It’s not called “The Diabolical” for nothing.
The weather was unusually nice to us this year. Yes it was like wading through porridge and there was a relentless drizzle and howling wind, but it wasn’t the apocalyptic deluge the weather men predicted.
It’s a shame we didn’t get a group photograph before we started and another afterwards so you could play guess-the-silhouette. The majority of us were wearing Gortex which rapidly looked like the aftermath of an explosion in a Bovril factory. Three sensible souls were in orange dayglo, possibly to aid their identification and rescue later.
6 of our hardy Dutch friends had again made the pilgrimage to come over for this annual fixture, so our warmest regards to them and we hope you got home safely, hopefully without too much Shepreth mud still adhered.

This was a 30-shot course quite definitely *not* to UKAHFT spec, so lot of tiny kills, long distances and downright blooming awkward peg positioning. Pallets, logs, swings and mesh abound. As Keith W pointed out, the only thing that would have messed with our minds even more was if they’d popped a 40mm unobscured kill at 20 yards. I guarantee there’d be an immediate backlog as shooters looked quizzically at the target desperately trying to work out what hideous factor they’d overlooked.
As ever the maximum score was 60. Out of 55 shooters only *4* managed to score over 40. The rest of us were quite happy to achieve the occasional plate.

Peg 31 was the “Golden bunny”, a small bird with even smaller kill zone around 30 yards away in the field on a pole. Just high enough to catch that un-hindered wind and directly in the path of the smoke from the smouldering ash pile. This was a bonus prize opportunity, adults had to get a knock down and juniors could plate it. Only 6 names went into the draw; Becky, Chris B, Vince, Rex, Tom Willingham and Jonathan Chidzoi.

Our thanks to the ever devious Tony Haas for this annual competition horrible, and his two heinous henchmen Martin and Chris.

If you’ve managed to get the mud out of your clothing and off your kit we’ll see you on the 2nd Sunday in Feb for our next shoot.

Open:
Jeff Westley 44
Sean Eustace 42
Richard Bailey 40
Alex Larkin 39
Martin Slane 39
Jon Houghton 38
Vince Holland 38
Steve Willingham 37
Colin Wilson 37
Justin Rhone 37
Jack Houghton 36
Chris Boulton 36
Wayne Mariott 35
Nigel Fleet 34
Mick Salmon 33
Richard Lander 32
Miriam Stark 31
Andy Ireland 30
Gary Chillingworth 30
Jonathan Hobbs 30
Peter Van Gemert 29
Jean Greatrex 28
Simon Vant 28
Dean Auger 26
Brigitte Vant 26
Willem Braams 26
James Free 26
Tony Haas 26
Andries Switer 24
Jamie McLatchie 23
Des Morris 23
Jason Byrne 19
Liam Ellis 18
Ingrid Van Gemert 13
Mark English 10
John Gamston DNF
Mark Gamston DNF


Recoiling:
Rex Bennett 35
Leon Beute 29
Jonathan Chidzoi 28
Kev Turner 27
Simon Topham 26
Phil Russell 25
Carl Toseland 15

.22
Neil Wakelin 36
Steve Youngs 34
Matt Rawlings 32
Ben Topham 31
Stu Deeks 30
Anne Higgins 28
Keith Warburton 27
Tom Willingham 27

Junior
Becky Rawlings 44
Aston Chambers 30
Olly Fleet 30