Chrimbo-Limbo they call it – in between the Christmas and New Year holidays – where cabin fever sets in after three or four days with the tree, turkey and TV and you need to get out.
Seems like half of Oxfordshire and beyond decided to blow away the Chrimbo-Limbo cobwebs at the Crazy Bear in Stadhampton. We rocked up at 10 past 10 to find that our cards were numbered in the 50’s – and every stand had a decent looking group shooting and waiting to shoot. We started with a decent cuppa and a nice bacon roll, cooked in the small marquee they have for taking your money and keeping you dry.
We had seven stands – and a compak set-up of thirty birds – to make up our 100 (priced at £30), the queues are unusual at Crazy Bear, but this set-up didn’t aid anything – we had a wait of 40 minutes for the compak, and plenty of other stands had a wait as well.
Target wise – nothing ridiculous – some decent crossers, a couple of nice sim-pairs, a nice crosser from the tower with a quartering rabbit that needed some attention. The Compak had six targets – a couple of quick whippy going away birds, two floaty incomers that were missable, a right to left crosser and a wicked high looper that caught a lot of people out (including me – I missed 3 out of 4 of those).
All-in-all a nice morning, a bit of attention and effort and I think they could stage a pretty-good registered shoot. Most of the stands have good wooden cages, there is a mixture of terrain with some light woodland and some open fields – there are a couple of towers and sometimes (but not today) a nice grouse butt with some interesting birds.
Scorewise – I came away with a 68, which is above my average – but below some recent scores – so I think quality wise it’s pretty good.
The Crazy Bear shoot is on the 2nd and last Sunday of each month, priced at £30 for 100 birds. Full details here : http://crazybeargroup.co.uk/fa…..mation.pdf
