The entry forms for the 2024-25 season are now available in the secure ‘Forms & Minutes’ page of this site (see the Sidebar) and have been, or will be soon, sent to club representatives.

The closing date for most of our competitions is 2nd September.

If you require the password to access the secure area, please use the ‘Contact’ link above to get in touch with the Site Administrator. It will only be given to legitimate enquirers.

The Denwood Target Shooting Centre in Aberdeen is again hosting the ‘Earl Haig Scottish Open Championship’. It will be held from Friday 28th June to Sunday 30th June.

The raison d’etre of this meeting is to hold the Scottish Championship for the Earl Haig trophy as the NSRA are not currently running traditional ‘Scottish’ meetings due to lack of a location. That’s not the only competition though, as there is a  programme of 4-class squadded and unsquadded competitions which are mainly those that would be confined to Scottish shooters at the traditional meetings, e.g. the Scottish Women’s and Junior championships and the Scottish club team competitions for the ICI/John Eddie and Pullar/Robin Levack trophies. There is a squadded aggregate comprising three Dewar competitions run over Saturday and Sunday and several unsquadded competitions, one of which is a Double Dewar to be shot on the Friday only. There is no ‘Unsquadded Aggregate’, though.

For the first time at this meeting, there will be a benchrest competition – 60 shots at 50m (unsquadded). And also for the first time, the 100yds Freuchie knock-out competition will be squeezed into the programme.

This promises to be a full and exciting weekend of shooting. Request an entry form here. Advance postal entries only, to be received by 22nd June. No entries on the day.

For the information of all clubs in Scotland:

The way Scottish Target Shooting (STS) processes PVGs (‘Protection of Vulnerable Groups”) on behalf of its affiliated clubs is changing. This resulted from a review by Disclosure Scotland with new advice provided to all governing bodies of sport and the wider volunteering sector.

STS has set out the new procedures in the these two documents –  STS Safer Recruitment and PVG Process Update  and STS Safer Recruitment Process. Take the link on each one to view it.

The STS’s All Ranges Matches took place last weekend and there was success for the ‘Lothian’ team in the Short Range Inter-regional team match. Our team of Susan & Angus Jackson, Adam & Rhona Dove (all Watsonians), Josh Mitchell and Tom Ralph (both Edinburgh University) with a score of 1957 beat Grampian into second place by 7 points.

Congratulations to them. There were also successes in the Indivdual competitions for these and other LBTSA shooters – take this link to the STS result page to see full details. Too numerous to list here.

All our winter competitions have finished and the complete prize list for the season is now available.

Take the Competitions/Prizelists link above to see it.

(Edit: the new Benchrest Championship had been omitted. Now included. Our apologies.)

Dan Gutteridge (the 2015 champion) and Neil Sinclair (both EU) drew the Byes and the other round 1 winners were Amanda Puchalla (EU) over the 2022 Champion Adam Dove (Watsonians), Tom Ralph over Aleyna Kartal (both EU), Rhona Dove over James Gutteridge (both Watsonians), the 2022 champion Alan Anderson (Hawick) over Eilidh Scheuerl (EU), Robin Thomson over Nick Baker the 2004 and 2008 champion (both Watsonians).

In round 2, there were wins for Dan over Amanda, Tom over Rhona, Alan over Neil and once again, Junsung Kim got through on a tie-break, beating Robin on countback.

The first semi-final saw another tie between Dan and Tom, with the latter going through to the final on countback. In the other, young Junsung rather ran out of steam and Alan won the match quite comfortably.

In the final, after an aborted start when his sling disintegrated, Tom Ralph took the trophy for the first time with scores of 98, 97 versus Alan Anderson’s 97, 96.

The trophy will (hopefully) be presented at the prizegiving in May.

I’d like to thank Balerno & Currie for allowing us to use their range, and also Mark Westwood of the home club for running the computer controlling the electronic targets. The event could not have taken place without him.

