Thread: St Arnaud sighting in area.

Southland Branch NZDA shot the Wilkinson shield again this year on the Invercargill Rifle Club range here in Invers. All Southland NZDA members have associate membership on the range, but very few of the 400+ shoot there, it's just a change in the way things are - an 1980s Deerstalkers shoot on the same range would have had at least 30 plus shooters (I know cause I won such a shoot in I think 1981 haha).

Likewise the New Zealand Small Game Shooters Assoc had several branches throughout NZ with particularly strong ones in Wellington and Dunedin, and man were those guys good to me! They held regular field matches which attracted quite decent shooter numbers. But as far as I know thats all long since gone. Things change.

If organisation's don't respond to change then usually they die. But it's always good to honor the past ( our range committee have been navigating this with our NRA shooters, whilst trying to respond to new interests e.g. shooting steel) - the fact that NZDA is still supporting target shooting is good, as is any involvement they have had in keeping this informal range going. Whether they did or not I don't know, but even if they did,that doesn't detract from the "local" effort put in. We are all shooters and need to welcome input and ideas from all quarters rather than snipe at each other.