September/October Newsletter Dorman Range, by Ron Card, roncard@shaw.ca Welcome back from summer. Many events have taken place since our last newsletter. I will attempt to highlight some of them with words and photographs. * 5-Stands and an Argentine Shoot have occurred on July 10, August 14, September 11 and on October 9. (2 nd Sunday of the month). The shoots have been set up and run by Phil Charlebois and/or John Oregan. Thanks guys. * And, since our members do a lot more than shotgunning I am including several photos of some early July successes. Photo on the left is a shooter, trying out the Argentine Shoot. Centre, Jim Guthrie, with a good size Ling Cod. On the right, Paddy Brown with a Dungeness crab. The fact that there s a highway to hell and only a stairway to heaven, says a lot about anticipated traffic numbers. * In June, we celebrated the 90 th birthday of one of our regular shooters, Bob Urquhart. The photo on the left shows Bob and myself; the centre photo has several of our regular shooters, L to R Len Moore, myself, Don Thiessen and Rob Wesson. The photo on the right shows Bob all decked out for shooting with Rigger and Ray on the left, Don, on the right.
* On July 9, the Parksville-Qualicum Fish and Game Association held their annual picnic at the Dorman Range. The hard-working individual that coordinated this event, including rounding up volunteers, was Paddy Brown. The weather cooperated and everybody had a lot of fun. See the photos below for more details of the event. Left: Test your skills with slingshots and archery. The slingshot event, with a box and empty plastic bottles was set up by Barry Kallies. The archery targets are being set up by Don McIlhargey, from our archery group. Centre: The archery targets are now set up. (The little white dog was not part of the archery targets.) Right: Some of our Club members enjoying lunch in the Dorman Range clubhouse. Left: A delicious lunch was set up buffet style out on the porch. Rod Wiebe s dog is carefully waiting for somebody to drop some food. Centre and Right: More Club members enjoying lunch.
Left: Club members lined up at the buffet. (The little white one has not paid his dues so he doesn t get anything. Oh ya?) Centre: More Club members enjoying lunch. Right: Barry Kallies testing his archery skills. Left: Len Fong testing his archery skills. Don McIlhargey, Doug Kitts and some other bystanders are checking Len s skills. Centre: Father-son trapshooters, Ed and Mark Bowater, on the left, taking a break. Right: Some of the equipment that is used to set up Sporting Clays. I speak my mind because it hurts to bite my tongue all the time. * Over the summer, Sporting Clays were held on July 23 (4 th Saturday of the month), August 27 and September 24. Some photos of the July 23 Sporting Clays are next. Left: Shooters at Station 3 Centre: Shooters at Station 2 Right: At a Station up in the woods. Grace Evans from Courtenay looking on.
Left: Marie Brannstrom, from Galiano, pushing the buttons and waiting her turn. Centre & Right: What the heck! Some more summer successes. The shoot on August 27 had a higher number of shooters than normal. There were 71 shooters in the morning with 3 more in the afternoon. Some of the morning shooters did not shoot in the afternoon. Bob Davenport took the summer off and we were reasonably successful in putting on the June, July shoots. Bob returned for the August shoot. He helped with the setup but I think that he was just observing to see if we could put on the event without him. How did we do, Bob? For the August shoot, the lower 5 stations were quite challenging but the upper 5 stations helped to improve the scores. In the morning there were 6 shooters that scored in the 40 s; Fraser Campbelly, Paul Hagel and Mark Bottomley shot 44 s out of 50. In the afternoon, there were 10 shooters that scored in the 40 s. Ron Stubbins shot a 49, Ed Pering shot a 46 and Kelly Lance shot a 45. One lady, Keri Mahaffy shot a 41. The high man for the day was Ron Stubbings with a 90 out of 100. Mark Bottomley shot a day total of 87 out of 100; Fraser Campbelly shot 85, and Paul Hagel shot 84. Left: Sporting Clays, August 27, Station 1 Centre: Station 2 Right: Lunch prepared for the Sporting Clays shooters (& friends) If people could read my mind..... I would get punched in the face a lot.