I would like to apologise to those present for forgetting to bring a vital component for connecting up the big screen in the clubroom in order to display the results, but an old-school piece of paper seemed to suffice.

WFH

Viewers might have noticed that in the post of 21st March it was mentioned that there was a tie for 1st place in the overall averages and that there was no rule in place to split such ties. Earlier this week, the Committee decided that ties in the overall averages would be determined by countback, i.e. the competitor with the highest scores in the most recent rounds starting with the latest one would be the winner.

Thus the tie between Sinclair Bruce (Balerno & Currie) and Peter Richard (Pentland) was broken in favour of Peter, who finished with 99 in round 10, thus beating Sinclair who finished with a 98. The Averages report in the Team Postal League page has been updated to reflect that.

The published regulations for this competition will be updated in due course.

Our Trophy Convenor is putting out a request that any LBTSA trophies held  by individuals or clubs should be returned to him as soon as possible.

Please get in touch with James Young to arrange collection/drop off.

The Final of the CYOH Individual knock-out has taken place and the winner of the Dundas Salver is Greg McMillan of Prestonpans. Congratulations to him.  He beat Julian Bradfield (Balerno & Currie).

Take the Competitions/CYOH link above to see full details.

The final match in this season’s S-S league took place last night. The winners of the Scratch league are Watsonians while Balerno & Currie took the Handicap league. Watsonians also secured the Matchplay trophy.

The winner of the Hayhoe Cup for the highest average in the league goes to Nick Baker of Watsonians.

Take the Competitions | Shoulder to Shoulder league link above for full details.

[Eagle-eyed readers might notice that Nick Baker was 2nd in the Averages ranking list behind clubmate Adam Dove. The award goes to Nick because Adam had not shot the required number of ‘away’ matches (3) whereas Nick had done so. Competitors are allowed to miss two matches and still qualify for the award although that rule was implemented many years ago when there were usually a lot more matches in a season.]

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Greg McMillan for running this league once again, and having to deal with some challenging personal difficuclties this season which did not make it easier.

The first competition to reach its conclusion this season is the CYOH Team competition. It was won by George Heriot’s FP, who beat Prestonpans A in the Final and win the magnificent Burton Cup.

Take the Competitions/CYOH link above to see the details.

At an Extraordinary General Meeting of the Association held on 15th November, an amendment to the constitution proposed by the Committee that clubs affiliated to Scottish Target Shooting (and not just to the NSRA as previously) would be eligible to affiliate to LBTSA was considered.

The vote overwhelmingly approved the amendment. Accordingly, Para 5.1 (a) of the Constitution (under the heading Membership of the Association shall be open to) now reads as follows:

(a) rifle and pistol clubs, not restricted to those located in the Association’s area of interest, which are affiliated to either the NSRA or STS (Scottish Target Shooting) or both and are interested in furthering the objects of the Association and;

The full document may be viewed in this page.

Th club has announced that it intends to run its annual Open Meeting over Saturday/Sunday 13th/14th January 2024.

Further details will be available nearer the time.

I’m sure many readers will know (or know of) Ian Gray, a stalwart of shooting in Perthshire. I’m sad to have to report that he passed away in hospital yesterday.

Ian was the County Secretary from 1971 up to 2012 and was also heavily involved in running the Perth City & County Rifle Club for most of his shooting career. He latterly shot for Kinross & Milnathort.

For as long as I can remember (and I go way back) he was always ‘Mr Perthshire Shooting’ and will be missed by all who knew him. My condolences go to his family.

Update 28/9/23:  Ian’s funeral will be held on 18th October at 12:30pm at Perth Crematorium.

This is advance notification that Balerno & Currie RC will be holding its annual Open Shoot on Saturday/Sunday 18th/19th November.  It’s all change from previous years as this time there will, firstly, be air rifle and air pistol competitions as well as the usual prone comps, and secondly all shooting including the prone comps will take place on Meyton electronic targets.

The programme and entry form will be available in due course. Watch this space!