Helping the next generation: Greg Hipwell gave his sashes to one of the best junior shooters in the US.
Photo by
Travis Williams
Greg Hipwell, Cohuna Clay Target Club Inc. member, or “Hippy” to anyone who knows him/of him, realised a long-time dream of participating in the world-renowned Amateur Trapshooting Association of America (ATA) — Official Group #GrandAmerican tournament in Sparta, Illinois, USA.
On target: Greg Hipwell in the United States.
Photo by
Travis Williams
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The tournament runs for 11 days straight, and is a spectacular feat of stamina. Each event is 100 targets, and there are three events/day (last five days is two events/day). That’s something like 2600 targets in that time.
For context, in Australia, the average weekend shoot might be three events of 25 targets each, and only one day.
Even the longest event in Australia is the Nationals, five-six days and around 625 targets.
Taking aim: Greg Hipwell in the United States.
Photo by
Travis Williams
So, the ability to maintain the stamina for 11 days, for that many targets, is a feat in itself. For non-shooters, to give you an idea — when I started shooting, after about 10 targets, I struggled to lift the gun.
Hippy had long talked about the Grand American, and wanting to attend his entire shooting life, but through circumstance had never been able to. He had been a formidable competitor in the ‘80s, and would have won more tournaments than you could imagine.
He stopped competing for quite some time, but fast forward to a couple of years ago, he reconnected with the trap shooting scene and became firm friends with Travis Williams and myself.
With some planning, Travis and Scott Mackenzie helped turn Hippy’s dream of getting to the Grand into reality, and a motley crew of Hippy, Travis, Scott, Robert Nelson and Stephen Haberman set off on a whirlwind boys’ trip to the States to compete.
In the lead-up to the trip, Hippy invested in 34” barrels for his #caesarguerini and was shooting the best he had ever shot (ahem, Kerang Clay Target Club inc., who is undefeated on the ‘off the fence’ so far this year).
He was feeling super confident in his ability with that gun and the longer barrels. (Again for context, it takes quite some time to adjust to a new gun plus it needs to fit you well for you to shoot consistently. Hippy had used this gun for probably 18 months, and had finally got to a good point with it.)
Before we go further, it’s important to know that competition shooting requires both the physical skills in developing good technique, consistency, accuracy and stamina, and the psychological skills of focus and concentration. Any shooter will tell you that most often poor performance comes down to ‘not having your head right’.
At Sydney airport, an unfortunate paperwork/gun registration number mismatch meant Hippy’s gun could not leave Australia! Defeated, and probably ready to walk off the plane and call it a day, the boys dragged him off to the US anyway.
There was a frantic search for a replacement gun at 40,000’ en route to the US, with Trav reaching out to Australia’s Ray Collins, a regular at the Grand, who kindly offered his beautiful spare Perazzi High Tech 5. Talking to Hippy in the following days, he was telling me that he was 90 per cent sure he wasn’t going to shoot. We all know the difficulty picking up a new gun anyway, but to pick one up that’s not fitted to you, that you’ve never shot and attempt to compete with that many targets, was next-level challenging.
As a side note, Hippy was renowned for turning up at tournaments back in the day, borrowing someone’s gun and winning the event. I reminded him of this, and that if anyone can do it, he is the one that can. His reply was that he’s not in his 20s any more, and was quite disillusioned. With some encouragement (and probably name-calling by his room mate), he thought he might have a go.
The first port of call was Vegas for a few days, and then they were to fly on to St Louis, then drive to Sparta, Illinois, on August 1.
That would have given them time to get to the shooting grounds and spend the rest of the day practising before the tournament started on August 2.
At Vegas airport, they were informed of the cancellation of their flight (numerous flights were cancelled due to bushfires), and a scramble to rebook via other cities was in vain.
They ended up hiring a car and driving the five-plus hours to Phoenix, AZ, to then fly over to St Louis.
They did so, but arrived at 1 or 2am on August 2.
The car hire place wasn’t going to be available until 4am, but they managed to get a car sooner and drive the hour to Sparta and finally fall into bed for a couple of hours, only to get up and go and compete.
Hippy, Trav and Scott all got sick along the way with flu-like symptoms, which also made competing challenging.
Hippy took a few days to adjust to the Perazzi and the boys’ scores were in the high 90s most days, which is remarkable shooting as all events are single barrel only, but not good enough for a win, and not the 100-straight that Hippy had hoped to shoot. His borrowed #perazzi gun was a great gun, but unfamiliar to Hippy, and also a high rib, which was very different to the flat rib he usually shoots.
Come the third last day of the comp, and the event was the 200 target ATA World Clay Target Championship sponsored by #Browning.
Hippy shot a perfect 25-25-25-25 using Challenger Ammunition, and was stoked with the achievement. The second set of 100 commenced, and Hippy continued his streak of 25-25-25-25!
So he’s now shot 200 single barrel targets in a row. That put him into the shoot-off, which commenced that evening, among 57 other shooters who have shot the 200.
Hippy went on to shoot a further 200 straight targets that evening, when the officials called it a night to resume the following evening.
He was one of the last eight remaining in the shoot-off, and the only veteran or sub-vet (55 years and over).
The next day, after the 200 targets for the day, the shoot-off recommenced and Hippy shot a further 25 straight. The next round unfortunately saw a broken target released at Hippy’s call, and broke the spell, subsequently missing his 428th straight target.
In shooting 427 targets single barrel straight, Hippy has won the ATA World Clay Target Championship Veterans division, and is #8 in the open division.
The fact he has done so after all that has happened, and with a borrowed gun, is nothing short of remarkable and a sporting achievement to be celebrated.
Well done Hippy, World Champ!
We have all been cheering for you along the way, and are so happy for you that you’ve broken your goal of 100 straight targets with a mammoth 427!
