On Saturday the 13th. March 120 competitors lined up at the Alexander Clay target Club for the first Sporting G.P., it is a step up from our Sporting Nationals and was set out to be a challenging and reasonable demanding shoot.
It has been the dream of the Sporting Committee for a number of years, and after an initial attitude from some with every reason why we shouldn’t do it, we persevered and now undoubtly it is firmly fixed on our calendar and in my opinion was overall, a success.
Before Saturday though, months of planning, recce’s, phone calls and E-mails had been going on and along with that we had incredible generous sponsorship from Graeme Brown (Target Products), not only in the form of 12 brand new Promatic traps for our use (plus he set 2 of the fields) or his son Hayden who was the main trap mechanic, but he also gave several thousand in cold hard cash, as did Neil Winsloe and his company Cleanburn Energy Systems, and on top of that Neil was Event Director.
The Alexander Gun Club chipped in with cash as well as manpower to help run the shoot, which indeed in it self was very generous as there were a few light-hearted, funny comments about the ‘Arkwright’s’ taking in all the cash. Thanks to Blake Holden for supplying his Laport traps to run two of the fields especially when he had a large Break One shoot on Saturday evening. Certainly much appreciated. Thanks also to Peter Morrison and Casey for their extremely efficient running of the office, and the attitude ‘we can do anything you require’, while it was a Sporting Clay Committee event, special mention must be made of Rob Carruthers and his leading the way with a large screen TV with consistently updating results, overall and classes. It certainly had the local DTL boys wondering why they don’t have such technology!! It was of constant focus during the event by all the shooters.
It was also very pleasing to see shooters attending who don’t normally support such events, local club shooters, and some who would be well outside their comfort zone, but made the trip down to Alexandra, from the conversation around it wasn’t that daunting and left some of them wondering why they don’t have those targets at their clubs! Special mention of Robbie Smith who drove 1,803 K’s (28 hours 35 minutes to make the shoot, other Northerners were making a road tip of it, not to mention the Aussies who attended, 
every one of them very warmly welcomed (cannot say what was said to them as it’s a family magazine) and some were going helicopter deer shooting after the event, we really appreciated their support and sportsmanship. More about them later unfortunately.
We started setting up on the Tuesday and by Thursday Ray MacFarlane was ready to check the targets, unfortunately Tuesday and Wednesday were 35+ degrees and it been perfect weather in Alex, but come inspection time it blew and blew sending most of the previous set targets to Dunedin. I’m not going to mention the fresh coating of snow on the surrounding tops! I must say deep black storm clouds, sun lit tussock are photographers dreams but it’s bloody hard to see black targets, but it never rained and the wind died. Graeme Brown, after a restless night pulled out one of his fields and totally made up a new one, and as some bright spark said, “he pulled out one perfectly good par cour to set another perfectly good one. Special thanks to Ray McFarlane (FITASC V.P.) who not only inspected all the targets but helped Rob and I with tips and ideas on target setting and was not afraid to get his hands dirty in helping us. It will be a sad day when Ray resigns from his FITASC position as years and years of practical experience will be lost to shooters.
The shoot itself was run over 8 ‘old style’ FITASC ‘par cours’with competitors shooting 4 each day, making up the 200 total over the two shooting days. It looked like it might go to Brian Deadman at one stage with a couple of Aussies not far away, but an absolute melt down on par cour 2, from his average of 20+ to a 7/25, the ruination of many scores, the highest being 19/25. (The average score on that par cour was 9.72).
I was in the squad with Aussie shooter Anthony Panetta who shot a 25/25 on 5, then we headed to par cour 6 (our final one) and yes another 25/25, making 98/100 for the day. As was said at prize giving that is an excellent performance and one rarely seen at a sporting shoot of this stature, considering he shot 13 on 2 it was a supreme fight back to become leader of the pack. And that’s where it stayed, Anthony Panetta 1st. on 172/200, Brian Mortensen (Aust) 2nd on 171/200 and our own Darryl Braun 3rd. on 167/200.
Prize giving had a couple of surprises with each FITASC winner receiving especially labelled wine in wooden boxes with their medals. The very generous sponsorship didn’t stop there with all categories receiving excellent cash prizes. The Bishop (Ray, Roy and Thomas) family presented a superb large cup for top New Zealander, one to be competed for annually and that was won by Darryl Braun. Graeme Brown presented Dianne Lawrence with a unique prize, a large genuine CCI clay target 35cm diameter, and one could only guess why one would be presented with such a large target. Finally Anthony Panetta was presented with $1500 cash for HOA, so he had a good day at the office collecting HOA plus top AA (again cash) and had a collect in the Lewis Class which we ran along side the event. A good weekend for him with Aussies taking out 1, 2, 4, 8 and 10th spot in the overall standings.
It was a hectic weekend with an official practice day on Friday, two days of competition and a pool shoot as well as a ‘long birds’ competition (Springing Teal at 45+ meters and a crosser around 60 meters), all this tied in with good restaurants’; I won’t mention a couple of Aussie’s getting food poisoning (Hell remember Suzy the waitress in South Africa) and very good Central Otago wines and lots of good banter. Next year it will be in the North Island and promises to be a very busy year with the Nationals in Rotorua, World English in TVDA, Oceania’s, Aussie G.P. and Nationals without even mentioning the local Zone and Island shoots.
For the Sporting Committee
Ron Madden