Sunday Territorian

Gun sport my life’s passion

- BART IRWIN BART IRWIN IS AN NT FIELD AND GAME SPOKESMAN

I RECKON everyone is passionate or even fanatical about something. For some it is music or a musician, movies or a movie star, a sport or a team. For me it is shotgunnin­g. I love nothing more than hunting birds or busting clay targets.

My work life in newspapers demanded efficiency in production. To put out one edition per day at the NT News or up to eight editions in a shift at Leader Newspapers in Melbourne required the right people with the right tools.

There was no time to waste, and the best equipment streamline­d all the work processes. So, I have found it with shotguns. They are versatile and can put a feed on the table, whether it be pork or quail. And shotguns make a walk in the bush not just a pleasure, but a hunt that gathers food of all sizes with just the mere change of shot dimension.

A load of BBs can take down a pig or a goose. A shell with #4s to #6s, a duck or a rabbit. Throw in a solid and large game like deer are possible. It is all about range and ability to both hunt and shoot.

Then that same shotgun can be employed as sporting equipment to shoot clay targets in competitio­n or just for fun.

I find great pleasure in the flight of a clay target coming to an explosive halt and turning to dust; it’s such a fascinatin­g sight. Clay target shooting offers plenty of games to play. I enjoy Simulated Field, better known worldwide as Sporting Clays, but there are simpler games like Trap and Skeet.

Recently I put on a sporting clays challenge of Make a Break at the NT

Field and Game range. It was like playing snooker with clay target traps given point scores of one to seven depending on the difficulty. The easiest trap had a score of 1 and is played like the red ball. We had to break a #1 trap target to shoot #2 with the second barrel. If both were hit a score of three points was added. And so on it went with trap #1, then trap #3 giving a score of four points et cetera.

This was a very compact game played on our Five Stand Sporting course with just five traps employed. It was simple and we added a bonus round where the shooters competing could choose a pair of traps to rapidly increase their score to catch up, while often the leader of the first round took safer options to maintain a winning lead.

Australian Simulated Field (ASF) is Field and Game’s version of Sporting Clays and has been deemed to be by some of the highest standard in the world. The presentati­on of different-sized clays at ranges from 15m up to 55m tests most.

An ASF course consists of five or more stations where up to five targets are shot at each station.

The shooters move around the course as a squad of up to six competitor­s. It is often referred to as “golf with a gun”.

This perfectly describes the atmosphere. It is very social with jovial banter and lots of encouragem­ent.

My advice, if you are looking for a sport to enjoy in the heat of the tropics, is to try shotgunnin­g. It sure beats the hell out of running around.

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