A REAL SMOOTHIE

“I must have put 130,000 cartridges through it, but I never once had a firing pin fail.”

I started my shooting career with a Winchester 6500, and shot the poor thing until it just about fell to pieces. I then moved on to my first Krieghoff K80 Super Sporter 30in. This was a reconditioned gun, rumoured to have been in a house fire. Supposedly all that survived was the action, so it had new barrels and wood fitted. It was probably around 20 years old, but it worked really well. Back then, I really wasn’t strong enough or competent enough to shoot a Krieghoff. It was a cracking gun, but unless you set the beast up correctly it can make shooting rather hard work.

Then around 2010 I was asked by a British Shooting coach to try Olympic Skeet – which, to be honest, I had no interest in whatsoever. The Olympics is a hard path, you have to travel all round the world and shoot in competitions, and if you win, you win a place for