Proving he is still on target 57 years later, Alistair Stuart has won the clay target shooting trophy he first scored as a 16-year-old.
The 73-year-old Alexandra man shot 30 out of 30 targets at Moa Creek on Sunday to win the Moa Creek Hotel Cup - the same trophy he first won in 1955.
"It's amazing to think that 57 years have gone past since then," he said yesterday.
"I was 16 and a-half and it was contested over 15 targets then and I'd only been shooting for about a year.
"To win it, I had a shoot-out with my father [Jim] and Jim Kearney, and I beat them both. I don't think my dad was very impressed ..."
He showed the win was no fluke by regaining the trophy the following year. Because he won it twice, the rules said he should keep the trophy, so he still has the first cup, which is a little worse for wear and missing both its "arms".
The replacement cup was also won twice in a row by another shooter, so the publican at that time decided the rules would change once the trophy was replaced again.
Repeat winners would no longer keep the cup.
Mr Stuart won the "new" Moa Creek Hotel Cup again in 1965 and his name will be engraved on it for a second time, after his win on Sunday. He has both cups displayed among a wealth of other sporting trophies in his living room.
The keen sportsman was the Central Otago Sportsman of the Year in 1970, but his shooting trophies take up the most room.
He is a life member of the Moa Creek Gun Club and was the fourth generation of his family to be involved with the club. He represented New Zealand in trapshooting teams several times in the 1960s and 1970s.
Mr Stuart said his eyesight had improved since having cataracts removed from both eyes last year - "it's better than it's been for years, in fact"- and he had no plans to retire from the sport he loved.
"I'll carry on as long as I'm able and can still walk around."
He had just changed the gun he used - the first change in 57 years. Until last week, he had been using "my father's old cast-off", an A1 Browning, two-trigger gun.
He traded up to another Browning, tested it out last Friday and used it for the competition on Sunday.
"It's working pretty good, so I reckon I can retire my Dad's cast-off now."
The retired Moa Creek farmer said participants had to be quick and alert to do well in the sport and admitted a stint as a professional rabbiter helped hone his skills. In four and-a half years, from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, he shot 21,000 rabbits while working as a rabbiter on Galloway Station.
Despite the introduction of the rabbit calicivirus disease into New Zealand in 1997, he maintained there was no replacement for the work rabbiters did.
"Those stations that kept on their rabbiters [after RCD] are the ones which have the rabbits under control now."
