Our History

In the beginning …

Back in April 1985, a bunch of guys decided to form their own shooting club as the cost of open shoots was getting prohibitive and full of posers of the first order. Sitting around the table playing cards were George Lake, Brian Sandle, Peter Selmes, Roy Grogan, Mick Harris, Dave Lyons, and Arthur Clackett. It was suggested that they form their own club. Names were bandied about, and, after a while, they decided to name the club “The F&F Gun Club.” For an explanation of the name, you would need to ask a member! The club motto became ‘Qui Vincit Qui Curat.’ George was named Chairman with Brian as company Secretary (looking after all the money). Everyone contributed £15 each, and the club was created. The first trap was purchased for £60, plus 600 clays for £17 and a ground rent of £20. The first official shoot was held at Tony’s farm on the A22 on 4 th May 1985. The average attendance throughout 1985 was 8-9, which increased to 10-15 in 1986. In 1985, they started the club’s annual weekend away in May with the first one in Totnes, Devon. In 1986, the cartridges were £2.50 for a box of 25! Following the success of the Annual Tour in 1985 at Totnes, in 1986 the Annual Weekend away moved to the infamous Wight Mouse on the Isle of Wight, where they shot for over 10 years. They started membership subscriptions in May 1986 at a cost of £10 per year. In 1987, they started to make a bit of money. Over time, things improved, and at their first AGM in 1987, they had a balance of £227.50! In 1988, the balance was £210, and so they started to look a bit healthy and bought more traps. In 1995, Brian and George felt they had done enough. Up to then, Brian had been storing the trap at home and was bringing it with him for every shoot. They handed over to Peter Lake and Darren Garrett, and the rest, as they say, is history! In 1999, they shot at the Wight Mouse for the last time having been there on the annual tour since 1986. In 2000, the annual tour was changed to the North Devon Shooting Ground in Ilfracombe. This remained as the location for the annual weekend away until 2011. In 2003, the annual membership subscription was increased from £30 to £35 per year for the 12 shoots (including Christmas). In 2011, the annual tour moved to Ian Coley’s shooting ground in Gloucestershire. This remained as the location for the weekend away until 2014. In May 2014, they purchased their first Auto Trap from GDK™, and after a brief learning curve, soon purchased another one together with remote launchers to enhance safety and allow their many trapper volunteers to concentrate more on their shooting. More recently, in September 2014, they added a third Auto Trap with ABT and DTL capabilities - “The Wobbler”. Great fun for everyone as it was a little bit different! In 2015, for the 30 th Anniversary of the F&F Club, they decided to visit the Isle of Wight and went to Bowcombe View Shooting Ground and Bob Cooper’s Shooting Ground. In 2015, the club website was created, and the F&F Gun Club came into the 21st century! It was then used a lot for passing all the scores, photos and general information to the club members. As part of this, we created our fantastic logo, ‘Missing Clays Since 1985’ !! Membership remained at a very reasonable £35 per year, only a little more than when they started 30 years previously. In 2015, three of the original founding members, Roy Grogan, Brian Sandle, and George Lake, created the ‘Founders Trophy’. This was awarded to a member who had contributed significantly to the club over the previous year. The current holder would then decide who would be next in line for the award and present it to them at the trophy dinner each year. In 2016, they created their own design of electronic launchers for the Auto Traps, allowing them more flexibility with SIM-pairs, multi-trap launching, and random clays. In late 2017, they had some challenges with the availability of a 4x4 to take their traps and clays, etc., from the Club Hut down to the area where they shot, so they took on the challenge to move their Club Hut to the middle of the woods where they shot. You could see the fun and games involved with the move in the video below. At the 2017 AGM, they introduced Country Membership for people who wished to remain members and be eligible for Trophies but, due to living a long way from the shoot, were unable to attend regularly. Country Membership was limited to a maximum of 5 shoots per year. In mid-2018, Brian Sandle, one of the original founding members of the club, announced his retirement from shooting and the club. At the AGM in 2018, the club voted to increase the annual membership subscription to £40 per annum (the first rise in 15 years) for the 15 shoots (including Christmas). On 6 th October 2019, after a long battle with a brain tumour Paul Smith, known to everyone as ‘Smithy’, sadly passed away. At Paul’s request, we managed to get him to the AGM in his wheelchair in 2019 and he had a great time, although in true F&F style, we’ve never forgotten he didn’t buy a round!! Paul is greatly missed by his many friends at the club. On 4 th May 2020, George Lake, one of