The images of the rifles that were to have been identified can be viewed from here: RIFLE IDENTIFICATION QUIZ

.THE HISTORIC MINIATURE RIFLE POSTAL LEAGUES

.............League Divisional Winners and Runners-up receive the certificate shown below and these engraved N.S.R.A. Plaquettes

.............See the .....H.A.R.C. Winter Postal League information: ..... and .....NEWS & Entry details:

.............To view the current WINTER and previous years' POSTAL LEAGUE RESULTS - click below

...................PRONE SERVICE CLASS.............PRONE CLASSIC CLASS.............

...................PRONE VETERAN CLASS.............PRONE POST-VETERAN CLASS..................

...................STANDING League results for DELIBERATE, RAPID REPEATER & SEMI-AUTO CLASSES ............

......50 yard SUMMER LEAGUE INFORMATION and RESULTS: .............care of the Dorchester Rifle & Pistol Club,

...........................and ..letters of thanks ......from competitors

The HARC Miniature-calibre Rifle Leagues originally comprised of just three prone classes, Service Rifle, Classic Rifle and Veteran Rifle each with one deliberate and one timed element card for each of the ten rounds of the competition. In the second year, a so-called Post-Veteran Class was added to accommodate owners of 1950s BSA Martini Internationals and, at the turn of the Century, an Off-hand league was brought under the HARC-MRL umbrella with classes for Deliberate, Repeater and Semi-automatic .22 rifles, the latter two being timed disciplines with optics permitted.
The Veteran and Post-Veteran classes have the long running NSRA Skirmisher discipline for the timed element.

It should be mentioned that these leagues are not exclusively for the .22 rim-fire calibre. A significant number of entrants shoot the .310 Martini Cadet rifle ( a Commonwealth issue training rifle)- with a considerable degree of success. Others have talked of using an Henry, Enfield, BSA or Greener rifles in .297/.230CF Morris, the former with Morris aiming tubes or the latter with solid barrels but, despite the known viability of modifying .22 Hornet cases for this purpose and the availability of dies, we have yet to see any cards with that size of hole! Could you be the first? If so, we'll turn up a plug-gauge on our lathe forthwith!

A set of prone 50 yard postal leagues, using the same original three classes as the HARC competitions - Service, Classic and Veteran - was also started by Dennis Hannam, under the auspices of the Dorchester Rifle and Pistol Club, to enable like-minded enthusiasts to continue shooting through the Summer, but out-of-doors at 50 yards.

We start with a fine and good-humoured letter of enquiry made with regard to entry in the Leagues. It well indicates the reason for so many shooters dusting-off the old club rifles and putting them to good purpose! The letter is interspersed both with our answers to the initial queries made (maroon) and again with the correspondent's subsequent replies (green).

August 2006

Dear sir,
I looked at your web site last year but didn’t have time to do anything about it. Having looked at your site again yesterday I went off to the club (B******** Rifle Club) took out of the cupboard an old BSA 12-15 (P68141) that I last shot as a boy in about 1979, found a two point sling in a box stuffed under a table, (incidentally the one that I used to use in 1979, although I note that it must have shrunk considerably!) blew the dust off and removed a dead spider from the fore-sight, went down and shot a four off!!!!

Dear J*****,
it's easiest and quickest for me to intersperse the answers to your queries within your text, so here goes ...............
If you can shoot a 96 on a 1989 target, then you will be acheiving constant " tons" on the Cadets and Schools one!

Thankyou for your prompt reply! I shall follow your example and add my text to yours.

( It never ceases to amaze me how badly I am affected by "stickeritice") [ This is the disease which afflicts a usually high-scoring shooter when the target at which they are firing has a competition sticker attached! - Ed]

It will be the "Skirmisher" that will win or lose your matches in the league .......................... you should read up the notes on technique and kit.

B*%%*£$s Skirmisher? Missed that one! I have had a bit of success with turning-targets standing, but the last timed event I shot prone was at Mill Pool with an Accuracy International Coopermatch borrowed from a friend, 12 rounds RG borrowed from his wife, a shooting jacket and sling from somebody walking behind the firing line, and a scope that appeared from somewhere during 5 mins of madness before the detail started; the underwear, however, was my own. My score wasn't that good, 20 something, but it was 600 yards and the three flags I could see were all blowing in different directions. I beat the fourteen year old two up the line though! Ha!

I couldn’t have been more amazed if I had dropped a brick and it had fallen up! As a result of this little experiment I would like to enter your postal league,

The results that can be obtained with these rifles are not to be sneezed at. There's evidently little need to change a barrel after 10,000 rounds! We will be delighted to have you and your colleagues joining the competition.

