... Shooting a standard .22 Weirauch HW80 (which I just bought new last month), over a GPS measured 206 yards at an empty Stella tin.

The target was sat on a wooden ledge on the broad side of a ruined old barn and I also decided the challenge should be shot standing and freehand just for the hell of it!

Chairgun helped the prep a bit, as did some improvised aiming and zeroing solutions together with a willing accomplice on a mobile phone who traipsed back and forth between each shot to mark out POI while I looked on through a spotting scope. It took well over and hour, over a hundred JSB Exact Express pellets, lots of frustration and the odd pause for thought/inspiration; but I cracked it in the end.

It has to be said however that the myriad of variables involved in this type of shooting caused a dire lack of consistency shot on shot. The size of the grouping during this exercise was over 3 feet (and that's excluding flyers and the slight shifts in wind throughout the session). In fact, if I'm honest it involved a modicum of luck to hit the can in the time I did, and to put this in perspective, a few weeks ago I had some tins out at 120 yards and was hitting them around once every 4 or 5 shots and out at a 80 yards was hitting them at least every other shot.

Satisfying as a satisfying thing when the 206 tin dropped though!