their much-loved founder members, sadly passed away after a long battle with throat cancer. George is greatly missed by his many friends at the club. In September 2020, they finally decided to expand the storage at the farm, so a new shed was ordered to become the new clay store. The plan had been to build this in September/October, but Covid delayed things. They then planned to build this in September 2021. Busy schedules meant a few further delays, but they did finally start building the new shed in March 2022, completing the base, the walls, and some of the roof. The rest was hopefully to be completed after the Annual Tour in May. In July 2022, Pete (Mad Dog) Mendham and Darrell Etherington both very kindly donated a Bowman™ Supermatch 1 Trap to the club, bringing the total number of Auto Traps to eight. The new Bowman™ traps were a significant step up for the club and the first semi-pro traps they had owned. This helped with their safety as it reduced the need for manual trapping. They added their own remote-control boxes in July/August to integrate them with their existing traps. In September 2022, thanks to generous donations from Terry Trevatt, Pete (Mad Dog) Mendham, and Graham Jackson, they purchased their third Bowman™ Supermatch 1 and retired another old GDK™ unit. This helped with reliability and gave them a lot more flexibility. At the AGM in 2022, the committee agreed to increase the annual membership subscription to £50 per annum to cover increased costs and the number of shoots rising from 15 to 18 per year (including Christmas). This was only the second rise in nearly 20 years! In January 2023, thanks to more generous donations from members, they managed to purchase two more Bowman™ Supermatch 1’s, giving them a total of five Bowman™ traps. At this point, they decommissioned all the remaining GDK™ units except the Wobbler that still seemed to be ‘hanging in there!’ In addition, Darrell & Geoff topped up the donations to get some custom-designed chunky off-road wheel trollies for all five Bowmans™, making them much easier to manage on the rough ground at the farm, and they looked good too! On 25 th March 2023, Brian Sandle, one of their much-loved founder members, sadly passed away after being unwell for some time. Brian had been shooting up until retiring in 2018. He is greatly missed by his many friends at the club. In August 2023, Derek Poole spotted a Battue upgrade kit for the Bowman™ Supermatch 1, so they added one of these to their growing fleet of Bowmans™, giving them the benefit of Midi, Standard, and Battue stands. At the AGM in 2023, it was decided the 2 nd shed was not very sturdy, so everyone agreed to build a new wooden one. Bob Beckman (2Bob) offered to design and build the new shed. In October 2023, the first section was completed, and plans were created to remove the old shed and replace with the new one. In November 2023, thanks to some further fund raising we were able to purchase a further two Bowmans, included the clever Rabbit/Chondel combination. The members had been asking for a rabbit for a long time, so this was a very welcome addition and allowed for a further two old GDK™ traps to be decommissioned. On December 15th, 2023, the old shed was dismantled and removed, and the pre-built sections for the new shed were delivered to the farm. On December 16th, 2023, with the help of some keen volunteer’s, the shed sections were moved down into the woods and the build was started and completed over the next few days. In January 2024, the last few bits of the new shed were finished off followed by a big ‘spring clean’ to organise the new space. In February 2024, more fundraising including donations, a raffle, and some proceeds from a training/practice day enabled us to purchase our 8 th Bowman™ trap. This left just one old GDK™ to replace. A great achievement for the club with the new traps creating a much better shooting experience. In the space of 18 months, over £10,000 was raised by members showing their true dedication to the F&F Club. In June 2024, the final old GDK™ was replaced when we purchased our 9 th Bowman™ trap. This time we ordered a Supermatch 1™ with a Mini attachment ready for our Xtreme event planned for August 2024. In August 2024, we ran our first ad-hoc event in between normal shoots which was branded the ‘Xtreme 100 Challenge’. This was a very difficult shoot covering the whole shooting ground and all sorts of special targets including flurries and long-distance birds. The event was limited but proved very popular and 10 members and guests attended to take on the challenge. A lot of fun was had by everyone – Ask Bob Beckman about the Horseflies!! On August 25th, 2024, we had our AGM and made a few changes to the way the club operates. We improved the format of the AGM with a detailed agenda and introduced a voting system to allow the members to vote for their committee. The committee size was reduced to three and a new committee was duly voted in. Due to some increases in farm costs, we had to increase the annual membership from £50 to £60. More to follow soon …

George Lake

Roy Grogan

Brian Sandle

Arthur Clackett

info@fandfgunclub.org