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Virtual Canterbury Champs - lock down 2020

Virtual Canterbury Autumn Championship – by Coby Snowden

So this weekend was meant to be the Canterbury Autumn Champs for fullbore shooting. And although I enjoyed my lie-in and cuppa tea in bed, me and our shooting friends are missing this great annual event at our great range. So, let's pretend we went ahead anyway and predict the outcome:

"Wow, Ashburton once again put on the perfect shooting weather, not too cold and no bright sunshine, a wonderful backdrop of snow-capped mountains greeted the large turnout with shooters from Blenheim and Invercargill also competing.

Allan White top-scored at 300y with a 50.9, Snowdy bettered that at 500y with 50.10, then Allan matched this at 600y. 700yards was tricky, Allan only managed 50.7 and Snowdy had a shocker with 50.4, so at the end of Day1 they are tied on 200.34.

The top 5 also includes Daniel A, John M and Malcolm. In B grade Martin was leading by 4 going into 700y but then crossfired. To make him feel better Martin's dad John also decided to hit the wrong target and now Megan is ahead by 1 point. (BTW at 600y both Martin and Malcolm hit wrong targets at exactly the same time, so each got each others' bullseyes, a feat not seen before, but very probable). In C Grade Brian is struggling to keep up with newcomers Lillian and Natalie. In FTR Mark has his (only) eye on the main prize, slightly ahead of Cookie and Brian but Coby hit another personal best at 700y to be ahead of all of them, she is at a good place to take out FTR tomorrow, but hey, anything can happen. F Open is always tricky to predict, Chui against umm, can't read the board, name blacked out.

Veteran trophy will be a tight battle between Charlie and Malcolm. Unsure if the teenagers/early 20s will turn up tomorrow, a pretty tiring day for them, getting up early twice in a row is a pretty tough ask.

F-class shooters rushed home to make trivial minute alterations to their ammo loads/lengths and everyone else is getting shit-faced at the pub. Final report after the prizegiving tomorrow afternoon."

 

Day 2 - Virtual Canterbury Autumn Championship

 

Canterbury Autumn, 2nd Day: (Read yesterday's one first if you haven't already!!)

Well, that was an interesting day. It started when I was rudely awoken with Brian G on the blower, asking where the hell everyone was. He had put all flags up, and Allan got the targets up & running, but no-one else was there. Turns out they had both forgotten to put their clocks back one hour, (of course all married guys woke up with the correct time on their clocks).

Unfortunately Ashburton was covered with a veil of fog and kickoff was delayed by an hour, which was lucky for Snowdy as he had 6 rifles to clean (the 5 Snowdies plus Bevan snuck his one in the queue, Snowdy never noticed).

We eventually kicked off at 10am in brilliant sunshine with the 15-shots at 600y. Allan had a fantastic start with 75.12 and all but Snowdy cheered loudly. Too loudly, the neighbours complained and the local policeman came along to check out what was going on and took Allan into custody as he suspected him of having narcotics in his vaporiser (also taken into the police car were Bruce H and Andre d T but they were released quickly after their legal immigration status was confirmed).

With all the commotion Snowdy kept his nerves and shot a brilliant 75.14. Followed by 75.10 at 700y so he was the obvious winner of TR. Second was Bevan (amazed what a difference a properly-cleaned barrel made). Third was Malcolm who surprised us all by hitting the right target each time. Daniel fell asleep during the lunch break and no-one had the heart to wake him. B Grade was a shoot-off between Megan and Clinton (yup, he quietly shuffled his way up the leaderboard). After 45 shots Clinton gave up as his dad was keen to get on the road. C Grade went to newcomer Lillian, Brian shot well but being left-handed will always disadvantage him (no no no not because lefties are dumb, but because of the direction of the sunrays straight into their sights or whatever they whine about). Of course Coby held on to her overnight lead to win FTR, a bit nervous with the Grimsey couple shooting perfect scores. Surprisingly, Chui decided to shoot TR today, thereby gifting the F-Open title to [anonymous]. When questioned about that he just smiled and says his mansion isn’t big enough for all his trophies.

The combined Spring/Autumn trophies were not handed out because no-one brought along last year’s ones because they had forgotten to get them engraved and Bevan was trying to get the red wine stains out of his.

Sun still shining in Ashburton, as will be when the Canty Autumn actually takes place. (always hard to follow up a funny post with a second episode, hope this gave you a wee chuckle anyway).

(Written during Lock-down 2020)

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