Bedfordshire County ABT Championship
Sunday 25^th May 2008

As the new Trap manager for Bedfordshire I’m pleased to report on the County ABT Championship held at Northampton S.G. on 25th May 2008.

The weather was awful and not at all suitable for shooting because most of the day it rained very heavily and only eased off towards the middle of the afternoon. However, I’m pleased to report that the turnout of nine for the county was again excellent and shows promise for the future. As there were only 9 squads, it was good that Bedfordshire made up almost two of them! My sincere thanks go to all of you for making the effort to turn up and compete. In particular, my thanks go to Seline Taylor as she was the only lady to make the effort to come and shoot.

The targets were excellent although on both layouts the microphones were again a little sensitive, causing a few spurious pulls. The standard of shooting was not quite as good as for the DTL competition in April, but considering that almost all of our contestants shoot this discipline very occasionally it was a very encouraging show. The winning score of 82 by me was not as good as I’d hoped it would be, but it did equal my personal best. (What I lack in skill I make up for in enthusiasm) However I had to work very hard to hold off Kevin Parsons, who was runner up with a credible 80, both of us having been equal on 41 after 2 rounds. The overall high gun was 94 with only one other shooter to break into the Nineties with a 91 and only 3 Straights were scored; one very early on and the other two by the winner on his final two rounds.

The scores of all contestants are set out below:

Once again; it would be great if we could build on this result and put together a county team for the Regional and National Championships later this year. So, if any of you out there would like to try out for the team please let me know.