“I came third in the Kaimai winter warm-up champs,” he said.
“Coming third, even though I was using a new gun (GBC Chaos Open pistol) and had to learn a new grip, motivated me to train harder for the North Island champs.
The extra training paid off, although Manson had to come from behind to retain his title.
“The match was run over two days, consisting of 12 stages and a round count of 240 rounds of ammunition.
“The stages varied from eight rounds to 32 rounds, with points scored and fastest times recorded.”
After eight stages on Day 1, “shot in fine conditions with a bit of cloud”, Manson shot well but found himself in second place.
“On Day 2, I looked at the scoreboard and was around 35 points behind the leader,” he said.
With 10 points up for grabs on each of the four stages, Manson needed to pull out all the stops . . . and he did, again thanks to some extra training.
“The first two stages were one weak-hand stage and one strong-hand stage.”
Manson said the terms “weak-hand” and “strong-hand” referred to one-handed shooting, the strong hand being the one on the same side as the holster.
“I had spent a lot of time at the range before I went to the match, training on my strong and weak hands,” he said.
“You can pick up some valuable points in these stages and that’s what happened.
“After these two stages I didn’t realise I was in the lead with two stages to go.
'I tried to shoot it differently and push to save time'“Going into the last stage, I thought I had points to catch up so I tried to shoot it differently and push to save time and get some much-needed points.
“I won the stage but still didn’t know if I had done enough.
“It wasn’t until prize-giving, when they called second, that I knew I had won the title and with it the grand master open division gold medal.
“My new pistol ran flawlessly all weekend and I have to thank my sponsor Gun Supplies and Gun and Bell Custom.”
Hawes did not have a good start to the match.
“I was on Stage 5, taking my last shot, and my gun broke,” she said.
“I thought that was it all over for me.
“I didn’t realise you could swap out guns or gun-share but Deano (Dean Kennedy, a Hamilton shooter) offered to share his pistol with me for the remainder of the match.
“I was really disappointed not to make it three championship wins in a row but happy to have been able to claw my way back up to second.”
The match was also the sixth of eight New Zealand qualifiers to find shooters to represent New Zealand at the Australasia Handgun Championship in the Philippines next year.
“You have to shoot a minimum of five qualifiers, to be in contention for the New Zealand team,” said Manson, who has shot four, while Hawes has shot five. At the end of the eight qualifiers, points are added up. If you shoot more than five, the best five scores count.
Manson and Hawes represented New Zealand at the 2016 Australasian champs in Indonesia.
Manson finished 13th out of 151 shooters. Hawes, then a new shooter, finished 110th out of 151 open shooters and seventh of 12 in the open women’s division.
“We’d both love to go to the Philippines,” Manson said.
“But for now our focus is on the South Island champs in Dunedin at the end of the month and the nationals in Rotorua in November.”
