Sod’s law/Murphy’s law states that if it can go wrong it will go wrong.  A way to avoid it is planning and foresight.  Sometimes though with all that is done, with all the preciseness of a Swiss watch, it goes to the next level, nothing can prepare you for what I call the chaos factor.  It’s the same as before, but things go wrong through a totally unrelated irrelevant imaginative way.  The only way round it is develop a knack for problem solving, fast, or just get on with it.

I usually grumble a bit then take the second option.

Now all the above, explains the circumstances behind me doing my first HFT shoot.

One night, up ratting at the shoot, it was raining again. It’s that time of year. Actually let me change that, I’m in the UK, it’s ALWAYS that time of year.  Still nothing was biting, or coming out to play. The S10’s mag was loaded up, ready to fire and the only action was me looping round the shoot again. I even popped down to the fields in between rain clouds, on the off chance that hunger had got the better of a bunny and it decided it would grab a brolly and go out for a quick munch. No joy.

Although the open gate and car in the corner of the field meant that there was some action in the rabbit field. Although not the sort I was after.  I carefully stashed the rifle, rang the farmer to let him know, where I was and waited for him, before going up to the vehicle and moving them on.

We better run through a few points here:

-          NEVER approach a vehicle, on your own, without someone else there.

-          ALWAYS sleeve your weapon, put it back in a car whatever, but NEVER EVER walk up to a complete stranger with it showing. Even if like me you are supposed to be there and they aren’t. They see full camo. . .rifle. . .and your only 5 mins away from meeting the local armed response unit. SO DONT EVER DO IT.

-          Get registration details make model etc , write them down, mobile phone camera, just in case

Ok lecture bit over but you have to be safe, and I’ve inadvertently met the armed response unit, when a passer-by from about ½ a mile away saw my setting up in a field and thought I had tied to bird a post and I was going to shoot  it. 

It was decoy, the AR police shout a lot, it’s a little bit scary and I vouch to stash the gun in the hide next time.

Do you see what I mean by the Chaos factor ?

SO back to the job in hand, no action at the shoot. I’m cold, I’m wet, I’m bored and the only pellet I let fly was the one to empty the chamber at the end of the night. These nights happen,  it’s the nature of hunting, even if it is a little bit annoying.  Still this is why we have supermarkets so that after nights like this, we don’t go hungry.

I return home early, empty handed and one pellet lighter. When I get back my Girlfriends deep in Ugly Betty. She loves me going out as she inherits the TV remote, and on my early return, she clutches it like its giving her life and gives me the sulky look.  “Don’t panic” I say “I have no interest in disturbing your viewing” and I trundle off to catch up with the stuff I haven’t read in the Airgun magazines, and go online to some Air gunning forums.

   On this occasion everywhere I looked the three letters HFT came up. Hunter Field Target. Hmmmm After a couple of hours searching around  and finding out a bit more, I felt like HFT was something I’d love to have a go at. Circumstances tonight pointed out that I was getting a little bit bored at the shoot. Blank nights do happen and it’s a little bit annoying when it’s your one and only chance to go out that week, as is normally the case for me.

I’d put target shooting and FT out of my head many moons ago. To me FT and competing meant, Space age looking guns which seem to be a must have to stand any chance of getting anywhere. Adjustable in every dimension including the 4th and possibly 5^th& 6th for all I know.

In order to stand a chance people  weighed pellets, lubed them up, chrono’d rifles,  had spirit levels, feathers on strings, hamsters (what do you do with a small furry rodent on a gun) laser range finders, parallaxed stuff, bracketed things, had huge wheels on their scopes, bean bags,  They all shot perfect scores. The guy that losses is the first one who accidentally drops a 1 instead of carrying a 2 in a complex equation that calculates where to aim allowing for wind, pellet weight, drop etc in a split second in his head.

Everyone looks very professional to me at it and they have baseball hats with official looking badges that have acronym'd letters on them .

All that scared me off. My baseball hat just has a picture on it, and I couldn’t be anywhere near as dedicated as I’d need to be. It also looked vastly expensive for that space age stuff and I don’t have a clue what it does. I’d hate to be one of those guys with all the gear and no idea, so no competing was not for me, that was for Elite Kings/Queens, Men of power and people who knew what they were doing. I was just a bloke who did a bit of hunting with an Air rifle. I’d get spotted a mile off.

But this HFT thing looked very interesting. From what I could see, it was the same sort of thing as FT but not so strict, I could pretty much turn up with my hunting rig and have a go. Seems like my kind of thing. According to the UKHFT website there are just a few simple rules, 

-There’s usually 30 knock down targets, with kill zone that range from 15- 45mm. Hit the kill zone and knock over the target gets you 2 points, 1 point if you hit the other bit and a 0 if you miss. Ok that easy enough.

