The Shooting Club is held at the Sue Hedges Memorial Hall. We have grown from having four regular members when we first started in 2022 to now having eighteen members, sixteen that shoot regularly. We first started with six shooting lanes, but due to the increase in Scouts and Explorers joining, we have had to introduce an additional two shooting lanes. We shoot a mixture of air rifles, both springer and pre charged pneumatic (pcp), and air pistols at either six yard or ten metres.We also run shooting for the Cubs (aged 8 to 10½) and Scouts (aged 10½ to 14) at Cub/Scouts camp. This gives them an introduction to shooting so that they can get some experience and see if they like doing it. For those that do, we run a Master at Arms course for Scouts. This is a six-week course, where they start shooting with a spring powered air rifle. Once they have mastered the basics, we progress onto pre charged pneumatic air rifles which are much more accurate and are used in the shooting competitions. We also teach them to use air pistols in the final week or two. Once they have shown continued improvement and can demonstrate they can safely handle and use the rifles, we award them their Master at Arms badge. In the year 2025/2026, we have awarded six Master at Arms badges. This is less than previous years and is due to only a few Cubs moving up to Scouts. We have just had a large amount of Cubs move up to Scouts, so we will have a lot more to train shortly. Once they have achieved this, they are welcome to attend the Shooting Club. We have also run shooting sessions for the Hook Girl Guides and Explorers from other Districts.At the Shooting Club we have had some amazing results in both local and County shooting competitions. We have had Scouts enter the District Scout competition as well as both Scouts and Explorers (aged 14 to 18) entering the Hampshire County Shooting competition. They all shot very well with some very good scores. We had two Scouts and three Explorers make it through to the Hampshire Sporter Rifle Final. We are in the process of organising a District Explorers Shooting competition. This will be held in the Hook Scout Hut on the 18th April and is open to all Explorers in the Bramshill District. Unfortunately, the National Shooting competition did not take place at the end of last year due to organisational issues. The Leaders are members of several Home Office approved Shooting Clubs and we are taking the members along to shoot at Bisley on Guest days to give them some live fire experience with both full bore and small bore shooting. We have also entered several Live Fire competitions organised by Surrey County Scout Rifle Club. These are held at the National Shooting Centre in Bisley. We had an Explorer who won and was presented a trophy in the Surrey Coronation Cup competition for 100 yards open sights using a full bore 7.62mm rifle. This is where you use the metal sights on the rifle and are not allowed to use a scope. We also had eight Scouts, Explorers and a couple of Leaders enter the Surrey Match competition. This is a competition shooting several different types of rifles in several different categories. The rifles used are a Ruger .22 bolt action, a Smith and Wesson .22 semi automatic and a Marlin .357 underlever rifle. The categories included a turning target, a limited timed round and a standard shooting round. We did well in the competition and even won a Silver medal. If you are interested in getting involved or want any further information, please speak to one of the Leaders.
You can email us at Shooting@hookscouts.org.uk