Left: Sporting Clays, August 27, shooters at station 10, deep in the woods Centre: Early September, line-up for a fun event, buddy shoot Right: The parking lot for the September Sporting Clays As usual it takes a lot of people to organize and carry out the sporting clays event, including the provision of lunch. Extreme thanks goes out to all those volunteers. * Over the summer, we gained new members, a father/son team, Myles and Owen Byrne. They started out as new shooters but at the end of the summer, they had to return to Calgary. Owen, who started out as a completely new shooter, on his last day before he returned to school, shot a 24. Way to go, Owen. Father, Myles, also became quite proficient and he has returned to shoot at the range on some of his business trips. * On September 24, we set up the Sporting Clays stations without Bob Davenport, who had gone to Yellowknife. Bob designated that this Sporting Clays was to be all pairs. We decided that we would give people the option of either shooting pairs or shooting an easier program. The experienced shooters, as members of VISC (Vancouver Island Sporting Clays), shot the pairs. Other shooters selected different variations. And as usual, we had muligans, which are different coloured birds. If you missed the muligan you got to shoot that bird over again. Left: Sporting Clays, September 24. Two machines set up at Station 4 Centre: John Oregan reloads one of the machines at Station 7 Right: Shooting a high flyer at Station 3
There were 52 shooters. The high shooter for the day was Denis Royan from Alberni, with 89. Ron Stubbings had 84, Mark Bottomley and Bill McNeilly both had 83, and Paul Hagel had 82. These people shot the doubles. * Our Club is always willing to promote outdoor sports for young people and as part of this, we provided facilities for a youth program put on by Ducks Unlimited on September 25. Wayne Pritchard was the driving force here, but other members of DU came along to be mentors. DU set up tables in one of the warehouse rooms and gave instructions on firearms safety, shooting instructions, hunter ethics, and the finer points of setting up blinds, setting out decoys, and calling in ducks and geese. They had 14 young people, both boys and girls. After lunch, the young people got some firearms experience by shooting clay pigeons. We supplied them with shells and clay pigeons. In the following week they went into the fields and were able to bag a few geese. At all these Club-sponsored events where outside shooters are invited, we make lunches available. We thank our various cooks for the efforts they put in. * Every section of our Club, whether it is shotguns, rifles, archery, or other, always have projects that need doing. Here is where you can help. The photos below show what has been done at our Dorman Range. John Oregan had cleared some areas where, in the future, we could be hanging shot curtains. He piled up the logs next to the field across from the warehouse. Stan Ziolkowski offered to bring in his portable sawmill to cut the logs into lumber. We put together a work party and we spent two different days saw-milling the logs and then stacking the lumber so that it could dry. Thanks to the work party volunteers and especially to Stan and John who used their equipment and put in a great deal of effort. Left: Just starting the sawmilling effort Centre: Cutting the cants and waste into firewood sized pieces Right: Lunch for the work party was provided by Andy Lemmon (not in the photo) (If anybody wants full sized photos of any photos in this newsletter, e-mail me and I can send them to you.)
Left: Stacking the lumber as it comes off the sawmilling machine Centre: Lumber is stacked into two piles douglas fir and cedar Right: Group hard at work. Left: October 2, stacking the lumber to dry Centre: Stacks made into pallets stacked up to dry; approximately 3,000 board feet Right: Lumber * Trap-shooting etiquette: -pick up your empty shells, or even better, if you have an over/under, when you break the gun, intercept the shells and put them in your pouch. Remember-somebody has to pick them up -when you rotate from position 5 to position 1, acknowledge to the lead shooter that you are ready -break down your cardboard boxes (shells or clay pigeon boxes). It minimizes the space in the recycle bin as well as helping with the clean-up -if you are the first shooter listed on the score sheet, it will speed things up if you coordinate the rest of the squad -if you are shooting handicap and have finished at your station, move the speaker to the yardage that the previous shooter is at. -offer to keep score I am not lazy, I just enjoy doing nothing! And just to finish off sea lions are back in Northwest Bay