Based upon a constant membership of 20, shooting two leagues and three internal competitions, that rifle should have fired something more like 234,000 rounds! I know they are good. My BSA 12-15, has seen me shooting LSR for county over the winter, but No Jacket, two point sling, etc., and a 96 prone? That's .4 below my average with my Anschutz Match 54, and half a hundredweight associated kit. (My 12-15 has often been laughed at as I have approached a firing line at the ranges on which I shoot, but nobody has ever been laughing as we have left!)

but I notice that a 12-15 is not shot using a standard 1989 pattern 2510 B.M./89 target, but rather the 'cadets and schools' target. I have a small quantity of these marked 2505 CS (1971) that we obtained a few years ago for shooting the LSR [Lightweight Sport Rifle- Ed] prone discipline. Are they one and the same?

Yes, they're the ones 2505 = 25 yards and 5 diagrams.

Secondly I notice that you are running a standing league this year I would be interested in shooting the competition but am wondering whether my LSR would be eligible. Some time ago I gave up on self loaders and managed to find a 12-15 ( 11326) which had been customised/butchered for hunting (Please see photo sorry about the background but she who must be obeyed has got me putting in a new kitchen)

......................................

Looks not unattractive, and to have been fitted with Model 15 butt-stock perhaps. ........... I'm tiling the floor!

Yes a little odd. The serial number doesn't start with a 'P' and it is marked A.G.Parker over the breech. If I could find someone that could do it I would love to get a border barrel to the same profile as a proper 12-15, and rummage for a foresight tunnel. Unfortunately everybody I have met so far has said that cutting the "cotter" slot for the QR taper pin is too difficult. It would be nice to have two barrels for the one gun, even though that would probably mean two ejectors. Is there any body out there that you know of who might be able to undertake this? Do you know of anybody with access to the blueprints? The rifle has the slot for the indicator on the side of the block, but the indicator is not fitted. I have often thought about trying to bodge one, but can't quite see how it should be done. If you are tiling on wood I have found that white spirit removes the adhesive from the hands quite well!

Fortunately I got to it before a scope was fitted, but the barrel has been turned down and ordinary open sights fitted. This rifle was obviously made after 1946 but given that it has the right sights would it be eligible?

Perfectly; just the thing for Deliberate, and you might be able to compete in the Rapid Repeater class. 5 shots in 20 seconds is quite achievable with a good Martini. A few entrants are firing more than 16 shots in 60 seconds on the "Skirmisher" (prone). You would probably not be the only single-shot shooter in the rapid comp.

I shall have a go at that I think.

If you can answer these queries then I can get on with completing the entry form. Lastly several of our older club members expressed an interest in what I was doing last night (and I think a great deal of mirth at the look on my face as 26 years of preconceptions disappeared in a wisp of smoke) The cut-off date for application is in September but when beginning or end? I look forward to your reply.

Yours faithfully

J**** B*******

Last entries last day in September. Forms and info sheets go out to previous entrants and interested parties at the end of August/early Sept. The cards for the first two rounds must be with the scorers by mid November - six weeks - not overly pressured!

All the best,

...................... HARC-MRL

I shall endeavour to get my entry off as soon as I can find the printer amongst all of these kitchen utensils!

J.B.

And, in a similar vein:

..........Might I just say thank you for what you are doing. I am very aware that we are losing our way in the shooting world. When I stand at the firing point at the moment with jacket, glove and sling, etc., I am wearing the best part of three hundred pounds worth of Equipment. Add another couple of hundred for shooting glasses, if you need them, two hundred for a scope, sixty quid for a cartridge box and two grand for a rifle, and all of a sudden this has become a rather expensive hobby. When I started, only one or two members had their own rifles or scopes, the rest of us shot club guns and somebody sat behind at the desk with the club 'scope calling out the fall of shot. Going back even further, we still have the spotters hole at the end of our range where the spotter used to sit, 4 feet away from the target, to call corrections - how different now. When the miniature rifle clubs started, the avowed aim was to make every young man a rifleman. When I did an assembly on “My sport” ( I am a secondary school teacher) a lot of the kids were genuinely interested, but the level of interest started to fall off when I explained the cost. UIT was supposed to sort this out, but the extra equipment necessary tends to detract from the savings that are made on the rifle. Lightweight Sport Rifle is a lot cheaper and even goes into three positional. In itself it is a fine sport, but I can't help but think that there will be problems if one concentrates on LSR and then tries to make the transition to full-bore. Perhaps we need to find our roots again and come up with a sport that provides a cheap grounding in shooting which, and I hate to use this phrase, goes back to basics. Perhaps this is it! The next time I am coaching LSR to a new youngster coming into the club, when I start to edge them over to prone, instead of trussing them up in a jacket and single point and handing them an old Vostock or Valmet, I will tell them to bring along an old coat and a large button, and fit them up with one of the BSA 12/15s that we have, and a two point sling. If they then have a competition to shoot, it will give some point to the operation. If they want to head over to more modern shooting later, fine, but in the mean time it will teach them some very important basics.

