WWA Junior and Young Shots Reports
This season all WWA Juniors and Young Shots were invited to attend specially arranged duck flights at Ulpha, Barkin and at the 15 acre floods (courtesy of the Arnside Tower shoot).
19th November 2011: The first organised WWA Young Shots flight went ahead this morning at 6am. 9 of our young members waited in anticipaton on the wetland at Ulpha. As dawn broke..wigeon, teal, mallard, shoveler and pintail lifted off the wetland after the opening shots. Everyone who attended had some shots at duck......Well done to those who managed to put a bird in the bag (Alix and Gareth Feeney, Scott Howsley and Max Shaw)...those who didn't will get more chances next time....we hope you all enjoyed the experience....The final bag was 6 mallard and 3 teal..A big thanks to Shoot Captain Andy Chaplow & Peter Rodell for hosting it.
26th November 2011: The second 'Young Shots' event was hosted by Shoot Captain Dave Coward at Barkin House Tarn. Despite the driving rain and gales, 9 WWA Young Shots and Juniors presented themselves for the shoot. The lads drew a ticket for their 'Butt' number and got into position. Unfortunately, the duck really never showed even though 60 or so had been on the tarn earlier. That's wildfowl shooting for you though! Unpredictable. However, the success of the night went to our new Junior Luke Robinson who managed a fine drake mallard taken with a single shot and to Jamie Bindloss who managed 2 cracking mallard. Nice shooting guys! Final bag 3 mallard.
11th December 2011. An impressive turn out of lads and dads showed up at the appointed time in The Ship Inn car park prior to the flight on the 20 acre floods. And hell, were they flooded with all that rain we'd had recently!! Several Committee members (Shawy, Stotty, Kevin) and shoot members (Ken, Brian, Mike, Gordon, Kevin) from the Arnside Tower shoot attended the evening hosted by Ken Shepherd. To the lads excitement a good number of Greylag geese were already on the floods...it was decided to try a pre-flight ambush on them to give the young lads a taste of goose fever...The lads were lined up in the ditches and hedges and the geese were then put off with a great rush of wings!! Up they went and broke over a lucky few...a spattering of shots down the left hand line and 2 geese folded and hit the water with an almighty splash....A nice right and left to Max Shaw...and missed chances for some but they'd had the excitement of being under these great birds. Onto the evening flight now and as it darkened the sounds of wigeon, pintail and mallard could be heard above...Several of the lads had shots and Matty Wright to my left took a nice hen pintail and a cock wigeon...We gathered at the end of the flight with a final bag of 2 greylags, 2 wigeon, a mallard and a pintail. Thanks to our hosts the Arnside Towers Syndicate for offering the WWA young guns this great opportunity!!
I hope all our Juniors and Young Shots enjoyed these flights as much as Shawy and I enjoyed being part of them.....Cheers to all our hosts, lads, dads and helpers!!!
Totals for the 3 flights: 16 duck and 2 geese:- 10 mallard, 3 teal, 2 wigeon, 1 pintail and 2 greylags.
