In your own words: BASC wants to hear how women got into shooting

Walk into an event with more than 100 women who shoot, and you notice something straight away: there is no type. That was reflected at BASC’s Women in Shooting reception at this year’s Game Fair, and it’s a scene I think the wider shooting world needs to see more of.

The reception is one of my favourite fixtures of the shooting calendar. It can be easy to lose sight of why gatherings like this matter, but stand in that space for five minutes and it is obvious. Gamekeepers, competition Shots, conservationists, newcomers – all together, all talking. Nobody is explaining why they’re there or justifying their place. They’re simply enjoying it.

That, for me, is the real value of the event. The conversations that happen almost by accident – two women who have never met, discovering they’ve got the same passion for the same discipline. Those moments build the kind of connections that outlast an afternoon at The Game Fair.

This year we had the privilege of presenting Megan Borthwick with the Women in Shooting Award, alongside BASC vice chair Claire Sadler. Megan is headkeeper at the Charlton Shoot in Northumberland, and her achievements speak for themselves, but they also speak to something bigger: the calibre of women now leading in gamekeeping and across the sector more broadly. It’s not a token presence. It’s genuine expertise, doing genuine work.

Opening the door with “This is my story. What’s yours?”

For any woman looking at shooting from the outside and wondering if it’s for her, the answer is “Yes, there’s a place for you here.” But we need to open the door wider for the next generation of women who haven’t taken that first step yet.

That’s the thinking behind BASC’s new campaign, “This is my story. What’s yours?” It’s a simple idea – we are asking women across the shooting community to share how they got into the sport, in their own words. Not polished PR lines, just real stories: about the person who first took them out, a first go on a clay ground, a slow-dawning interest in conservation, a family tradition picked up and carried on, or a community and set of friendships found almost by chance.

Why the ordinary stories matter most

None of those stories needs to be extraordinary to be useful. In fact I’d argue that the ordinary ones matter more. They are precisely the ones in which another woman, who may be sitting on the fence about whether shooting is for her, is most likely to recognise herself.

If you’re a woman with a foot in this sport, in any capacity, I’d genuinely encourage you to take part. Fill in the form, tell us what got you started, what keeps you coming back, what the community means to you – and let us do the rest. We’ll be featuring these stories across BASC’s channels to try to grow our community further.

Our Women in Shooting reception showed what happens when women in this sport are given a room and a reason to talk to each other. The test now is whether we can take that same energy beyond The Game Fair – and I think we can. It starts with more women telling their stories, and more people listening.

Tell us your story – it’s easy. Fill in the form and we will do the rest.

Lois Pettitt is the BASC operations coordinator for the Eastern Region and a proud member of the Women in Shooting team. Having grown up in the countryside, she has a passion for rural life and enjoys all aspects of shooting.