We have also received many much appreciated letters of thanks, and reproduce a few here with our own "thank you" to the correspondents, and to those others who have written similarly over the last few years.

3rd. January 200*

Dear all

Many thanks for sending the cards, they arrived this morning.

I really do enjoy shooting the 12/15, not because it reminds me of yesteryear, but because it is an object lesson in getting back to the basics.

The first rifle that I used at the New Milton R.C in Hampshire was a BSA 13. The club had a variety of club rifles including a Vickers and a BSA 12. But the BSA 13 was a handy little rifle and the club secretary suggested that it was right for me (aged 16). You did not argue with the club secretary, who also owned the range.

I remember having trigger pulling explained to me as follows: - squeeze it as you would your girl friend's hand. I did not like to admit that at the age of 16, that I had never experienced the thrill of squeezing any part of a girl, let alone her hand! How things have moved on since 1951.

I have put out a few feelers about finding a really clean and shootable BSA Mk II or MkIII but without success so far, so if you find one let me know pronto.

Just one more point of interest, the BSE Rifle Club has almost completely switched over to using Eley Match EPS. Members like the cleanliness after using Lapua and the neat wadcutter type hole that the round makes. Hopefully Eley are on the way back.

With best wishes for a happy and healthy NewYear to you all. Regards, T.E.

8th. March 200*
Dear all,

now that the daffodils have started to bloom in my garden, and in view of the considerable pleasure I am having in shooting in the HARC winter miniature rifle league (Classic), my thoughts naturally have turned to the summer, and the great out-doors.
With this in mind, I wonder if you would be kind enough to send me, so I may pass on to my club, details of what is required in the way of TARGETS for the summer season's competition. If they are out of the ordinary for 50 & 100yds, we will need to make frames etc and securing fixtures at our range. Photocopies would suffice for this task, if the TARGETS ate unlikely to be among the club's modern stock. Please let me know if there are any expenses involved.
I intend to use my Martini-Bonehill again, and also a nice little BSA12/15, which I have discovered at the back of my club's armoury, and is just begging to be dusted off and brought blinking out into the sunshine. So all being well I can enter the Veteran class as well.
We have one other member who has expressed an interest in joining next years winter league, and another who participated in fast years, but was unable to commit so much time this year. I am hoping that with sufficient advanced publicity other members may consider using the stock of elderly rifles we have rusting away in the armoury.
I hope I don't bore you with the following. Thirty years ago at the tender age of 16, a photo of the club's Edwardian founders grouped with their Martini rifle conversions always impressed me, and as I had seen "Zulu" far too often for my own good I swore that one day, I would have a .22" Martini of my own.I did not think a great deal about it until a dealer friend of mine happened to mention he had such a rifle and the opportunity came to fulfil my vow. Within a fortnight of acquiring my rifle, and much to my surprise, I found myself participating in your winter league. It was all a bit of a scrabble, as my club did not have any suitable TARGETS or frames, but since then I have had my most enjoyable winter season to date since I took up shooting again. So please accept my most sincere thanks for all of your team's efforts in setting it all up and giving me so much fun.

Yours sincerely,

G.S.

It may be thought that the foolishness of this kind of act, which fools keep repeating, as the moth and the daddylonglegs repeat that of flying into the candle, cannot possibly be further set forth than it has repeatedly been. Perhaps that is so; but there is a folly in connection with it which, those who are likely to commit, or may be able to prevent at least, have not had so frequently pointed out to them. That is the folly of leaving a gun about loaded, which is conditional to the foolish act of letting it off. A gun could hardly be fired, in foolishness, at a companion by one fool, if it had not been left about loaded by another fool.
The fool who leaves about a loaded gun, and the fool who pulls its trigger, or the trigger of any gun, whether loaded or not, whilst the gun covers anybody whom he does not mean to shoot, are nearly as great fools, one as the other. But the latter of those fools is something worse than a fool; for covering anyone with a gun and drawing the trigger even knowing it to be unloaded, is shooting that person in idea, and that idea is a vicious and criminal one in itself, and ought, perhaps, in act, to be rendered more punishable than it is.