Imperial Meeting Day 7 - In Case of Emergency, Break Glass

I've not been having great groups at Bisley, with only relatively few possibles (5) even in details where the conditions haven't been that bad, and I'm more than a point down on my long-term average. This seems to be a pattern continued from earlier in the season, when weight loss from running meant my jacket no longer fit properly; however the jacket has since been re-tailored. The only other significant variable was the barrel. To cut a long story short, I decided to swap barrels halfway through a moderately disastrous day.

The 300x shoot at 09:00 went well, with a 35.5 out of a possible 35.7 but the group was again a bit on the big side and the wobble persisted. Still, I was hopeful that yesterday's clean and re-foul had helped a little. Similarly the 900x Conan Doyle (yes, as in the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, he was a renowned rifle shot) was an acceptable 48.4 with one clear windreading error on my part and a slightly irritating corner* shot.

The final shoot of the morning before a long hiatus was the 500x range of the 1st stage of Her Majesty The Queen's Prize, which was pretty dire simply because of a big group. Having had a new barrel put on at the start of the season to save my previous, extremely high-performing barrel from getting worn out before the games with lots of training, I had them swapped. This involved a lot of faff (160 miles of driving, a bit of searching to find someone with an action wrench and a bottle of malt whisky) but may be worth it as the barrel is a known quantity and shoots extremely well indeed with the batch of ammunition to be used in the Commonwealth Games.

The final shoot of the day at 600x went well. OK, I lost a point for not getting one shot away before the wind changed, but the group was pretty good. Maybe I've had problems because of a duff barrel (it does happen occasionally.) We shall see...

*Note for non-rifle shooters - A corner shot is one which goes out of the bullseye on the diagonal high-left, high-right, low-left, or low-right. This usually implies that the shooter's group isn't all that it might be.