NEO Hadjialexandrou was just 17 in 1984 when he won first prize in the Cyprus hunters’ sporting competition, beating 150 other men, much older and more experienced than himself and proving that he was a natural when it came to the highly disciplined sport of competitive shooting.
Since then, in his time off from his work as a butcher, the silver cups, plaques, and medals, and a much prized award from the Cyprus Olympic committee, have piled up, and he is still winning in a sport which is becoming increasingly popular with Europeans, now that there is a higher proliferation of open membership gun clubs, and that the elitist image of shooting as a pastime for the landed gentry has been firmly knocked on the head.
The small group that gathered last week at the Paphos shooting club was not even remotely gentrified. Riccos, our resident Sunday Mail chef, turned up for his first lesson, resplendent in his signature cow print head covering and loud Bermuda shorts; Neo was more conservative, clad in his neat black and white ensemble with ancient and much loved shooting jacket; and our token Englishman played extra safe in mandatory UK beige coloured shorts, shirt, and running shoes.
This sartorial group was now ready to take on the sport of kings, and perhaps convince people that shooting tiny orange saucer-shaped disks on a hillside near Kouklia is something that will get their juices running.
But, let’s face the hard facts first. It may no longer be a sport for the aristocracy, but you’ve got to have a bit of cash to spare. Like golf, this is not a poor man’s hobby. Guns cost a lot of money – several thousand pounds to be precise. So do cartridges, and unlike golf balls, which you can expect to return home in your golf bag, cartridges always go up in smoke, and they don’t come cheap (a pack of cartridges will set you back five pounds and last you as many minutes).
Neo acted as tutor to our duo on the art of skeet shooting. The first important lesson was safety, how the gun always had to be breached, never loaded until ready to fire, and never ever waved around. Although comforted by the novices’ attention to these basic rules, my photographer and I swiftly removed ourselves to safer confines behind the metal score board, and there waited for Neo to show us how it should be done.
Although skeet shooting originated in America, the English version has its own unique rules. First, targets are fired horizontally over the range from two brick built houses, each with a firing slit in the wall which the targets fire out from. One house is built high and the other a few metres lower. Two firing positions are situated by each house with six others linking these two together at an equal distance through a semi-circular curve.
The shooter will walk, and then fire in turn, from each of the positions until he reaches the one with the most level of difficulty, position number 8.
Neo blasted off first, and sure enough a nanosecond after he called “pull”, small bits of orange plastic exploded all over the place. Then, with great patience, he positioned Riccos for his first shot and we all waited for him to prove that, although he can make a killer gourmet dinner, he is severely lacking in the marksman stakes.
Of course, we were all proved wrong. Even Neo congratulated Riccos on his superb first attempt, which had yet more bits of orange plastic cascading to the ground.
Next up was Pete Simister, who hails from Blackpool, and is a member of the local gun club, but he had not yet tried his hand at skeet, so once again Neo showed him how to position his gun, explained about trajectory, blind angles, stance, and gun position, until Pete was poised to kill his plastic saucer, which came out of the firing slit at around 95mph.
Full credit of course has to be given to the coolest guy on the range, young George, Neo’s son, who was charged with the job of pressing the firing switch whenever the shooter yelled “pull”.
And so a delightful morning was spent watching hundreds of exploding bits of orange plastic, the constant yell of “pull”, plus a feeling that your ears had been permanently worked over by a Dyson vacuum cleaner, combined with the ever deepening frustration on the faces of our novices when they missed hitting their flying saucer. Oh, the joys of skeet shooting.
Neo went on to explain that the sport really does demand a great deal of physical strength coupled with an ability to concentrate, focusing the mind totally on the target, and of course, pretty fast reactions.
My only concern – other than the fear of being peppered by buckshot by my butcher, chef or revenging Englishman – was the reply from Neo when I asked him how he took care of his gun: “Like a woman,” was the response. Considering that Neo strips down his gun in five seconds, keeps it locked away for weeks on end, and only takes it out to rub down the stock with dodgy smelling oil, I question his success with women.
