Over BUCS weekend at the end of February, six brave Imperial souls left the comfort and warmth of their London flats to compete in the BUCS Smallbore Rifle Finals. After a hearty Chinese takeaway dinner, something of a team tradition, they set off for Sheffield ready for the upcoming two days of individual and team shooting.

Smallbore is a rifle shooting discipline that involves a small calibre round (5mm wide by 20mm long) fired over short distances between 20-100 yards. Indoors it is shot over 25 yards. Smallbore shooting encapsulates the pure marksmanship aspect of rifle shooting, disregarding external factors such as wind, weather and lighting conditions, as well as the use of a more controllable firearm due to its reduced power. It is the most popular rifle shooting discipline owing to its simplicity and accessibility, forgoing the need of large outdoor ranges. For this very reason, many fullbore rifle shooters, those who shoot long distances outdoors, frequently train with smallbore shooting, especially during winter.

After a few hiccups and delays with some of the other teams (cough ULU cough), shooting got underway. The Imperial A team led by Laura Stokes, emerged with silver medals on their necks and relief after such stiff competition. This is the highest Imperial has placed in our known competition history, having come fifth the previous year and fourth the year before. A notable mention was our illustrious club captain, James Badman, who shot both the best and worst score of the team, 88⁄100 and 99⁄100, over consecutive rounds, showing that shooting is just as much about mental stamina as the physical stamina. There were a few competitors from other teams who felt the need to show off their impressive rifles with extra long barrel extensions, perhaps to compensate for their lack of skill. However that wasn’t the case and the competition was tightly matched. The point margin between 2nd place and 6th place was ten points out of a maximum of 2400. The team won second place by 1 point. To put that in perspective, if one shot out of the forty by any of our shooters was off the mark by an extra half-millimetre, it would’ve knocked the team down to bronze.

Gold ultimately went to Southampton University, winners of the title eight times out of the past ten years, also the alma mater of one of our best shooters, postgraduate medic Lawrie Greenfield, owner of the infamous all-black “Darth Vader” rifle.

BUCS competitions are shot as a league throughout the winter, with the top teams and individual shooters progress onto the finals. Also worth mentioning is the fact that the Imperial B team, led by Goronwy Tawy, won first place in the BUCS smallbore division 3 league bringing back gold medals and further motivation to our mostly fresher B team.

Imperial College Rifle and Pistol Club is one of the oldest societies at Imperial College, dating back to before the merging of the constituent colleges. As a club, we offer every discipline of shooting that is available in this country, smallbore rifle, fullbore rifle, air pistol and clay pigeon shooting, most of which have corresponding Olympic events. We cater to shooters of all levels, from those who have never held a firearm before to national level athletes. In fact, our very own A team member, Alex Taylor, is on the GB U19 fullbore rifle team competing in South Africa this Easter. Our state of the art facilities and helpful community of shooters mean we’ve consistently had over 150 members, many of which start their lifelong shooting passion with us. So if you want to try something new, something a bit different, why not give it a shot?

We can be found by our Facebook (rifleandpistol), twitter (ICrifle) and on the Union website.