Never give up!
“Becoming world champion is just fantastic,” says young Amy, who will be finishing school soon and has her eyes set on a career in criminology. “It shows that you have to keep going and never give up. There are also bad times in sports shooting, when you just want to pack it all in. It’s the culmination of a lot of work on yourself.”
And Amy has always had a Browning in her hands, during good times and bad. “I’ve been shooting clays since I was eight. I’ve always had Brownings. I’ve been using a B725 Sporter Black Edition for six years. Having a Browning guarantees a reliable and good-looking high-performance gun that is well balanced.”
Came to sports shooting via hunting
Like many others, Amy came to sports shooting via hunting. “When I was really young, I used to go hunting with my dad and grandad,” she says. “That was my first experience of shooting. Nowadays, I hunt both small and big game.”
A question that’s often asked is about the relationship between shooting and hunting. Does being a world champion really help? “Concentration is vital in Compak Sporting; you don’t know where the clay is going to come from. When I’ve got a muntjac or a rabbit in my sights, I manage to keep totally concentrated.”
Training and support
But it takes more than concentration and determination. You also have to train non-stop. “I fire about 20,000 shots a year. I enter lots of competitions. Thankfully, my parents and sister support me all the way. Even my school supports me, I’m very lucky.”
Browning’s young English standard bearer also lets us in on a little secret. “There are very few ranges that offer Compak Sporting lines in England. So we train almost exclusively at sporting clays. In this discipline, the trajectory of the target is even more unpredictable than in Compak. You have to concentrate even harder. That gives you a small advantage when you’re shooting Compak.”
In any case, at just 18 years old, Amy hasn’t finished adding to her medal haul or to the Buckmark brand’s reputation. “My next goal? To take part in the mixed world championships.” We wish her the same success!