Spring gun revival (again.....)

[bozzer]

Aye Herx77's post is a pleasant read.

I really don't know what it is with me. There's some frustration lurking in there somewhere. Maybe, like Andy says, it's just remembering the fun me and my mates had as youngsters with a couple of old Webley break barrels. We would go down the pot bank tip and line up some cups and saucers and shoot at them. So compared to modern day target kill zones they were massive, but there was a skill to be learned with the reacting rifle if you wanted to keep hitting them. I suppose that possibly fuels my passion, when posting, that you don't need lots of tiny kills for it to be a shooting test and fun.

Maybe there's also something about me that says a newcomer, in any sport, SHOULD have to learn to do something well before they start getting good results. The PCP has meant that youngsters and newcomers and those that don't really want to put in many hours of range time CAN buy a 0.177 PCP and use the HFT rock steady prone stance and pretty much straight away start knocking down plenty of targets. I get that that probably gets more people shooting the sport and sticking at it, but as I'm always saying, it has, ironically, driven courses to a point where wind estimation is probably the biggest factor of getting very good scores and actual shooting skill is an also ran.

We can't be dinosaurs. We can't stand in the way of technical development. So the fact that PCPs mean that a newcomer can just buy one, shoot it for a short period of time and shoot it quite accurately ... that's a good thing right! Well, as I mentioned earlier when it's being used clinically to do a job like pest control then yes I think it's a very good thing. Is it great for shooting ... and Sunday morning comp shooting? Well if it means numbers are up then I suppose, yes, it has to be good.

Are these developments always a good thing?

As a youngster I was pretty good at table tennis. I played in the local leagues and I did well. Plain pimple bats were just about fading out and most were using more 'modern' bats that had some sponge and then pimples facing in rubber on top of the sponge. That gave a flat rubber surface that contacted the ball. The sponge greatly increased ball speed off the bat. You could then start to get different 'Tackiness' rubbers that could put great spin on the ball. The Chinese then started using very long pimple rubbers that had the smooth side fixed onto the sponge and the long pimples pointing outwards. This was called 'Grass' because the thin pimples were that long. The thin pimples absorbed the spin when receiving the ball and imparted all sorts of weird spin on the ball when releasing it. So the opponent was then receiving a ball that he couldn't control. To make things worse players would have a plain rubber on one side and the magic 'Grass' rubber on the other. They would then 'flip' the bats in their hands during rallies so the opponent had no idea which rubber had hit the ball. Rallies dropped from 20 or 30 shots to just a couple of shots. Players that had never really done all that well in the local leagues were buying these bats and starting to win lots of matches. The sport tried to negate this by ruling that bats had to be black on one side and red on the other so opponents could see which rubber had hit the ball. It basically destroyed the sport and eventually the very long pimple rubbers were banned. In more recent years the old 'Ping Pong' has made a resurgence as a sport. In Ping Pong you don't have your own bats. Two identical plain bats are provided. These are pretty much like the original bats that just have some thin pimple out rubber on the wooden blades. This means that no great amount of spin or deception can be put on the ball. So all the skill has been moved back to the players. Not only are the bats provided for the players but if one player feels the other player's bat is better than theirs then they can ask to swap bats. This makes for a very skilful game with long rallies and the player with the most skill will win.

My main love has always been cricket. The authorities have always insisted that bats are made from simple willow and there have always been restrictions on how 'wide' ( side to side ) the bats can be. Up until quite recently ( last 15 years or so ) a batsman had to time the ball and pretty much hit it in the middle to hit it with great power. If he risked trying to hit a six and there was a fielder on the boundary then if he didn't time it well enough he would be caught as the ball wouldn't travel far enough to go for six. Bats have gone crazy in recent years. They are now pressed very lightly and they have huge curves in the blades. They also have massive edges and even bigger 'middles'. As they are pressed lightly you can have a bat that is enormous but still picks up very light and can be swung with great hand speed. So now you have players ( instigated by Twenty20 ) trying to thrash most balls. Even if they get half a bat on it the ball will fly for six. The bats have meant that far less 'skill' is required to time the ball and make the boundary. It wasn't an option to try and make all cricket grounds bigger, so the authorities have just introduced new rules to limit the thickness of the bats to try and halt this direction.

So just a couple of examples. There will be many more and I'm sure people will mention motorsport. I used to watch the RAC rallies in the forests. I remember the huge Audi Quattro's exploding their way through the Welsh forests with the trees being lit up in the early morning darkness by the flames from the exhausts. I wasn't a rally driver but I had mates that used to rally and they always told me that the real competition is in the smaller classes where the skill of the driver is tested more than the technology of the cars.

I will never say that people buy prizes with top end kit. The best shooters will always be at the top of the lists. The guys who put the time in practising and working at their shooting. I just think that the ease of shooting a PCP, along with the rock steady HFT prone stance, has pushed courses to a point where actual shooting ability ( body position, hold, breathing, release, follow through ) has been pushed well down the list and wind judgement, plus a tad of ranging, is most of the job. That leaves the very small percentage of shooters who have to concentrate on shooting ability ( the springer folk ), shooting targets that are on their limits and so many will either walk away from the sport all together, or will migrate to the masses that shoot 0.177 PCP. They'd sooner be an average 0.177 PCP guy who averages around 50/60 rather than have scores that bounce all over the place with their springer and those scores often don't equate to how they've shot.

Would the Sunday morning tin chicken sports be a better test of shooting if kills were relaxed slightly, encouraging more people to give it a go with their springers, and stick with their springers, also giving a better chance for youngsters and newcomers, and more 'Shooting Skill' positions introduced for Elite shooters using 'Corpse Rifles' ( More kneelers and standers and maybe a less stable prone stance [ butt off the floor etc ])? ... I'm 100% certain they would. Would numbers drop though because most shooters don't want to have to put the time in to improve their shooting skills but want pretty much instant respectable scores? ... I'm sadly 100% certain of that also.

Just a last note ... We often hear the old guys ( myself included ) talking about springers, usually related to the fact that they were the air rifles available when we first used them as kids. However, probably the most successful HFT National Recoil shooter has been Kyle, who is a very young man. I spoke to Kyle and asked him why he shot a springer. He said that he just liked the way that it actually gave him a nudge in his shoulder and he had to work hard to shoot it accurately. Gary, who won this year's National HFT Recoil Class is also a relatively young guy. So thankfully it's not just us dinosaurs that like to try and master the springers.