Clay Pigeon Shooting in London

Now, I am definitely someone who is known for their abysmal hand eye coordination skills. To put this into prospective, even sitting at less than a meter away from the TV, with a pinpoint guide to help me, I still manage to shoot everything apart from the target in COD. Yup, I'm bad at aiming, so you can guess how nervous I was to hold an actual live gun.

It took us about 40 minutes to get from my work place to Ruislip, which is in North West London. The shooting grounds looked beautiful, just like the British countryside. I didn't even know places like this existed in London!

So, we made our way to the target practice sites, and it was finally my turn. The instructor actually loaded the gun for me and gave me a shoulder pad as well (this is because otherwise the gun would have recoiled on my bare skin as I was wearing a cami top) to soften the recoil. I held the gun up, missed the first 5 times, then hit the clay disc flying towards me! Adrenaline-rushed, I shot down another 3 before missing again. I blame this on my glasses frames as they blocked my vision, plus everything above the frame was blurry. Instead, I had to try and arrange my frames to be higher on the right side and lower on the left just to see anything.

There was a huge variety of the directions the clay pigeon could be shot as you so you had to try and adjust to that as well. The easiest (for me anyway) were definitely the ones that come towards you slowly and across your vision field. You also get "rabbits" which roll across the floor, and ones that fly over your head so you have to lean back and shoot up.

All-in-all, despite being a bit nervous at the beginning, it actually turned out to be really fun! I thoroughly enjoyed it and the instructors were really helpful and patient. You do get a VERY painful shoulder afterwards, even if you had the shoulder pad on, which made everything a lot harder to do. But the feeling of shooting down a clay pigeon counters all of the pain :)

We went to West London Shooting School: http://www.shootingschool.co.uk/

The shooting grounds were lovely, the instructors were so helpful and the food was amazing. Great choice if you're thinking about spending either a whole morning or afternoon shooting. They also have a school in Oxford, which I wish I knew about earlier.

Helpful tips for Beginners:

1. Wear trainers, comfy ones, they will be your best friend on the day
2. Try to wear a T-Shirt or a fabric between your skin and the gun, so the recoil is softened
3. Probably consider wearing contacts if you wear glasses like me, you can see better that way
4. You can wear your own sunglasses instead of wearing the clear glasses provided
5. Listen to the instructors, as they know best and will help you develop your shooting skills

Lastly, don't worry! Even if you only manage to shoot one down, the whole experience is still fun, and I would definitely recommend you try it out if you haven't been before!

Rating: 10/10

Tiny