You come home from a cold morning in the hide or a long evening around the farm buildings, tired, muddy and pleased with how it went. Then comes the bit most of us skip: writing it down. A good shooting log takes two minutes, and it pays you back for years. Here is a plain-English checklist of what is worth recording, and how to make it a habit rather than a chore. Why bother keeping a shooting log at all? Memory is a poor record keeper. Three months on, nobody remembers whic

Ask anyone who has squadded at a UKPSA club match and they will tell you the same thing: the shooting is the easy bit. The hard bit is the paperwork afterwards. Scores get written down wrongly, penalties are forgotten and a stage that felt brilliant turns out to be a headache for the match organiser. Here are the five scoring mistakes that crop up most, and how to avoid every one. 1. Mixing up the hit zones Practical shooting scores each hit by the zone it lands in, and the v

Almost every household has one: the splattered index card, the screenshot buried in your camera roll, the half-remembered method your gran never wrote down. Recipes are some of the most precious things a family owns, and some of the easiest to lose. Here is a practical, plain-English way to gather them, keep them, and actually cook from them. Why do family recipes get lost so easily? Most recipes live in scattered places: notebooks, bookmarks, messages, magazine cut-outs and

Work out what each gun pays for a driven shoot day: birds, lunch, tips and any shared extras, split evenly and ready to paste into the group chat.

Pick your gauge and what you are shooting to see a typical shot size and load weight for 12 and 20 bore, with the UK lead shot rules explained.

Enter your targets shot and hit to see which CPSA class your average falls in, and how many hits you need to move up. Uses the current CPSA cut-offs.

A free peg draw tool for driven game shoots. Enter your guns, pick the number of drives and get a fair peg board in seconds.

A driven day can feel intimidating the first time: unfamiliar traditions, a dress code, and a lot of unwritten rules. The good news is that the basics are simple, and most hosts and keepers are happy to help a newcomer who is polite, punctual and safe. These are the questions first timers ask most. How much does a driven day cost? Most commercial days are priced per bird shot or per bird in the bag, so the price depends on the size of the day. As a worked example from a Sport

Clay pigeon shooting is one of the easiest field sports to try in the UK, and the same handful of questions come up every time someone books a first session. Here are the answers in plain English. Do I need a licence to go clay pigeon shooting? Not for a beginner session. At most clay grounds you can borrow a gun, buy cartridges on site and shoot under the supervision of an instructor, so you need no previous experience and no certificate of your own. A shotgun certificate on

Every shotgun and firearms certificate in Great Britain lasts five years, and the three questions certificate holders ask most are always the same: how much is the renewal, how early can I apply, and what happens if I leave it too late? Here is where things stand in 2026. How much does renewal cost in 2026? Fees rose by 3 percent from 4 June 2026 under the Firearms (Variation of Fees) Order 2026. Applications received by the police on or after that date pay the new rates: Sho

Most new shooters walk away from their first practical shooting match having heard the words "hit factor" and "Comstock" a dozen times each, and understood roughly none of it. It sounds more complicated than it is — once you see the logic behind it, the whole system clicks into place fairly quickly. The three things that actually matter IPSC was built around one idea: reward accuracy, power, and speed together, not any one of them on its own. That's where the motto Diligentia

Most Guns turn up on the morning of a driven shoot, get their peg number, shoot a few drives, have lunch, and go home happy. Almost none of them notice the one person quietly holding the whole day together — the shoot captain. It's not always a formal title. Sometimes it's the host, sometimes a senior Gun asked to take it on, sometimes the keeper themselves wearing two hats. Whoever it is, the job is the same: make sure eight or nine Guns, a line of beaters, a picker-up team,

If you've just started shooting registered rounds, you'll quickly run into a letter next to your name on the scoreboard — C, B, A, AA, or AAA. That's your classification, and it exists for the same reason a golf handicap does: so you're competing against people of a similar standard, not getting outshot by someone who's been doing this for twenty years. How the classes work CPSA classifications run from C Class (newer or less experienced shooters) up through B, A, AA, and AAA

Shotgun certificate renewals in the UK have always asked for a reason you hold the certificate — sporting use, pest control, or both. What's changed is how much scrutiny that reason now gets, and how long it takes to get through. Some Firearms Licensing Departments are reportedly taking over a year to process applications, and there's ongoing Home Office review of whether shotgun controls should move closer to the stricter Section 1 regime. What licensing departments actually

Peg allocation is one of the first jobs that can make or break a shoot day. Get it right and nobody thinks twice about it. Get it wrong — or even just look like you got it wrong — and it's all anyone talks about at lunch. Why fair peg allocation matters Every peg on a drive offers a different picture. Some sit under the main flight line and see birds all morning; others, at the end of the line or facing into the sun, see very little. Over a full day of four to five drives, an