All Things Air Rifles & Pistols UK charity shoot 2017

Location: Owls Hoot Target Club, Prospect Lane, Warrington, WA3 6EH. Date: 22/4/2017. My name is Chris Waddicar, I run a facebook group called All Things Air Rifles & Pistols UK on Facebook. Late in 2016 I decided to start planning a group shooting event for members of my group to meet up and decided to do this in aid of Help for Heroes. At the time just an idea, I asked opinions of group members and set about registering myself as a fundraiser and started to fund raise prizes from retailers, manufacturers and hobbyists who make accessories. At the beginning I had no idea how successful the event would be and seen my £1000 target as pie in the sky, but nevertheless I aimed to get there.

At the turn of the year, entering 2017 I set about emailing, sending messages on Facebook and cold calling all businesses I could think of related to airguns and accessories to ask them to donate anything they could that were airgun related and after 4 months, days before the event I was overwhelmed with the success I had in generating prizes. I had managed to obtain over £1800 worth of airguns and accessories from our sponsors, who are, Owls Hoot Target Club, Pellpax, Blackpool Air Rifles, The Airgun Centre, Paracord Items for All, N8Vision, Custom Bolts, Go Outdoors Warrington, Sportsguns, Warrington Guns, Ultima NV, Warrington Tackle & Guns, T & J. J. McAvoy Gunsmiths.

The event itself was held at Owls Hoot Target Club in Warrington where the owner Lee Durney very kindly donated full use of his facilities as well as donating prizes. We had around 40 attendees all pre- booking with me on my Facebook group ‘All Things Air Rifles & Pistols UK’. And throughout the day we held shooting competitions including split the playing card, the ton up challenge, Darts with pellets as well as holding 6 big prize tombola style raffles. To see a gang of airgun shooters come together from online friends to brothers in arms was great to witness and between us all on the day itself we managed to raise over £1200 with several hundred more coming from online raffles currently still live on my Facebook group.

We also had the pleasure of Mike Duffy of Airgun Review TV joining us to take some photgraphs and videos as well as interviewing myself for his channel. Mike also brought with him a dressed up world war 2 soldier for people to take fun photographs with. This was the first of many annual group charity shooting events I will organise, every April I will be holding a charity event at Owls Hoot Target club with next years big event already being planned by me and Lee Durney and will be held over two days.

I owe an enormous amount of gratitude and thanks to all those involved from all the sponsors donating prizes to everyone involved on the day. Chris Waddicar All Things Air Rifles & Pistols