After replacing and upgrading the traps over the past two years from single stack to carousel traps and a lot of huffing and puffing we managed to manhandle one up to the top of the tower we thought that we were ok for the first open shoot of the year a couple of us was still trying to get things set up on Friday night [finished up after ten pm] and was back out at eight am that's when we found our first problem one of our single stack traps went "full auto" and would not stop until we pulled the terminals from the battery, not good news as the guys were starting to arrive ,still we had the trap we took down from the tower last night, so out with the tools and after twenty mins we had it up and running sorted. Half an hour later problem no two showed up the two traps from the tower went out of sync , they were set up for driven grouse, fast and low where you had very little time to see and shoot , you had to be quick to get a pair. So up the tower to see what went wrong a simple fix was all that was needed as the lock nut on the spring tension was slack . Surely that was all of the problems over well almost around one pm one of the traps on the left- right crossers decided to break a spring on the separator knifes , now this spring is around two inches long and a quarter an inch diameter not a big spring but damn awkward to replace , problem was we did not have one so that's was that they thought as they went to rearrange the layout but wait a min the first trap that went full auto was the same make as the one that broke its spring a quick look confirmed they were the same so off with the top plate and five mins later sorted. After all the drama I managed to get round the course what could go wrong with that well may you ask the sun was up so was the wind it played hell with the clays they were going all ways , I just could not hit the damn things . Still it was a good turnout and some damn fine shooting ,the high gun was won with 36 clays out of 40 with the runner up on 35
Robert
