Cobram Pistol Club: What have we been up to lately?

Well another year is coming to an end and we are definitely ending on a high. We have managed to double our membership in 2 years, and everyone is as keen as mustard which makes it easy to find the motivation to keep the club running smoothly!

The coming year will see some new opportunities and hopefully funds to improve our ranges. We would love to hold more and varied competitions like Action Match, Steel Challenge and Metallic Silhouette matches, as well as the old favourite, practical, which will definitely keep everyone interested.

If you are interested in coming along and having a go at pistol shooting please contact us through the blog.

We thought it might also be useful to put together a quick overview of what's been happening at the club over the last couple of years.

Welcomes and Farewells!

We’ve said goodbye to some old friends and stalwarts of the club. Bob Chamberlin, Jim and Jennifer Bennie and Peter Green will all be sadly missed and we bid farewell to Shane M who is moving to the US.

We are however very pleased to have been able to welcome a number of new members into our club (we are always on the look out for more too!). Mike and Merrilyn joined the club in early 2015, and the last half of 2016 has seen the club membership almost double with Murray, Kris and Michael coming over from the Murray Valley Pistol Club, and Tristan joining us from Geelong. Also a big welcome to James, Brad, Gagandeep (Sam), and Mikael, who are all locals and joined us having made contact through the Blog.

Competitions

The club holds competition shoots every third Sunday of every month (unless circumstances require a shift in date!). We always aim to set up interesting, challenging and fun courses that everyone from novice to expert can shoot. Whilst we record scores, the club competition shoots are really more about members trying to improve their own personal stats. The following pictures are from the various shoots we have held over the past three years.

JD (John), our ever reliable club captain who has been a stalwart of the club for many years. Good on you JD.

Mike bringing out the black powder powered toys

JD trying out the new red dot on his .22

Ruger Charger .22 – The closest thing you’ll ever get to a 10/22 without a Category C license and very fickle in its choice of ammunition. Loves CCI and RWS, and hates Winchester with a passion.

A ‘target rich’ environment: All of our steel plates and gongs on Range 2 set up for an impromptu shoot.

Duncan, doing his best to reduce the richness of the target environment. He was also hoping the loud noises would help induce the birth of his first child on this day (his wife is taking the picture!).

Keep practicing son.

JD scoring his targets, possibly hiding some of the evidence

Because the club is setup on sandy ground, things get a pretty dry over the summer months.

This is a picture from Round 1 – January 2016. Notice everything is dry as a chip on range 3.

The same range, same position, six months later. 200 – 300mm of rain in a couple of months helps.

Scotty (L) giving a stage briefing to Mike, James and Kris while Wade and Matt look on.

Scotty explaining how not to sweep your hand when opening a door or window in a practical stage.

"If you are aware of the course of fire": Merrilyn making ready, Scotty as CO/RO

James’s first practical shoot: Getting used to the sights. Scotty stressing the importance of ‘finger out of the trigger'.

Spectators and Competitors: L-R: Matt, Mike, Kris and Wade

James patching out.

Looking back up range at a really quick stage: PP1 activates swinging target T1. On signal engage targets as seen. Kris and Mike having patched out and reset the swinger.

Christmas 2016 Shoot

Thanks to Kris, we were able to do a couple of steel challenge stages at our last Christmas shoot, something many of us have not shot before. Brodie and Amanda have numerous times, and of course they smoked the targets with a practiced ease that left the rest of us in their wake. Mind you, Brodie has won more Championships than I’ve had hot dinners so it wasn’t surprising. It was amusing to watch the reactions of the people who haven’t seen Brodie in action before.