Stone the crows!

Oh dear - our Inter-county competition at Wolverhampton has fallen victim to the global pandemic crisis and has been cancelled :( 

Whilst we are disappointed of course, the risks associated with us continuing to practice and train are very small so our training session is still on (but dont come if you catch it!).

Our focus will be on developing your shooting skills for later competitions such as the Waterloo and National Scout Rifle Championships so we will update our training plan and keep it useful and fun! (and of course air gun shooters are always very good at hand washing after handling lead!)

Second Practice

Our next practice is at Monkmoor Scout Hut on Sunday 15 March from 1-5pm

(Click the map to go to the google map page)

Meanwhile, the squad Hoodies have been ordered - the price will be £25 (it gets expensive when adding logos and names but the County are chipping in a bit to keep the price down to £25) - probably not available for this week but should be with us before the next practice! If you can pay by cheque then make the cheque payable to Shropshire Scouts or we can take cash :)

Shropshire Rifles 2020

Welcome to new squad members and welcome back to those that are already in the squad!
I have just emailed everyone with info about our first training session at Priorlee Scout Hut on 7 March 10-12:30 and 1:30-4:00 - click the link for google map directions!

Bring a pack lunch and the required legal consent to shoot!

Here's the order form for a squad hoodie if you want to order one or need to a new one!

I feel like I win...

Waterloo!
The next national competition is not until the NSRC in October at Bisley, but a great opportunity to practice the events and win some glory in the meantime is the Waterloo Shooting Competition organised by South West Cheshire Rifle and Pistol Squad on the weekend of 8-9 June. It follows a very similar format to the NSRC - perhaps that is why they always do so well at Bisley in October!

They have invited us to join them and John D and Martin Croll plan to run a weekend camp so you can take up the invitation.
The competition entry is £25 and we will need to cover food and transport too. At this stage could you please email John and Martin to register a (non-committing) expression of interest so they can see that we will have a viable entry. 
They are dohoo@clara.net and monkmoorscout@aol.com

Movin' on up

Well done everyone - we successfully beat our 2018 selves! And also moved up the inter-county rankings to 5th. Thats an improvement of three places on our previous best and puts us in the top half of shooting counties (despite being one of the smallest in terms of scout population). (Also beating Hampshire - John's old scout county :) )

We had a good final practice at Aldersley (...very smart)

and the sun shone on our camp (even at 5:30am wake up - not many scouts up yet though...)

And finally we had a successful competition and everyone smiling at the end!

Special congrats to Will who was our top scorer and got an invite to join the National Scout Squad.

...but well done all - I'm particularly pleased to see the improvement during our preparation - sometimes it seems like the practices don't go well, but you can see that you improved on average by more than 38 (equivalent to one ring every shot) which is a big improvement! 

I can email out the full results to anyone that wants to see - just drop me an email. 

And so now, with this group of skilled shooters across the county, we should be planning to get a good Shropshire Contingent to the National Scout Rifle Championships in October - after all we have the current Scout Champions in both Rifle and Pistol in our Squad!

Thanks all for your efforts and enthusiasm, and company - I look forward to seeing you again soon!

last post...

...before the championship!

Please confirm details for camp! It would be nice if you can email me the form as soon as possible, and bring the fee to camp if I don't see you before then!

Camp details are either on the form or on the blog post that contains the form. If there is anything I have missed, do please email me. 

The one bit of info that is neither on the form nor on the post is the arrival and finish times - We aim to meet at Aldersley at 9:40am on 23 March and finish for parents to collect from Aldersley at about 5pm on 24 March. Leaders will be travelling from Whitchurch, Leaton and Bridgnorth so if you contact your local leader you will likely be able to get a lift from nearer home!

Finally, we will have a final pre-camp practice at Leaton on Weds 20 March 7-8:30. The Eventbrite booking was not really used so we'll just take our chances on numbers and squadding! I hope to see you at the practice if you can make it!

Permission to Camp

Here's the permission to camp form we need for the training/competition weekend. Please bring it to me as soon as possible at a training session or by email. The price for the use of the range for training, shooting for the two days, and food and accommodation is £10.

We will camp at Patshull, but have use of the hut too (the sleeping accommodation at the hut is not as healthy as a tent so we will camp rather than sleep indoors!)
You will need to bring normal camp personal kit, tent, sleepbag, roll mat etc. You will not need mess kit as we can use that from the hut. You will need a pack lunch for Saturday - we will provide all other meals. You also need to bring your smart uniform for the closing ceremony and comfortable clothing and squad hoodie (!) for both days shooting. If you need to borrow a tent please let me know as you can use a Boreatton hike tent for the weekend if you do not have access to one of your own.

Please let me know of any dietary preferences/requirements - we aim to please!

We will stay in touch via leaders mobiles or in case of emergency during the day by telephone to Aldersley shooting centre  01902 743562 .

Patshull scout centre where we will stay has a website www.patshull.org.uk which again has emergency contact info, but normal communication will be via leaders phones. 

My phone contact is Home 01939 291352 and Mobile 07895 140034.