Hopkins Concrete has sponsored a series of clay shooting competitions known as Farmer’s FITASC.
The initiative was started by dairy farmer Richard Pike, who wanted to maintain the camaraderie between farmers from the game season throughout the summer months. He said: “I thought it would be nice to keep everyone together, especially at the moment with the struggles farming has had over past few years. I shot FITASC so I tried to get people involved and came up with idea and called it Farmers FITASC a few years ago. Graham Brown at Purbeck Shooting School thought it was a good idea and offered to help.
“We’ve got our own classification because people there all ages and abilities. There is also a newsletter each month that goes out to over 100 people, and we regularly have numbers in the mid-40s at the competition.”
Hopkins Concrete is a company in Somerset that focuses on concrete, aggregates, waste removal and lorry hire, and the company’s Nathan Hopkins was keen to support the idea after he started game shooting a few years ago. Richard said: “Nathan was looking to improve so I said that he needed to get better through the off season, and I invited him to shoot the Farmers FITASC. Rob Allen is a director for Hopkins Concrete and he had done a bit of shooting and wanted to come as well.”
The company is keen to support new and improving shooters, so donates 500 cartridges to each shoot. One slab of 250 loads are given away as a prize draw, while the other 250 are given to the person who improves the most that month and the classification system is updated after each competition.
The season started at Purbeck Shooting School, but the next competition will take place on Wednesday 20 April at Podimore Shooting Ground and the following month will see shooters head to Barrow Farm Frome on 18 May.
For more information on how to get involved, call Richard Pike on 07970 484890.
Leave a Reply