Winter 2008

St. John's Rod & Gun Club Trap 2013: (39 Photos)

39. 2013 was another busy and successful year at the St. John's Rod and Gun Club. I managed to get out to many more events than I have in past years. I participated in just about every registered trap shoot throughout the season, and attended many more trap & sporting clays events as well. I was also elected to the board of Directors for the club, I am very excited to become more involved and help with running of the club.

38. Our Trap Shooting season began the first weekend of April when we serviced and reinstalled the electric throwers into their respective bunkers on the trap field. The machines are taken out and stored in the clay target storage building over the winter months as the trap bunkers have flooded in the past damaging the equipment.

37. The following weekend we received our tractor trailer load of clay targets from White Flyer which we unloaded and stacked by hand into our new storage building.

36. We moved approximately 12 pallets of White Flyer Clay Targets which will be used by both the Trap and Sporting Clays groups in the coming months.

35. This was the easiest year yet for unloading targets. Late last Fall a contractor broke the top beam at our main entrance gate to the club with a piece of equipment. This beam previously prevented tractor trailers from being able to enter the club grounds. The boys used to unload them at the highway into a pickup truck and then unload them again into the storage building!

34. Many hands make light work.

33. As is often the case with any trip to the club, the day ended shooting as many rounds of Trap as possible before dark!

32. In early May we held a spring cleanup day at the club. A lot of volunteers showed up and we got quite a bit of work done all across club grounds.

31. The youth group did a magnificent maintenance job on the rifle range hand picking four tandem dump truck loads of rock from the range floor and berms. This is important as rocks are not only a trip hazard, but a ricochet hazard as well. The rifle range was fitted out with new steel/concrete collars for the target stand posts which will make target stand rebuilding easier in the future.

30. We performed oil changes on the Lister diesel generators, installed a new tensioning cable for the main entrance gate, removed dead fall timber, and changed the cables & pulleys on the clubhouse flag pole.

29. In June we held a very special surprise birthday party for fellow trap shooter Paul Bailey (OMB). This was his 80th birthday and it was held at the end of one of our regular weekly Sunday shoots.

28. Without drawing suspicion, Paul's family arrived and the clubhouse was decorated while the boys kept him distracted shooting a few extra rounds of trap.

27. We cooked a fantastic dinner with all the trimmings and Lobsters fresh out of Conception Bay that morning. He was completely surprised and we all had a wonderful time!

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25. June also brought the 2013 Annual Newfoundland Sportsman Shoot. This popular event saw over 50 participants shoot 50 Trap Targets in the morning, and 50 Sporting Clays targets in the afternoon.

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21. The month of August was very busy at the club. In between our regular Sunday trap shoots and the annual Memorial Shoot, we were busy getting the clubhouse and grounds ready for the upcoming Atlantic Provinces Trap Championships which was to be hosted at our facility on Labour Day Weekend. Grass was mowed, stands painted, the rickety old club house chairs replaced with new folding chairs, and the entire building was cleaned top to bottom.

20. Mark French and I picked up materials and built two more shotgun racks for the trap field to replace two old rickety, worn out units before they blew over full of expensive shotguns!

19. These new racks were modeled after the two good racks on the trap field which are a nice sturdy design.

18. We made our frames from pressure treated lumber so that they will last a long time, the tops were made from Cedar. Each of the barrel notches are offset from the opposite side so barrels on each side will not strike each other.

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16. Another project completed before the Atlantics was the installation of a shotgun patterning board. The unit was made of steel approximately four feet square and will be folded down when not in use. This allows shotgun shooters to pattern their gun as they make fitment adjustments

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14. Another project we completed at this time was a cleaning up the trap fields between the firing line & the trap houses.

13. We hired a contractor to excavate about 12" of gravel, rocks and weeds and replace it with clean maintenance grade road gravel.

12. This is not only aesthetically pleasing, but more importantly removes trip hazard for sporting clays shooters using the Trap Range & people reloading trap machines.

11. The Labour Day long weekend arrived and with it the 2013 Atlantic Provinces Trap Championships. The event began with meet and greet/practice shoot at the club Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile a bunch of us scrambled to install a loaner Pat Trap machine graciously lent to us by the Upper Humber Rod and Gun Club to replace a defective unit on "A" field. The weather Thursday was absolutely beautiful which is when all these pictures were taken.

10. Friday arrived and brought with it the tail end of a hurricane which amounted to torrential rain and high winds for the Atlantics Preliminary Day Shoot. Although the weather was far from ideal, shooters & scorekeepers headed to the firing lines anyway. Squads of shooters were undiscouraged and enjoyed some very challenging wind blown targets!

Fifty shooters from Atlantic Canada, Ontario, and the United States registered and partook in the weekend long event. Preliminary day targets consisted of 100 singles in the morning, followed by 100 handicap and 100 doubles in the afternoon.

9. The shoot continued Saturday (still in the rain) with the Singles Championship which was a total of 200 targets. Saturday evening our club hosted the Shooter's Social Banquet at the Elk's Club on Carpasian Road. We enjoyed a fantastic steak dinner which was followed by an awards presentation for the preliminary day shoot. The night concluded with a Calcutta Auction for Sunday's Handicap Championship.

The weather finally broke for our final day of competition on Sunday as we shot under sunny skies and moderate winds. The day started with 100 doubles in the morning and ended with 100 Handicap targets in the afternoon to conclude the event.

The awards presentation and the APTA Annual General Meeting brought the event to a close around supper time. This was my first time participating in a large scale trap shoot and I had a great time. It was fun to participate, a lot of hard work to help run the event, but definitely worth the effort as everyone had a a ton of fun, even with the aweful weather!

8. Our next big event of the year was our annual Turkey Shoot/Hunter's Challenge. Each year we unofficially end the Trap & Sporting Clays shooting season with this wonderful event. We spend the day shooting Trap and Sporting Clays and end the event with a full Turkey Dinner and all the trimmings.

This year was no different, even though the forecast called for rain the shoot went off under clear skies with over 40 participants and even more for the Turkey Dinner. Four Turkeys were cooked in outdoor deep fryers, while Monty, our crew and one of the staff from his restaurant prepared a meal of the finest quality! Big thanks to O.P. Hunting for sponsoring the event and providing many prizes, and to Monty & Monty's Place for all of the hard work in preparing an excellent meal!

6. As the weeks roll on, the days get shorter and colder but that doesn't stop a few of us hardcore shooters from turning up for a Sunday shoot.

5. Many cold, late November/early December weekends found Troy, Valerie, Andrea, Monty, Ronald, French and I at the club. We would spend the day alternating between shooting trap & warming up in the clubhouse.

2. Finally, on the second weekend in December with a major blizzard forecasted, we removed the trap machines from the bunkers, winterized the club house and brought the trap shooting season to an end until next year.

1. It was another fantastic year, and I cant wait until next year to do it all over again.

Cheers, MIKE