Thread: Field Target Shooting

I dont know if any of you know about this and what it involves so i am taking it upon my self to introduce you all to the sport. Now it doesn't involve powderburners here we are talking air rifles only Spring guns and PCP. The idea is to knock down targets in the field. You get one shot per target and one minute to take your shot plus an extra minute to setup per lane. There are normally two targets per lane so you normally get 3 minutes per lane to knock over two targets. you have to knock the target over to get a point. if you hit the target and do not knock it over it is classed as a miss. there are 50 targets and are placed randomly out to a distance of 50 meters. the targets have a hole in the middle of them you must shoot through the hole to hit the paddle behind the front of the target (face plate) to knock the target over. Hitting the face plate is counted as a miss. once the target has been shot at your partner records your shot as a hit of a miss and pulls the string attached to the target to reset it for the next shooter. we have three shooting positions. Standing kneeling and free. the free position is just that you can shoot how ever you like in what ever position you feel is good. however, the rifle must be supported by your body at all times and you are not allowed to rest it on anything so you can not use tri-pods or rest your gun up against a log or anything like that. the most common position is sitting. You are not aloud to use any kind of electronic wind indicators or range finders. The size of the holes in the targets go from 10mm to 40mm depending on the distance. It sounds easy right? anyone interested in giving this sport a go? any questions please ask here and ill try to answer to the best of my knowledge and thanks for reading

Thanks for the intro, Nunga.
How much carry over is there to hunting ? Can you use your field target rifle and skills to shoot bunnies or possums ?

You can use a field target rifle to hunt with but they are worth a lot of money so people tend not to and there is quite a bit of carry over into hunting as well.

I would thijk with the current trend in long range shooting most would be interested in full bore field shoots

I think I have seen this stuff on youtube , big smallbore rifles with massive parralax wheels?

Hello Nunga - I used to be a member of the north harbour FT club at Greenheith Auckland. Ah the good old days eh. Yep FT is a good sport alright.
Which club are you at? I still keep in contact with a few of the guys like Andre, Davo from Wellington and 'Zooboy'.

p.s I miss our mate Sean Sweeney eh. RIP ol fella

-Tim

I belong to Piako but also hang out at north harbour a lot as well...you could call that my second home ha funny how you mentioned Sean...we were just talking about him over the weekend...good fella he was.

Why not take up metallic silhouette all you need is a dial up scope on a .22rf and you're good to go you can use your field air rifle as there is a air rifle course of fire as well
Sean started the North Harbour club so he could practice silhouette in Auckland, Silhouette is more realistic as hunting practice as it is shot standing up,
Any one interested the next shoot is at Tokoroa sport shooting complex June 21/22 start a 9.30 am.

That's Dawn! I remember many a night over at Howick battling it out for a peanut bar

What clubs do .22rf silhouette shooting in the Waikato?
Seem's to be a real lack of clubs of any type of shooting near Hamilton.

I would be interested if there was something local to me and I could use subsonic rimfire. Wouldn't buy an air rifle just for FT.

I'm a fountain of knowledge

Rimfire sils are shot at Tokoroa each month, and Riverhead range here in Auckland. Tokoroa Rifle Silhouette Club, shooting air rifle, rimfire and centrefire (the centrefire is scaled to just 200m as that's as far as the range goes, but still a challenge shooting a 200m off hand, standing).

Next Tokoroa shoot is :

June 18th Smallbore, Light Rifle, Air Rifle, June 19th 09:00 Air Rifle, 10:30 Centrefire & Rimfire

July 16th Silhouette Challenge Shield, July17th Smallbore, Light Rifle, Air Rifle



Next Riverhead shoot is this Saturday 11th June for rimfire only, Saturday 23rd July for centrefire only. Centrefire is also limited to 200m.

There's a video is centrefire at Riverhead on YouTube.