Originally Posted by
Unframed Dave
Thank you. I can't take all the credit though, my wife, despite never having taken a shot at anything, ever is incredibly supportive. She helped from the start and still sets up and takes down with me almost every week. That and counting out an average of 640 pellets every week into sanitised bags of 8.
The club started with the help of a couple of friends and as the article states the village hall have been extremely supportive from the start.
I had advice from many people along the way, including our own T 20 and Transporter Ray, along with members of his Bell target club.
We did have a little opposition to the club, but whenever they raised objections, I invited them along to see how we conduct ourselves, it was never accepted and the opposition died back.
We have some great members who seem to be able to turn their hand to anything to keep our little club going.
Kelly made our targets at I guess material cost only, Terry built, hosts and maintains our website and Facebook page and there are plenty of volunteers to run the club when I'm not able to.
The club was really starting to grow when covid struck, we had a junior session before the big boys turned up and were taking on new members regularly. Now we've had to stop the junior session because of the close supervision required and are only accepting experienced shooters as new members for the same reason.
Hopefully the day will come when we can get the kids back in, a bunch of old duffers like us can only keep going so long.
I'm especially pleased this year that our two most improved shots were ladies, one of whom had never shot prior to joining the club and who now owns two target rifles.
Ultimately, I have found the air gun community to be a very supportive group. I have made some great friendships over the years, especially via this forum. I'll raise a glass to that tonight.
Big thanks to Terry for publishing the article, and also for his counsel when I gave a talk recently to a group about the historical development of the air rifle.
Dave