As you may have heard there is a new way to learn benchrest. Annie and Stuart Elliott have just started operations and are running a training program for benchrest, as well as a number of other shooting disciplines.

For those who do not know Annie and Stuart, they are both very accomplished shooters. Annie was beaten on a count back for the World Championship a few years ago, and Stuart has also been an individual World Champion. In addition, they are both members of the Australian Benchrest Hall of Fame, the hardest benchrest club to join! In short, if you can get advice from these guys, you better listen up!

They do individual courses as well as small groups. I managed to find a date to accommodate myself, my son David, and Steve Pelin a couple of weeks ago at Silverdale, just a week before the Nationals.

My first impression of the whole day was of professionalism. A week or so before, Stuart emailed us and asked for a list of things we would like to cover. He added these items into his regular topics, and it all went very well. The day was busy but well laid out and structured.

The program was quite a full day, covering some theory, some shooting then some video analysis of us as well as looking at some videos of other benchresters.

At the beginning of the course we were given a folder containing quite a bit of useful information and food for thought, we also took lots of notes during the session.

Topics included bench technique, cleaning and wind reading amongst lots of others.

The shooting sessions were particularly interesting, everything from speed shooting (a 30 second group is lots of fun!), to chasing an errant shot.

One of the most interesting parts of the course was while we were shooting a group, Stuart just kept talking about what he was seeing on the range, which flags were moving, where the air was coming from and the pickups and letoffs he was seeing.

Video is an important part of the program and it is really interesting seeing yourself from both the front and the back while shooting at the bench. I was a bit surprised to see myself with one eye closed for extended periods, I had no idea I did that.

I would thoroughly recommend the program to all benchrest shooters, newbies and old hands alike. With benchrest shooting costing around $1 per shot, this course is a real bargain.