-You have to fire from the post and it must be touched. You can do them in any position kneeling standing or prone. ( there are some compulsory kneelers, prone, standing etc) no sitting shots and when kneeling with your foot must be straight. And your trigger must be behind the firing line.

- rifle wise you don’t have to have a singleshot, you can use a multishot but you have to remove the mag between pegs and as long as the depth of the rifle form centre of the barrel line to the bottom of the stock is less then 150mm its ok. That’s the stock part not the grip bit. A normal stock is fine. But the 150 mm rule stops people using a hamster to rest the rifle on the ground when taking a shot What is it with these competition people and tame rodents ?

The rest of the rules are pretty much safety based common shooting practises and you can find them all on the UKHFT website.

Needless to say I liked the sound of this HFT shooting, it all looks a lot friendlier, and lot more easy going atmosphere, something I could enjoy without any pressure of having to prove my worth by getting great scores. I want to turn up, have a go, enjoy myself,  get dirty, shoot at some things, have a good time and the go home again. Now I know FT is probably exactly the same, but I’m an outsider looking in and it’s a bit daunting. HFT doesn’t look half as scary and it comes across as people like me having a bit of fun with a competitive edge. And that was what I was looking for. I had found a new way to play. And from on of my frequent visits to an Airgun forum on the internet I found the perfect place to break my HFT cherry.

The Quarry Extreme HFT Shoot. 

The words Extreme should have given it away really, but I stumbled on blindly and signed myself up knowing no better. Other people on the forum offered up pearls of wisdom, “Don’t do it man,” “do something easier first like a rubiks cube”  stuff like that.  But I’d made up my mind. I had a month of preparing before it was upon me.  It was close by, just over the Severn Bridge, and one of the names that came up frequently whilst I looked up info on HFT was Mr Pete Sparks. He was one of the founders of Quarry and if you look up UKHFT history his names all over it. So if I can have my first attempt at HFT near one of the guys who was there at its beginning, then all the better to me. I can watch learn, and if it is the harder course out there then the rest will be easier in comparison. All I wanted  to achieve is at least hit the faceplate of all the targets and get a point. I’ll watch and learn and see how I go.  So that was it decision made, I was going to break my HFT cherry at the Quarry Extreme. 

Now that’s a plan and it would have been the best to have stuck with it right there. Take my .177 S10 BBK in a month’s time to an HFT comp and have a go. It would minimise probability of the chaos factor, and most things have been planned for.

Then In true me style, I have to go moving goal posts.

I’d brought myself a BTAS Verminator a couple of week’s before., its light it’s great and I love it. I had two ideas in mind when I did so, Firstly my girlfriend would like to have a go at shooting and the raider I had was too big for her to handle, and the S10’s are too heavy for her as she is tiny. This was something she could use, every now and then. And Secondly, I want a lightweight gun I can put an add-on NV scope onto a day scope.  The Verminator is ideal as it is so light and the fact that the stock is hugely adjustable means I can move everything around to compensate. Another advantage is that it’s got three power settings so I can reset it down for ratting ad up again for out in the field. Brilliant, stuff. So I’d chopped in the single shot raider and got the Vermy.

Since then I hadn’t even touched my .177 S10 BBK, I didn’t have to, The Verminator was cutting swathes through the rat and rabbit population and I could quite happily walk around all night without it getting heavy. No, the S10“ratter” had been replaced and was surplus to requirements. I wasn’t going to get rid of it though, it could become my HFT gun if I enjoyed it and live a relatively pampered life, very much like a horse being put out to stud.

And then it happened, a friend was selling his X2, a synthetic RH stocked 177 with a single shot tray and 2 magazines.  The advantages of this was that I could pop the singleshot tray in for the comps and not have to worry about slipping the magazines in and out.  I know I’d end up firing empty chambers with a mag at the comp and that would be a zero. No I wanted that X2, and in order to get it I had to sell the S10. The X2 also didn’t come with a scope and in order to raise the cash for it I sold my S10 with the scope. I also had my eye on a one of those Silver Vipers so what better reason for me to get a new flashy scope.  I need one, I need a silver one as it matches the rifle ( that one always convinces the gf) and I’m doing comps now so I need a better one than I had.

With 2 weeks to go I had rewritten the plan. New rifle, new scope, 2 weeks of practising so all sorted.  Except it wasn’t quite that simple. I couldn’t get the scope I wanted. I tried the local shops and usual mail order guys, no-one had stock. I contacted the distributor and they told me they were a limited edition and there were no more coming into the country so still no joy. 

 I’m a bit stubborn at times, and all that just made it more of a challenge.  A week of ringing every single shop that advertises in Airgunner in my lunch break,  finally got me the result I was after, one of little ads right at the back. (see they do work), could have on in the post that afternoon. It was now just over a week away from the comp and the week before Christmas. Nothing like really pushing those goalposts.

