No wonder I had forgotten how much fun was involved with competing at the annual sporting clay shoot put on by the Barrelville Outdoor Club. I shot in the first three events (actually being on the winning team in the inaugural blast), but when I found myself toting a scattergun on Aug. 23 around the mountaintop course it was for the 10th yearly event. A half dozen shoots had come and gone since I punched holes in the sky near the Pennsylvania line.
This shoot is a success story. All of the profits are used to finance the club’s There is a Santa program that makes sure that children who would otherwise have a Christmas without gifts don’t ever face that situation. The same club members who were wearing T-shirts and sweating at the shoot two Saturdays ago will slip inside Santa Claus suits this coming Christmas season and distribute the goodies.
“This is the best turnout we have had,” said Jake Wilhelm, who has been among those organizing the tournament since the beginning.
There were 29 teams shooting this year. Each team has five members. Each shooter fires 75 rounds.
Take your socks and your gloves off so you can use all your fingers and toes and you will see this math adds up to 10,875 clay birds being fired upon.
Wilhelm said that there may be money available this Christmas to add a food basket along with the kids’ gifts, making sure each family has a fine holiday dinner.
I was shooting again because of the generosity of Jeff Kerr of Kerr Bros. Guns on Virginia Avenue. Thanks, Jeff, for putting me on the team. Sorry I only whacked 31 of the 75 birds.
Phil Woods, who works at the gun shop, was our team’s top shooter with 46. In between were Bob Slider and his sons, Jason and Bobby.
The winner for the second year in a row was the Hillbilly Claybusters. Second and third went to two teams sponsored by the Piney Mountain Sportsmen’s Club.
The top shooter was Steve Edmonson from the winning Hillbilly Claybusters. He smacked a mere 70 of 75 clay birds. The top female shooter was Kim Isonook with 49 birds.
I thought a really nice touch to the course was that each shooting station bore a Santa Claus hat with the station’s number on it. Many thanks to the club member who toured the shoot on a four-wheeler handing out cold bottles of water.
Post event we scooted to the pavilion for a picnic lunch that was woofed down after the four-hour shoot.
On one of the walls in our rec room is a framed photo in which I am included. I treasure this photo, being a lifelong Pittsburgh Pirates fan. The picture is from the first Barrelville shoot.
During those days, Bob Robertson was instrumental in bringing former Pirates to the event. In the photo, in addition to the Mount Savage strongboy, as our former sports editor J. Suter Kegg, called Robertson, are a number of Pirates.
There is Elroy Face, whose 1958 relief pitching winning streak I listened to on the radio as a young man in Altoona. There is Nellie Briles, who is no longer with us.
My partners at a couple of the shoots were Manny Sanguillen and Kent Tekulve. Both were terrible shots, but immensely enjoyable to be alongside. Teke, as Tekulve is called, at one point said, “I’d hit more clay birds by throwing rocks at them.”
“Yes you would,” I said, and I meant it as a total compliment, having been thrilled on numerous occasions by Teke’s masterful, nearly-underhand, pinpoint domination in relief.
At one of the shoots, I told Ed Ott, a catcher with the typical fire-hydrant build and strength, that on a summer Saturday in 1979 I watched TV as he slid into second base.
“Felix Mantilla tagged you real hard in the face with the ball,” I said. “You picked him up, turned his feet up in the air and slammed him head first into the infield dirt.”
“No I didn’t,” Ott said.
“But I saw it on TV,” I replied.
“It was Felix Milan,” Ott said, correcting me.
Contact Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.
Michael A Sawyers - Outdoors
Boom, boom for the kids
Children enjoy Christmas because of shotgun tournament
- Michael A Sawyers - Outdoors
-
-
They have their ways
“Brrrrrrrt! Brrrrrrrt!” my phone vibrates in my shirt pocket. Sometimes when that happens I think that I just burped.“Hello?” -
Md. hunt rules being formed
The Maryland Wildlife & Heritage Service, currently in the early stages of setting hunting regulations for the next two years, envisions no changes to the deer bag limits in Region A (Garrett, Allegany and western Washington counties).On the other hand, substantial changes are being eyeballed for Region B, which is all of Maryland from Clear Spring eastward to the Atlantic Ocean. -
Officers allowed to enter
Is it legal for Maryland Natural Resources Police officers to walk onto your private land?
-
Wapiti survey begins
What’s up with this elk stuff anyway?
I’m speaking, of course, about the news announced this past August that some folks are going to look around Garrett and Allegany counties to see if it would be feasible to reintroduce Rocky Mountain elk. Elk used to live here, you know. -
Jury still out on Marcellus shale drilling
Mother Earth, having been around as long as she has, should be given the right to choose elective surgery when needed rather than have exploratory surgery forced upon her.
-
Gobblers hunted on Sundays; sun still rises
See. It wasn’t the end of the world.
Well, wait a minute. I better check before I speak too quickly.
Getting on the Internet, hmmmm, hmm! Yahoo now. Hmmmm! Nope, nothing there. Checking Bing. OK. Now MSN. -
2011 was a very (insert adjective) year
As January started, grumbling could be heard on both sides of the North Branch of the Potomac River.
-
Progress in eye of beholder
Folks in the state-run hunting and fishing industry are always looking for ways to attract new license buyers.
-
W.Va. buck kill up
I have always thought that the wildlife biologists for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources were brave. Each year, about the middle of November, they predict the buck kill for the upcoming firearms season.
-
And then there were...
I want to start this column by assuring you that I don’t begrudge anybody a buck that is taken by legal means.
- More Michael A Sawyers - Outdoors Headlines
-
