The gun range above the Cache Creek Landfill is slowly growing, with over 150 members taking advantage of spacious grounds.
Even the weeds can’t stay away, but they’re only a minor nuisance.
The trap range is active every Tuesday, mostly for practicing. The club hosts two sporting clay shoots through the year with 10 stations. Club president Jerry Fiddick says around 45 shooters come from all over. Some are local but many others are members of other sportsman clubs about BC and Alberta.
It was a “blankin blizzard” on the range during a Jan. 3 Meat Shoot, but they were still out there shooting, he said.
The black power range also gets busy when there are events going on. Fiddick says the participants often dress up like frontiersmen in buckskins and period costumes. For the past two years they’ve held a black power shoot at Thanksgiving. “They get right into it,” he says.
The club went into a slump for a while and not much was happening, Fiddick says. Now they’re getting more people involved who are interested in rifle and pistol, so they’re working on getting more events at the ranges.
Each discipline is supposed to have a director who arranges events, he says. It’s coming along. Archery as a discipline hasn’t been going for a few years, but trap shooting and black powder are. Rifle and pistol have interest and members can still fire their guns on the gun ranges any time.
The club re-roofed the rifle range just recently, replacing the old roof that had been there since the 1970s. They’re also training range officers to patrol the area and do safety checks when people are shooting. They’ve also had an instructor from Clinton teaching a Wilderness Handgun Course.
The range officers are partly to do with the club’s insurance, says Fiddick. The club belongs to the Shooting Federation of Canada and insurance demands are growing.
They just signed a new 20 year leave with the province for their land, and come November they’ll be mailing out the new membership application forms. Forms are also available at Irly Building and Supply in Ashcroft and the Cache Creek Machine Shop.
“We want to get more people involved,” says Fiddick. More members will hopefully mean more activities being offered and perhaps even an annual banquet. “I’d like to see that happen.”