I gave them my parents address as that where we would be for Christmas, and crossed everything I could that it would get here in time. I could always swap scopes and stuff if it didn’t.

It did arrive on time, in true royal mail style in turned up the day after the 48 hour delivery was up. (taking Christmas, Boxing day, and the Sunday into account). Which was also the day after we had gone back home, and 2 days before the comp.

No worries I'll scoot down get it, drive back, fit it, zero-it all in and get a days practicing in, no problem at all.

All was going fine until on the way back, My Girlfriend was out shopping in town, and had asked me to pick her up, So instead of taking then usual Motorway junction I was going on a couple of junction to take me into town.  However this was the day that just after my usual junction, the traffic slowed and came to halt. Little did I know that in between that Junction and the next, a car had hit the barrier forcing the highway officers to close the motorway behind me. Six hours later and busting for the loo, I slowly drive past a car with a dented wing being picked up by a recovery truck and 5 highway officer cars blocking off the rest of the motorway while the occupants stand around chatting. By the time I get home, I’m tired, and decided I’ll do it all tomorrow. 1 day to go.

The next day I get up early, whilst drinking my first coffee of the day  I fit the scope and then proceed to make myself some 40mm discs. I don’t  have any knockdown targets, and I thought I’d improvise. I measured out 40mm and tried to find something circular about the same size to draw around. 2 pence pieces were about 25mm so I drew round them on some paper and extended it out a bit. These were my little kill zones and I cut them all out and got them ready to go up to the shoot to zero in.

Various things got in the way of me getting out of the house and eventually I did get up there in the early evening, No worries I’m used to shooting it in the dark. I got out and set my targets a various ranges. The set about zero-ing in. I always zero on the length the yard. It varies but it’s the distance I usually have to work at. My new scope has parallax and ranges on it but. I really didn’t have time to decipher it right now. I wanted to get it zero’d  on a range I worked  with so that I had something I could work with.

When I was happy with the results, I then proceed to go and get me some paper killzones.

Now round the corner of one of the barns there is a security light that comes on. It very bright and lights up the whole yard, this time however there was a tractor parked in front of the sensor and it didn’t blink on quite so fast. Instead I picked my way around the corner as per usual, and fell into a mystery hole that wasn’t usually there. When I’d gone round at the start I’d gone another way and hadn’t seen that they had started excavating a hole to put a bit of a drain in.

I hit the ground hard and as much as I tried I couldn’t hold onto it. The rifle spiralled out of my hands. My heart stopped my breathing stopped, My brain said “go go gadget arms” but they didn’t work, they never worked.

The rifle hit the deck. My heart sank, all the pain coursing through my body was pushed aside, as right now I was more worried about the rifle. I lifted myself up and staggered on a twisting ankle over to the rifle. I picked it up and the scope hadn’t taken the brunt of the fall. The cover for the IR battery cracked although was still in its place. The stock of the rifle had got a ding in the butt where it had hit the deck and on the other side a crack ran down the length of the grip, and had fired the swivel complete with a chunk of stock across the yard. The mech looked fine and I loaded a pellet and fired it at a target. Smack as it hit dead-on where I’d aimed. The scope was still on zero and even though the stock was broken all was not lost. She fired, where she was pointed, so I’m sure I could get by.

I returned home, gutted that Id’ broken my new toy, pain stinging my body  from hitting the ground like a sack of spuds, and beating myself up with “if only’s” and “what ifs” over the events of the night. The only thing to do was, dig out some superglue and hopefully do a quick repair job when I got back. But even that wasn’t really going to happen.  Someone, several years ago I expect, hadn’t put the top on properly and the glue had set solid all down one side of the little plastic bottle and had stuck the top to the bottle. So I couldn’t fix it. I wouldn’t be able to do it the next morning on the way as I had to be there by 10.30 and the shops don’t open till then.

 I’d run out of time, I’d had no practice, and managed to break a stock. I couldn't go but then I would be admitting defeat. Nope I was going and I decided I’d take the X2 and the Vermy just in case. There was no pressure on me to do well, I just wanted to have a go and see if I could do it. And with the gar I had, If that gear was broken so be it. My gear has always been about function and not looks,  and for once, I made the mistake of going for looks before function and got a slap for it.

The next day was damp and saw me venturing out earlier than I normally get up on a Sunday. I plugged in the Long and Lat on the sat nav and drove off, feeling a bit nervous as to what the day would bring and loosing myself in whatever was playing on the Radio. I followed Yoda’s instructions on the sat nav and an hour later, I turned into a damp field with a few cars and a portaloo by the gate. I had arrived.

Everyone apart from me knew what they were doing, getting guns ready, getting dressed up in Gortex, and zero-ing rifles on a range.