How do you get a club to have full bore status?

[Zilberbak]

On behalf of some club members who are interested in full bore rifle shooting but not yet having a full bore rifle on their FAC’s I am trying to persuade my committee colleagues that we should look to encompass full bore as a discipline within the club by affiliating to a suitable range that allows full bore shooting (i.e. Severnside). Currently my club only allows up to .44 Gallery.

There is a little bit of resistance from a traditionalist view that full bore shooting should be left to full bore clubs, but I see this as a false limitation and not in the best interests of developing the club or in promoting shooting sports in general.

I am not suggesting or wanting the club range to be upgraded to full bore as this is not practical.

Does anyone have experience in leading a club down this avenue and what pitfalls to try and avoid?

Any views, comments, or advice would be really appreciated.

[mag41uk]

Should be straight forward and there certainly shouldnt be any resistance to the proposal.
The club I belong to is only a gallery rifle range i.e. not full bore. (I know that full bore ranges can also be gallery ranges!)
We have a couple of other clubs that rent our range to shoot air gun and blackpowder.
We are affiliated to the NRA and most of us are individual members of the NRA so we shoot full bore at Bisley.
We generally have a monthly full bore shoot there.
I would think all you will need is an arrangement with Severnside or whoever to rent their range.
Quite why your committe members need persuading seems odd to me!
They should fully support any type of legitimate shooting.
HTH
Tony

[dromia]

Our small bore club had a full bore section for a while and it was easy enough to do, the only downside was having to affiliate to the NRA to do so. The two reasons were firstly we were having to affiliate to two national organisations and the membership dislike the NRA even more than the NSRA.

The only reason we stopped was because of problems with Landmark, When booking ranges I always insisted that if we were the only club on then we wouldn't take the range as that would incur full cost, on all three visits we made we were the only club there and instead of a £3-400 bill we were getting £800-£1,000 bills the wrangling to get it sorted was debilitated and at the end of the day it wasn't right for a predominantly small bore club to be having to excessively subsidise a minority of its membership.

If you can get the fullbore section to cover the costs incurred then it is quiet feasible and if you don't use MoD ranges then you don't have to cave into the NRA monopoly. So the two "national" body issue doesn't occur. Unfortunately our multiplicity of "national" organisations work against efficient joined up multi discipline shooting.

Good luck to you. As chairman of a club I and my committee are right behind developing all shooting and we were disappointed that we couldn't make our full bore section work. We do have reciprocal arrangements where we can visit other clubs fullbore shoots as guests but it means shooting at their distances and targets. Access to fullbore ranges is not good and getting worse if your only option is MoD ranges as to get on one is a minimum of £400 for the day and can go up substantially depending on the number lanes used, the service from Landmark is sh!te as it takes a good 1-2 hours to get them to find targets, paste, patches, communications etc before you can get shooting.

[FredB]

I am easily confused. Since when was 44mag not full-bore? Our club has a 100yd range, limited to about 2100'/sec and an energy limit which I can't remember but is less than that of a 303, 7.62 etc. We allow these calibres with down-loaded ammunition. Shooters are required to test their hand loads with the club chronograph and the results kept in a range log. This only applies for smokeless loads and for calibres which exceed the range limit in factory loading. It amazes me that most of our members continue to use jacketed bullets with their downloads. See: www.stourportonsevernpistolnrifleclub.co.uk/. The web page is never up to date, but the pictures give the general idea of what we have.
Fred

[Zilberbak]

I am easily confused. Since when was 44mag not full-bore? Our club has a 100yd range, limited to about 2100'/sec and an energy limit which I can't remember but is less than that of a 303, 7.62 etc. We allow these calibres with down-loaded ammunition. Shooters are required to test their hand loads with the club chronograph and the results kept in a range log. This only applies for smokeless loads and for calibres which exceed the range limit in factory loading. It amazes me that most of our members continue to use jacketed bullets with their downloads. See: http://www.stourportonsevernpistolnrifleclub.co.uk/. The web page is never up to date, but the pictures give the general idea of what we have.
Fred

I know my .357 is a full bore but because of the arrangements of our shared outdoor range (even though typically ex-military, but only 50m) anything over .44 and the correct velocity is not allowed by the association that we share the range with (more to the pity and not worth pursuing is the impression I was given).

I have spoken to Richard at Severnside and he is more than happy to facilitate with a couple of firing points on agreed dates albeit with the passing of coin. My club is already NRA registered and it appears there is very little stopping us proceeding.

Would we need to advise the Boys in Blue of anything as some of the members would like to put in their variations?

Thanks for the quick replies, much appreciated.

[IainWR]

Is it a Home Office Approved Club, and if yes, do you intend to exploit that status to shoot "fullbore", by which, since you already do up to .44" mag, I assume you mean centrefire rifle calibres such as 7.62x51 and .303", not former pistol calibres?

If you are operating HOA for .44" then you are already Approved for "full-bore rifles", and all you need is a variation (which of course is free for a HOA club) to acquire a few rifles in .308, .30-06, .303", 6mm br... whatever, and you can get started. Actually, if you can find someone willing to lend the rifles, you don't even need the variations. If you are NRA affiliated you can turn up at Bisley and hire the guns and the range space from us. Using MoD ranges is, as Dromia indicates, frequently problematic and expensive (and it was NOT THE NRAs FAULT that you have to have Competency cards issued by the NRA to use MoD ranges, despite what the detractors might say); to get started you might do better finding a club that has a private range with appropriate clearances.

If your club is NRA affiliated do please call and discuss if you need to.

Iain
NRA Firearms Manager
01483 797777 x 154

[Demonic69]

My local club is home office approved but the butts are only rated to pistol calibres, they are nsra and bra affiliated and have a slot once a month with a full-bore club near Bury.

[Alpha1]

they are nsra and bra affiliated

bra affiliated no idea what that means but it sounds interesting I am all ways keen to have a go at any thing to do with bras.
I am guessing nsra means national small bore rifle association.

[JonC]

BRA governs a variety of disciplines
left hand opening
right hand opening
surreptitious
and teeth only

[Demonic69]

So that should be NRA... though I think being affiliated with bras may help some shooters