As a youngster when visiting my grandfather’s house I also got taught to use a small bore shotgun for ratting purposes.
While at boarding school I joined the Army cadets, only because the RAF cadets liked sitting in classrooms and talking about doing things and marching, with the Army cadets we got to go to camps and try out some of the training like parachuting basics, then we went on a outdoor exercise as a patrol armed with 303’s and a magazine of blanks and had great fun ambushing people and trying to avoid getting ambushed.
After joining up I enjoyed shooting so much that I spent the first 10 odd years on various station shooting teams and attending Bisley each year, my ‘speciality’ was the L39 target rifle, followed by the SMG, both disciplines earning me some decent medals, I enjoyed the 9 mm browning pistol but was not a top shooter and had to include the SLR as that was the main weapon, I, like many, earned the right to wear the following in the earlier years and then we were told to remove them, cannot remember when that decision was made:
https://royalairforce.wyedeanstores.com/royal-air-force-marksman-qualification-machine-machine embroidered-badge
I was bored once doing the annual shooting down the range and targeted the crotch of the target blowing a nice hole out of that area, rock was not impressed telling me that I had missed, my response that the enemy was just as dead/incapacitated and that had I been running that a lot of the shots would be higher up on the body mass and would render the enemy equally as out of action, he was not amused.
Do they still use the electronic shooting ranges that was introduced at RAF Cottesmore around 98/99?