The day started a bit damp as we all met up with Andrew in the car park. A few people needed headache tablets after a pint or two too many the night before. The rest of us stocked up on sandwiches and some of the now famous Llangurig Pickle.
After a short drive along the road in convey we turned off the road and made our way into the 7,000 acres that make up the WMS Steel Challenge rifle range. Here we met up with John who made us all welcome with the first of many cups of tea and ran through the safety rules. Its unusal to have range safety rules that involve care of the sheep!
It then stopped raining, which was nice. There was a slight blustery breeze, but overall it was almost ideal conditions to shoot and although cold at first warmed up considerably by lunch time.
The first activity involved checking zero on the 100 yard range with both paper and reactive targets, followed by several plates, bunnies and gongs at 200 yards. Those of us with .223s were able to also shoot the 'dueling' targets that consisted of horizontally mounted swinging targets that moved over to your partner's side when shot.
There were a large variety of rifles and calibres, from a standard sporting CZ in .223 to a deluxe Sako TRG in .308, with a few custom rifles in the likes of remington .260 and even a 6.5 Nemesis. When we were all happy John gave us a challenge to shoot a number of explosive reactive targets with just the one shot. These are quite spectacular when they go off.
We moved back to the main base to have a quick cuppa and discuss what we wanted to do next. During this time some off road bikers kept us entertained with their antics as they drove round were we had just been shooting using the backstops as jumps! We tried to persuade them to tow balloons for moving target practice but they were just not interested.
Moving on, we jumped back in the cars and moved up the hills even further for the next challenge. This involved shooting downhill at a variety of animal shaped targets, gongs and figure 11s at 300-400 yards. Here we had to stop a few times to allow the sheep to cross. Its amazing how they just down seem to mind rounds landing 100 yards or so from them.
John was always on hand to offer advice and suggestions to improve our technique. Being able to hit the engine room of a life size deer target at 320 yards gives you confidence when shooting in the field at lower ranges.
We were then split into two groups with the aim of shooting 7 wooden skittles at just over 300 yards. Both teams started on the outer skittle and worked inwards with team members taking it in turn till the winning team shot the 4th skittle. It was a very close run thing.
The final challenge of the morning was to shoot a figure 11 'terrorist' centre mass (it had a centre swinging target) to indicate a hit, then shoot the 'hostage taker' without hitting the hostage (a second head to left of the firgure 11 swings when hit). We had 6 shots to do it and it was against the clock. The spotter's job was to watch the fall of the shot and indicate any adjustment required. The winner took two shots in an impressive 10 seconds to complete the task.
After lunch we moved to the main central range starting at 300 yards then moving back to 500 and finally finishing at 830 yards. Again there were a variety of targets with the delay between hitting the targets and the audible "BONG" increasing as we moved back. At 800 yards it takes a full two seconds to arrive and still makes me smile when I hear it.
Everyone had a really good day and we all learnt a lot about the capabilities of ourselves and our rifles. The expert tuition offered by John along with his good humour and enthusiasm make it probably one of the most enjoyable as well as challenging days target shooting you can have.
You can find out more about WMS Steel Challenge on their website.