Friday 13th December 2013 – Part one

After a week of training, assessment day was finally here for our Advanced Rifle Handling (ARH) qualification. More would have been made of it being Friday the 13th if people knew what day of the week it was.

We left for the range at 06.00 on the dot and after the set up there was a briefing/pep talk by Bruce, it was then straight into the assessment.

I wasn’t one of the first to go, nor did I have to wait too long either. When my turn came many had been failed and only Marnis had made it through to this afternoon’s ‘lion charge’ test. It was like waiting to bat against an incredibly fast bowler and all the batsmen ahead of you had barley got off the mark.

I surprised myself by doing well in the 15m accuracy exercise, then taking just 10 seconds to score two bulls and a five in the distance (15m/10m/5m) exercise, then I sailed through the misfire drill before scraping through on my final attempt with the buffalo brain shot at 12m and 8m.

The range session came to an end with Marnis and I through to the ‘lion charge’ in the afternoon. Ulrica came incredibly close but missed out at the final hurdle.