Fine festivities at club

By John Wood
JUST on 50 shooters and visitors attended the Woods Point Gun Club’s final shoot for 2011.
All of the Christmas events were novelties that threw most of the shooting rules, except for the safety rules, out of the window.
Shooters from Melbourne, Gippsland, Mornington Peninsula, the High Country, the Yarra Valley and the Central Highlands enjoyed the day of fun, good tucker and companionship.
Prizes varied from full-leg hams, half hams, meat trays and champagne with a bottle of wine to be won by any shooter that managed to hit a special coloured target that was randomly thrown.
By the end of the day 24 shooters had managed to hit one of these targets.
The first event was 12 targets walk back where after every two targets the shooters had to move back two metres on the handicap mark.
Tom Apps won the first ham of the day, 16/17, after a shoot off. Ross Elstrek, Ken Skinner and James Guppy took out the minor placings.
Event two was quite different, 50 targets quintuples. Teams of three shooters shot at 10 rounds of five targets, two pairs and a single. As the three shooters only had six shots between them, there was not much room for error. The winning team with an excellent score of 44/50 was Matt Woods, Tom Allen and Jim West.
The second team was Catherine Skinner, Jessica Kirley and Glen Coolahan followed by Mick Ward, Chuck Lay and Shawnti Coolahan. The fourth placed team was Harry Ward, Eddy Woods and Steve Bedggood.
The third event was a fairly standard 10 target continental with the added twist of being shot from grade handicap, C – 15 metre, B – 17m, A – 19m and AA – 21m, and also scored in points. Hams to be won by 1st and 2nd in each grade.
Paula Elstrek with a fantastic 29/30 and Chuck Lay, 22/30, won the hams in the C grade with Peter West and Laurie Poile the B grade winners.
The winners in the A grade were Ken Skinner and Trevor Newman whilst Mick Ward and Ross Elstrek won the AA grade hams.
To finish, the shooters had to try and break 10 pair of targets thrown back towards the shooter from down the shooting range. Looked easy but looks can be deceiving. The final winner was Harry Ward 15/20 with Trevor Newman 2nd. Tom Allen took 3rd place followed by Phillip Desmond in 4th.
All of the shooters who hadn’t won a prize by this stage went into a ‘Poor Bugga’ shoot off for a ham. John Butters kept his ‘best’ until last to win the Poor Bugga ham, Brendon Hempenstall 2nd.
The overall high gun was Trevor Newman, 89/112, junior high gun James Guppy. The low gun was won by the worst score of the day and was proudly taken by Rob Kirley, 59/112.
A magnificent Christmas lunch and afternoon tea, followed by the monster raffle, saw everyone go home replete and happy. The first shoot for 2012 is on Sunday 22 January at 11am.