YOUNG MARKSMAN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 26, 30 December 1925, Page 9

YOUNG MARKSMAN.

THE KING’S TROPHY. “LORD ROBERTS” PRIZE. LONDON, Nov. 21. The National Rifle Association lias made known the results of the shooting by Mother Country competitors in connection with the annual Empire competition for the King’s Trophy and the Imperial Challenge Shields. The competition for 1925 is concluded, but tho figures for tho Dominions are not yet to hand. Tho complete returns for Great Britain shows that 6900 boys entered for the King’s Prize, and of that number 5500 actually shot the two small-bore practices which constitute the test. Tho leading 2000 boys scored 144,572 points out of a possible 200,000, which gives an average of 72.28 out of an individual highest possible scoro of 100 points. Considering that tho average of tho 2000 boys is certainly not above 16 years, and that many of the competitors were below the nominal minimum of 12 years, the score is remarkable enough to warrant the hope that the Mother Country’s mass team may regain tho position which the Ist Nottingham Church Scouts and the London School Guild won for Great Britain in the first years of tho Imperial Challenge Shield match. A stimulus to shooting within the competing countries has been provided in Great Britain by a trophy presented by Countess Roberts in memory of the great Field-Marshal, and in tho Dominions by cliallengc-cups given by tlic Governors-General. Tho Lord Roberts trophy has been won this year by St. Andrew’s; School, Eastbourne, and the R.N. Training Establishment, Shotley, who are again, as they wero in 1923, bracketed “equal firsts.” This is the third successive occasion on which the sailor boys from Shotley have gained that honour, which last year they shared with tho 14th (L.M. and S. Railway) Derby Troop of Boy Scouts. Teams for the Lord Roberts match must bo of a minimum strength of sixteen boys. St. Andrew’s produced 26, every available boy of firing age’; but the Shortley establishment actually fired 1734 boys, every bov on tho establishment’s books. Had the minimum been lower tho trophy would have been won by Beaumont House School, Heronsgato, Hertfordshire, whoso uttermost shooting strength reaches only to twelve, and all juniors. Those twelve youngsters, however, made the finest team score in tho competition. Out of a possiblo of 1200 points they scored 1131, or an average of 94.2 per boy, an average that might bo envied by many hundreds of adult miniature rifle shots. A large proportion of the young competitors used aperture sights on their .22 rifles; but .although the wholo of the Shotley boys shot over plain sights, out of their team of 1734 -no fewer than 1203 have obtained places in the “King’s Two Thousand.”