Cambridge Summer Safari July 2014

What is it with weekends in July? I seem to recall the last Safari culminated in a monsoon too.

This was Cambridge HFT’s annual 2-day extravaganza; a 40-shot course to UK spec on the Saturday afternoon and then a 30-shot Cambridge rules course on the Sunday.

Lets start with the Saturday shoot. The weather at this point was verging on tropical. Humidity was nigh on 99.9%, the sun was beating down on us and an army of midges the size of bats had descended on us. Nice. Even a liberal marinating in Deet didn’t seem to put them off.

How different Sunday could be…. Chances are if you’re reading this Sunday evening various garments of your clothing are still quietly steaming and there’s tufts of kitchen roll poking out from your rifle breech.
The BBC weather site said “light showers” around 12pm. What came down at 11:15am could in no way be described as either “light” or a “shower”.
When the shoot started at 10:45am the sun was bearing down on us with a furious heat… hence most peoples waterproofs being left in the cars.

Within the space of a few minutes the ground became a river of mud and we were absolutely saturated.
Trudging from one wood to the other we passed other shooters, all of us looking like stand ins for a remake of “The Creature from the Black Lagoon”.

So, a big *thank you* to all those who tempted fate again by coming to our infamous “Summer” shoot and braving the best of British weather.

Hopefully the meteorological gods will be kinder to us for the next shoot; we’ll be sacrificing a sausage later to try and sway the odds.

Here’s the results:

SATURDAY 40-shot shoot

Open
Gary Chillingworth 72
Anne Higgins 72
Jeff Westley 72
Phil Russell 71
Jill Cochrane 70
Andy Ireland 68
John Houghton 68
Jack Houghton 68
Finn Cochrane 65
Graham Mason 65
Martin Slane 63
Ralph Currie 60
Alan Sultano 59
Mark Gamston 59
Keith Warburton 59
Jonathan Hobbs 58
Roger Brigham 57
John Gamston 52

.22
Matt Rawlings 67
Dean Auger 57
Justin Rhone 54

Recoiling
Andy Day 63
Jake Day 60
Becky Rawlings 60
Alex Bye 50
Andy Yates 46
Jim Leman 47

Junior
Nia Preston 52

SUNDAY SHOOT

Open
Matt Rawlings 54
Jill Cochrane 52
Jon Houghton 52
Ralph Presland 50
Martin Slane 49
Jonathan Hobbs 49
Jake Day 48
Jack Houghton 47
Jeff Westley 47
Anne Higgins 46
Clive Presland 46
Mick Salmon 46
Finn Cochrane 45
Roger Brigham 44
Phil Russell 44
Andy Ireland 44
Graham Mason 44
Colin Sykes 43
Mark McCarthy 43
Liam Ellis 42
Ken Philipps 42
Ralph Currie 41
Gordon Smith 39

.22
Justin Rhone 45
Wayne Pearce 45
Des Morris 44
Steve Youngs 41
Dean Auger 40

Recoiling
Becky Rawlings 49
Andy Day 44
Dan Measures 44
Alex Bye 42
Steve Martin 40

Ladies
Jo Cogger 48