By Pete Whomersley

The Mattersey Steel Challenge returned to its ranges in North Nottinghamshire on the weekend of the 30th/31st of July after a years break. Around 60 shooters took part in the event, amazingly enough everything worked and nothing seemed to go wrong.

There was a good mix of stages 7 in all, which included some of the favourites.

Snooker

This consists of a bank of red plates and two banks of colours, set out like a snooker table and in descending size with penalties relating to snooker scoring i.e. yellow 2 seconds, green 3 seconds and so on with the one inch black costing 7 seconds if left standing. The idea is to shoot a red, then a colour until all the reds have gone, then clear all the colours in the second bank in order.

Speed

Just what its name suggests - all out speed, 5 plates and one stop plate, shoot them as fast as you can, five runs all to count. The fastest single run for the stage prize and with a chance of getting in to the man v man final.

Mover

The mover is a real heart thumper, it's 40 plates with a moving no shoot shield. As soon as you see the shield appear you have to shoot the plates; you can only shoot the ones in front of the shield. The mover makes four passes, each time it disappears the shooter has to reload ready to shoot again when it reappears. The heart thumping bit is when you see the shield in your peripheral vision encroaching on your targets.

Big 50

This one is 50 plates all shapes and sizes, as many rounds and mags as you like, with a par time of 45 seconds to shoot as many as possible. Its just not doable but it sure is fun trying.

Pool

The pool stage consists of 14 plates 7 red and 7 white and a black stop plate. The shooter has to pull a ball from a bag to decide which plates to shoot either red or white.

Nice-N-Easy

This one's for the older shooter as all the shooting is done from a chair. This stage had a slight twist to the last time we shot it, the targets were placed in groups i.e. 2 plates, 3 plates, 4 plates and so on up to 8. Each group of plates must be knocked down before going on to the next group, plus all the groups were mixed up.

3Position

This stage had 30 plates + stop plate shot in 3 positions kneeling, weak shoulder, and free style.

THE MAN-V-MAN FINAL

Held at the end of the competition, it included 8 finalists all picked from the fastest speed match shooters who stayed to the end of the day. The final is run on a J ladder. The finalists were Layne Chisholm, Dave Holt, Jon Williamson, Mike Shields, Mick Tedesco, Dale Pearmain, Paul Langfield and Ian Cox who were matched against each other in a three leg bout with the best of three winning the bout. On command the shooters run forward to the table pick up their rifles, load and engage 7 Plates with a compulsory reload to knock down the stop plate. This match is very exciting to watch and always draws a crowd. It's probably more fun to watch than shoot because nerves are the key here, one slip with the reload and you could lose the bout. This year it was an all Mattersey final between Layne Chisholm and Paul Langfield with the winner after five legs being Layne just by a whisker. Paul then had to shoot for second or third with Mike Shields and just beat Mike to take second place.

SOMETHING NEW

We tried something different this time in the form of a side shoot, shotgun steels sponsored by York Guns who loaned us some non-FAC shotguns. There were several classes, own gun FAC,own gun section 2 , and of course borrowed gun which was section 2. This proved to be a very popular event and we had to almost drag some shooters away on the Saturday. They went away vowing to be back on the Sunday with more money!.

The course of fire was five pepper popper steel targets with a stop plate and there was a large timer readout above the shooters head for all to see. Just like the American speed shoot it was great fun to shoot ( yes I had quite a few goes myself ) and it's also good for spectators. We plan to run this as a Christmas shoot with 22r/f and lever action speed steels.

York Guns put some prizes on the table which included rifle bags, cleaning kits and a shed load of caps with Benelli and Berretta logos. I would like to give a big thank you to Dave Neilson from York Guns whose idea it was. Dave put a lot of work into the shoot helping to run the event along side Pete Harvey who made the setup. Thanks to all the staff at York Guns for their help especially Gary who, although very busy running the business, still had time to talk about the shoot and find ways to help us.

PRIZES

There were some great prizes on the table once again, the trophies were shields with the by now famous Mattersey medal made by P&V Displays and Enamels of Birmingham. Our generous sponsors Roger & Sheila Francis of South Yorkshire Shooting and Mike Russell of Conway Security supplied us with an array of wines and spirits, chocolates and other goodies for the main match and not forgetting York Guns who, as I said before, gave some great prizes for the shotgun steel side shoot. One of the good things with our steel shoot is the fact that it has four classes with prizes to fifth place so everyone has a chance of winning something.

THE FOOD

Allison Tedesco stepped in to do the catering at the last minute. Lyn Whomersley should have been doing the cooking, but we had a bereavement in the family so I would like to thank Allison for doing such a great job of keeping the range crews and competitors fed and watered all day plus not forgetting little Toni Tedesco and James Milsom for their help taking orders and delivering the food to the range crews.

AND FINALLY

All that's left is for me to thank all those who helped on the day and in the weeks and months leading up to the event, so if you attended I'll see you again next year, if you have not tried it before Come and have a go !

P.S. The results can be found here

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