff Willis had no opposition but his late arrival and rushed first stage contributed to a less than satisfactory score of 56.2 for the Australian F class hopeful. Willis’s second stage 59.3 was certainly up with the level required for selection in the Australian team to Canada. Steve Pelin in one of his rare appearances brought a short barreled hunting rifle and light ammunition to sight in at the short 300 yard range. His 97/120 was a reflection of the unsuitability of hunting gear for precision target shooting.

           Next week is the second round of the F A Wilde trophy on Saturday 4th June followed on Sunday by the Blue Mountains District Rifle Association Champion of Champions shootout at the Lithgow Rifle Range. The winners will go on to represent the BMDRA at the State CoC in Sydney later in the year. Bathurst is represented by Graeme Bright in target rifle and Grahame Willis in F class. 

Scores: 

J Coghill TRB 91.05 (7 ¾) 98 ¾

G S Willis FSA 115.5 (2) 97 ½

G Bright TRA 95.05 (2) 97

G Shepherd TRA 93.05 (3 ¾) 96 ¾

D Lavelle TRB 85.05 (9) 94

S Pelin FSB 97.0