By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News
Tucked away on Helper’s Reservoir Hill lies the Helper Gun Club, one of the Castle Country Area’s hidden gems. To draw more eyes to the locale, the club is hosting a round-robin trap shooting competition on Saturday, March 15, and Sunday, March 16. To speak on the club and the event, Mike Giannini from the gun club joined the KOAL newsroom and provided a closer look at what participants should expect.
Opening our conversation, Giannini spoke about the benefits of the sport: “Trap shooting is really a great sport. It’s not doing it just as a competition-type sport, but it helps people with wing shooting if they’re going to hunt birds, pheasants, or anything else. It’s a great training tool to get up there and practice a little bit.”
The club also emphasizes the importance of gun safety for shooters of all ages,” We have guidelines we follow as far as gun safety goes up there. It’s either open or out. We don’t have anybody walking around with a loaded gun. They have to be careful where they’re pointing it. And we’re pretty conscientious about if people are not going to pay attention and do things properly, they won’t be welcome there to shoot. So from a young age, we don’t tolerate any misuse of firearms.”
Switching focus to the tournament, Giannini explained,” We’ll just walk them into the club and kind of take their names down, explain what’s going on, and get them signed up to go out. And the way we’ve got it planned, we’re not expecting teams at first. So if we have two or three people ready to shoot, we get them signed up.” He continued,” Those people can go out and shoot their 75 targets. And the more people we get up there, the more we’ll try to put five people out on the line to shoot at a time. And we’ll run more than one trap. If we get enough people up there, we’ll load up two or three traps to run them through so they don’t have to spend the entire day up there.”
It will cost $18 to shoot 75 targets at the event, and competitors must shoot 150 to qualify for the state meet.
In closing, Gianini shared,” We’d just like to get as many people up there shooting as we can. We don’t care what age they are or what their skill level is. This is designed for new shooters as well as old shooters.”
The Helper Gun Club’s Round Robin Trap Shoot will occur on Saturday, March 15 and Sunday, March 16. The club is located at 721 Gun Club Road in Helper. For more information on the event or the club, contact Gianini at 970-260-6452 or follow the club on Facebook.
*Photo Courtesy of the Helper Gun Club