A letter published in the August issue of Airgunner magazine (Published at the beginning of July) inspired me to write a reply. To be honest I wasn't expecting it to be published at all as some of the points I made contradicted the editors comments after the letter concerned, but seeing it in print in the November issue three months later I was surprised at the extent of the editing, which meant that the letter as published did not appear to fully communicate the points that I was trying to make in reply to the gentleman's original letter.

For those of you on here who read the comics, here is the original letter (written on the 14th July) so you can compare:



Dear Sir,

In the August issue of Air Gunner magazine, Mr Sam Elliot expressed concern regarding 'Equipment Ability' and cast doubt on HFT as a family sport.

While it is true that in general the top shooters at HFT events will be using relatively high end gear, in which sport is this not the case? These shooters are not at the top so much because of their rifle and scope, rather than due to their commitment to their sport of which only part is the investment they have made in their equipment.

Banning scopes over 12x magnification will acheive nothing. The shallow depth of field in focus at high mag effectively limits the usefulness of a scope with this capability for HFT as you are not allowed to alter the scope settings during the shoot.

Restricting rifles based on price is also unworkable. Do we stop someone who has bought a Daystate Harrier X2 Sports R at the RRP from participating and yet allow someone else with the same rifle bought second hand to compete? How would we police it? I know of at least two competitors who have sold multiple rifles from their respective collections to purchase Daystate Mk3s. Now they have their dream rifles do we exclude them? Of course not.

HFT is a family outing. Samantha (my wife) shot a creditable 55 ex 60 at Quarry, and we bring our daughter Anna to the national and club events as although she is still too young to shoot in the competitions she enjoys playing with all the other children who attend with their families, some of whom shoot and others who merely enjoy the social aspect of the HFT meetings across the country.

The course setters to date have managed to acheive the fine balance between maintaining a safe and challenging shoot yet making each shot attainable. Making the course easier will denigrate the event and the competition is so fierce at the top I have no doubt there will always be a shoot-off among the top five places at any of the UK summer series events.

Yours sincerely,

David Stancomb.