Qualifications:

 I wrote this article nearly 25 years ago. Has anything changed?       

 It was a Wednesday night during May of 1994; the recently renovated Hamilton small-bore rifle club’s hall was buzzing with people. A quick head count revealed almost fifty including Graeme Brinkworth and myself.   Graeme had put an ad in the Waikato times for people interested in Air rifle shooting to attend a meeting at the range. You see, the two of us had come up with this idea that 10 meter Air rifle shooting needed some serious promotion, but we decided to take it one step further and actually do something about it. So you can imagine my astonishment looking at this number of people considering I was the one dumb enough to put my hand up and say that I would do the spadework. We started taking names and addresses and it became evident that there was a number of parents with their children and some others that didn’t seem so keen after we talked about promoting “Olympic” style air rifle shooting rather than “plinking” so I thought that probably about half of these people would be serious enough, but even twenty five was a daunting number! We agreed on a starting date. All we needed now was some rifles and targets! Graeme Brinkworth bought three second hand target air rifles on behalf of the club, a couple of the new members worked for Ramco boats and were able to make up some aluminium target holders and pellet catchers. We obtained from somewhere some six-target cards similar to small-bore targets. It was official; Wednesday night was air rifle night. We had a good number of juniors so to give them a fair go we would start them at six O’clock and seniors at seven thirty The records show that twenty-five people did participate on the first club night. Wednesdays became a really long day and I rarely got home before ten thirty but I loved it. Most of the young shooters were enthusiastic and improving fast.   I think it was August of 1994 a group of us competed in the Te Kuiti Open match organised by John Stuart and I offered to return the five electric target changers back to Graeme Hudson in Auckland. You know the saying about possession being nine tenths of the law? Well I rang Graeme Hudson and asked if NZSRA would consider selling these target changers to Hamilton branch, he simply replied “I knew you would say that!” As it turned out they were being upgraded so we bought them. Now we wouldn’t have to wait untill the whole detail finished shooting before changing targets, maybe I could get home earlier, HA, FAT CHANCE! While these target changers save time whilst shooting they take at least half an hour to set up and about twenty minutes to dismantle and put away each Wednesday night. Oh for a dedicated air rifle range which can be set up all the time and people can come along and train any time. Not much show of that in a busy small-bore range like Hamilton. The number of regulars had dropped to around ten or twelve and up to fifteen on a good night but it was workable numbers and everyone got in a fair amount of shooting. I even put a couple of busloads of kids from as far away as Te Aroha one School holidays.  It is amazing how interesting you can make shooting if you really try and we certainly had some good nights.  With the new shooting academy based at Auckland and the Hungarian, Laszlo Hammerl, as coaching director and his partner, Eva Joo, being a world ranked air rifle shooter, advise and coaching tips were readily available at the monthly competitions that were held at the Ardmore complex. This also allowed the up and coming talent to be ‘noticed’. Some of the young athletes became serious enough to want to buy their own rifles, which they did. It was becoming apparent just how limited we were. The better these young athletes got, the more they needed to train, but apart from weekends the range was only available one night per week for air rifle and that was our club night. The time needed to set up and dismantle the range was a pretty good deterrent also. And then there are exams, the bane of most students. Most of these young athletes excelled academically and school exams always seem to coincide with the big competitions. They soon got pretty good at planning their time or gave shooting away all together near exam time. September on is always the quiet time of the year, at club level anyway.   Sadly, in 1999 Laszlo and Eva returned to Hungary, citing difficulties with our immigration laws as the reason for leaving. I was astounded that we could let such talented people leave. After their departure air rifle shooting at national level seemed to lose its impetus and this of course filtered down to club level because without regular competitions at Ardmore the stepping stones to success were even less apparent.   Another problem that I encountered was lead. I had my blood lead levels tested in February of this year and the results were high enough for the health authorities to be notified by my doctor. Interestingly, the person who visited me was armed with all sorts of information about lead poisoning including a document outlining a policy for safe procedures concerning lead on small-bore rifle ranges written by Ross Mason. To the best of my knowledge this policy has never been implemented on any range. Anyway I thought I was duty bound to advise the shooters (especially as young people are at most risk from lead poisoning) of this hazard and to put in place some safe procedures of my own.  I don’t know if it was the sight of me looking like Darth Vader wearing mask, gloves and overalls whilst setting the range up, but we suffered a dramatic drop in shooters from that day on. The good news is that my blood lead levels where well within the normal threshold when tested again in July.   The drive to promote air rifle shooting has to come from within TSNZ not just from individuals like myself and I think that the name change has gone some way towards that end. The fact is that the ‘culture’ that exists is still predominately ‘indoor small-bore’ and little if any thought is given to the ISSF or Olympic shooting disciplines by mainstream members. In my opinion, properly structured air rifle matches or series of matches needs to be regularly occurring especially for juniors. Without juniors we have no future! Admittedly it means some work, it is hard to get young people to make a long-term commitment to anything, especially a recreational activity when there is so much to choose from today. And yes, I suppose shooting from the standing position and trying to hit a ten the size of the full stop at the end of this sentence could be termed difficult, but only if you are used to shooting prone. But unlike prone it can get a young shooting athlete you to the Olympics!  

Dave Sheely.