Skeets and Clays

Oct. 28, 2016

It’s a quiet morning at the Cedar Rod & Gun Club as Toby Westlake casually strolls around the inside of the cinder-block shotgunsports room where club members gather before heading out to the shooting range.

With tired brown eyes, Toby eventually flops on a well-cushioned couch and nuzzles into the lap of a startled first-time visitor to the Sullivan Road club. He wants his head rubbed, and the visitor complies.

Toby, you see, is an affable English setter, who belongs to Jim Westlake, a CRGC member who is doing some coaching and shooting today.

“Toby kind of hangs out here and sits on the couch,” explained Con Belfour, a retired carpenter serving as range manager on this day. “We’re dog-friendly here.”

Belfour first came to the club on a once-ina-while basis more than 40 years ago to shoot trap. “I started spending more time here when they started the sporting clay course in the early ’90s,” he recalled. “We have hunters and some don’t hunt at all. Some of the guys come out and practice for hunting season or sight-in their deer rifles. We used to close in October, and we’d all go hunting, but now we stay open. The faces change during hunting season.”

While the CRGC is a rod and gun club, there’s scant mention of the former and heavy emphasis on the latter. A few of the members, including Club President Tim Stein, are fly fishermen. The club does co-sponsor a Kid’s Fishing Day in June at Veronica Valley and offers a number of fly fishing classes during the summer.

But don’t be misled. It’s basically a friendly group devoted to the shooting sports.

Along one wall of the shotgun sports room, a lineup of CRGC ball caps hang in a rainbow of colors — blaze orange, black, brown, pink and camo. On this particular morning, about 20 shooters — 19 men and one lone woman — gathered to shoot, sip coffee, munch doughnuts, eat grilled hot dogs and trade tips on where to get the best deal on shells. After a bit of back and forth, it’s noted that Dunham’s seems to have the best prices.

Of course, there’s lots of talk about hunting, specifically bird hunting, on this day. “We put up seven grouse and shot one,” said one shooter, clad in jeans, camo shirt and hunting vest. “It was a really nice morning, damp and 47 degrees.”

“We have a really good group of members,” said Stein, a retired Wolohan Lumber executive who’s been a member since 1994 and enjoys bird hunting. “We’re up to 530 members now, shootership is up, membership is increasing, and revenues are increasing.”

The club picks up a few new members every year, according to Belfour. “Most are retired guys, but this year we picked up a number of younger shooters,” he said. “You know, people who move into the area and want to shoot.”

And a growing number of the new members are women. “We have several female members who enjoy shooting,” said Stein. “There’s a group of 11 who come out to shoot on Wednesdays. I think there’s a new awareness (by women) of the shooting sports, on guns in general — and in the self-defense aspect. Many of them are pistol shooters.”

Trapshooting is one of the three major disciplines of clay pigeon shooting, which in volves firing shotguns at clay targets. In trapshooting, the targets are launched from a single “house” or machine. While trapshooting dates back to 1750 in England, in the U.S. it began in 1831. Originally live birds were used as targets. The first automatic trap machine designed to launch clay targets was used in 1909.

In skeet shooting, the 4.3-inch targets are launched from two “houses,” in somewhat sideways paths that often intersect in front of the shooter.

In Sporting Clays, shooters walk from station to station over natural terrain and are faced with many different launch points. “Sporting clays is like golf with a shotgun,” said Stein.

At CRGC, the targets are launched remotely from a hand-held control, similar to a TV remote control. Over the course of a year, CRGC shooters go through some 250,000 clay targets. The shooters have several options, including:

• A classic trapshooting field

• A skeet field

• A 5-Stand field

• A 50-yard, 15-lane handgun range

• A 225-yard, six-station rifle range

• An 11-station sporting clays course.

“The shotgun sports are open to the public,” explained Stein, a sporting clays enthusiast who designed the club’s course, which opened earlier this year. “The rifle and pistol ranges are members only.”

To learn more, visit www.crgc.org.

Safety and getting young shooters involved in the sport are two of the club’s main activities. They hold a Youth Trap League every spring that draws dozens of shooters ages 12 to 18. “We had 40 to 50 young shooters from seven high schools, from four counties here, from April to June,” said Stein. “Everything is covered. Just get the kids here.”

The club’s Hunter Safety Program is another free event that is held annually during the last weekend in August. The two-day program is widely considered to be one of the best shooting education programs around. “If there’s a young person who wants to learn gun safety, they should come here at the end of August,” said Belfour.

“We had 114 participants, ranging from 7 years old to 47 years old,” added Stein. “And they don’t pay a dime to be involved.”

The Cedar Rod & Gun Club was established in the belly of the Great Depression, in 1936, by four Leelanau County shooting enthusiasts: Pete Schettek, Paul Garvin, Rufus Brow and Joe Pleva.

In the beginning, club meetings were held at the Solon Township Hall, the Cedar Fire Hall, or Brow’s Barber Shop in Cedar. In 1960, the club bought 25 acres of land on Sullivan Road. Two years later, trap shooting began, and it continues at the site to this day.

A pattern of measured growth and improvements has continued ever since. A log building was moved from Lake Leelanau to the location in 1964 to serve as the clubhouse. In 1966, a garage was relocated from Greilickville and added to the north side of the building.

Early in the 1970s, the skeet and rifle range was set up at the club. In 1978, a kitchen was added to the clubhouse, and in 1990, a shooting range was established for sporting clays.

In 1992, an addition was completed to the east end of the building, and a pistol shooting range was developed in 1994. In 2001, the Cedar Rod & Gun Club Educational Foundation was formed. It’s the training and education arm of the club and is a 501 (c) (3) charity for tax purposes.

The clubhouse’s knotty pine walls feature photos of early club members, shooting trophies and certificates. A few stuffed animals and birds catch the eye. It’s a well-lit, open space for shooters to gather, enjoy a meal, and swap tales.

Long Lake Township resident Dan Kirkwood, 77, is a U.S. Navy veteran who volunteers at Munson Medical Center. He enjoys coming to the club for the camaraderie as much as the shooting. Kirkwood used to make the drive more often but is dealing with an eye problem of late.

“I like to shoot skeet, but I shoot pistols more than anything,” he said. “I’ve got a collection of guns and I shoot ’em all. I don’t hunt any more. I wasn’t a very good hunter. I’m no goody-two-shoes, I’m just not interested in killing anything anymore. There’s a lot that goes on here, and it’s a nice bunch of people. It’s all for the better use of firearms and hunting.”