A hint of the ‘OK Corral’ is being regularly played out on a hillside close to Paphos town.
Driving down the rough track leading towards the local gun club, cracks of gunfire reverberate and the smell of cordite fills the air as we enter a playground for adults with big guns.
Here, the name of the game is clay pigeon shooting, which is fast becoming one of Europe’s top leisure activities. It’s a sport sometimes likened to golf except, instead of swinging a four iron, you use a shotgun. The comparisons with golf are entirely sensible once you understand the Zen-like mastery required to become a marksman of note as ‘shooters’ endeavour to pulverise small flying objects as they whizz past at great speed.
And no, contrary to popular belief, live pigeons are not sacrificed. This sporting title comes from the old days when feathered critters were indeed released from traps to be summarily executed by marksmen standing by with shotguns at the ready. In 1921, however, clays were introduced and these four-inch spinning discs are now called ‘birds’. If you hit one it’s still called a ‘kill’. Basically it’s all about trying to hit a fast Frisbee which is being fired into the air to simulate the speed and flight path of various game birds, giving you all the fun of the bang with none of the bad karma.
Apart from reasonable eyesight and steady arms, the main requirement is tremendous concentration. You don’t aim a shotgun as you would a rifle because the cartridge is packed with powder and pellets, so you are firing a three-dimensional cloud which has a certain length width and height. Anticipating the flight of the target and then firing ahead of it is not a precise science but it is something of an art, as you only have a split second to work out the clay’s distance and speed.
Like golfers, marksmen are also on a relentless quest for perfection, and every time they pick up their shotgun, the contest is with themselves, whereas in other sports you can watch and study your opponents and decide a strategy. Here on the shooting range, you will only look at your own mistakes.
Cyprus already has a major marksman in the form of George Achilleos, the 26-year-old from Yeriskipou who now leads the world rankings in this sport. There are high hopes this young man will be coming home with a gold medal when he represents our country at the Beijing Olympics next year.
Ian Inglis and wife Maria agreed to be given a master class in ‘clays’. To coach them, they had Paphos-based, first division champion and president of the Paphos gun club Neophytos Hadjialexandrou who patiently took them through the first basic steps. Neither of them had ever before held a firearm, far less fired one, so both were justifiably nervous about how they would perform.
Neo patiently explained the three key elements for a good shot, concentration, timing, and syncronisation of eye contact with your target. He demonstrated after ‘killing’ four clays in rapid succession the importance of the trigger finger, coupled by staying absolutely calm at the time of pulling the trigger. He also stressed that the skilled marksman will always put his success down to 25 per cent technique and 75 per cent mental ability.
Ian was first to step up to the ‘ring of fire’. He nestled his gun under his chin, ‘got himself into the zone’, and, against all odds for a rank beginner, he went and killed the very first clay that shot out from the tower. In the process, I duly lost a £10 bet I made that he couldn’t hit a flying fat piglet, far less a four-inch, orange tornado-powered disc.
Maria didn’t do as well, and it didn’t help that she had an inherent dislike of guns to begin with.
”What I couldn’t quite master was the need to shoot ahead of the target. Basically I just blasted away whenever the clay emerged from the slot in the tower, and I didn’t lean into the shot to reduce the recoil and maximise accuracy or really concentrate on trajectory. I was just desperate to hit it, which I did only once, and that was only because Neo instructed me when to pull the trigger.”
Clay pigeon shooting is expensive, at least for the initial set up costs. A decent gun costs around £1,000 plus. Then there’s the cost of the shells which for just one round of shooting will cost on average £4.50. You will also need a carrying case, a special steel, lockable cabinet at home to secure your weapon – separate from the shells – ear plugs and earmuffs, a proper shooting jacket to carry the shells, special vision glasses for the summer sun and a special dedication to cleaning and caring for your gun after each shoot. The big bonus is the low membership fees. Paphos gun club offers potential members a fee of £20 pounds for the first year, £10 thereafter. Via the club you will apply for a gun licence from the authorities which if accepted takes around one month to process. Before anyone invests in a gun the club will loan a shotgun to potential members in order for both them and the new member to see if they are mutually suited to the sport before they invest in all the equipment.
For more information contact the president of the Paphos gun club – Neophytos Hadjialexandrou. Tel: 99 475630. E-mail [email protected]
Or the club’s general secretary, Dimitris Efthymiou. Tel: 99 655737.
E-mail [email protected]
