Tuscaloosa Gun Club

Newsletters

Newsletter – Winter 2011

This should be a fairly short newsletter since the timeliest and most important information has already been shared as necessary.  It appears our issues on the Rifle Range have been resolved and on a positive note this has been something that has resulted in all of us rethinking our safety practices and being safer shooters.

As our club grows and continues to evolve, input from the membership is essential in helping shape a vision of what we want to become.  When I am at the range, I just can’t help but look around and remember what it was just a few years back, and appreciate where we are today.  At the same time, I realize that changes did not happen in a few weeks; it took hard work, money and time. 

When we applied for the last grants one of our exhibits we presented was a “Master Plan” and to be honest, that was the aspirations of the author to help justify our request for funding.  It is safe to say we are on the brink of a good bit of change to our facilities.  We are financially healthy and it appears our landlord is about to sell the land we lease to the Millers, who live in the white house on the way into the range.  While we have enjoyed a comfortable tenure with Mr. Warren and Mrs. Nevin we have been able to develop a much more comfortable mutual relationship with Mo & Terry (Miller).  Mr. Miller has told us that he is very agreeable with continuing our lease as it is with Warren/Nevin and appears to be ready to work with us when the time is right for us to purchase the property we lease. 

We have long been limited with what major improvements we might want to do by a timid lack of control over our future simply because we have not been comfortable building on property we do not own.  The Executive Committee plans to assemble a small ad-hoc committee to meet and begin developing a long-term vision for our facilities along with budget estimates and safety considerations.

The long-term success of any club is dependent upon providing a product that serves the interests of members.  If you have ideas, it is important that you share them with us.  The Executive Committee membership and contact information is listed at the end of this Newsletter.  Please feel free to contact any or all of us regarding issues you believe to be in the best interest of your club. We hope to be able to provide the membership much more information about the product of this committee at the next Annual Business Meeting that will be on June 2, 2012.

One other note regarding the Millers: For everyone’s safety, they have asked that we please drive slow as we come and go down our shared drive. The importance of our relationship with the Millers cannot be overstated. They live at the gateway to our range.  They vigilantly watch over the property when we are not there.  Conversely we are coming and going during the time they are away at work, so let’s do our best to help them by driving slow and keeping an eye their property as we enter and exit the range.  Please call me at 205-886-7165 (this is also on the hang tags) anytime you think someone needs to check out a situation at their home.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Members often ask if it’s okay to do this or that to improve the range. The answer is almost always “Yes, by all means, if it helps, go for it”.  It is OUR RANGE, please don’t wait on someone else to clean up or build something. 

Butch Skelton has been doing an absolutely great job of maintaining the grass, but in the limited time he has to cut grass he can’t do the weed eating as well.  Anytime you are going to the range and have a gas weed eater, take it and do 15-30 minutes of helping out.  You don’t need to do it all, let someone else catch a little and if we can get several of us doing just 15 minutes of it every 2-3 weeks, that job is accomplished.

We generate a pile of trash; if you have some time, put some of the trash in one of our burn barrels and burn it while you shoot.  Make sure you don’t leave a fire, but just a little help from everybody makes a remarkable difference in our facilities. 

Talking about barrels, all of our barrels are at the end of their useful lives, if you know where we can pick up some barrels, either get them yourself or let one of us know and we’ll arrange to get them.  We could use at least 6, if not several more for the future. 

The hanging plate on the rifle range is the most popular target on our property and as a result it takes a real beating.  One of the shortcomings of that is the cable and hooks that suspend it are being continually cut from bullet fragments splattering on the target.  We will put together a little repair kit with extra hooks & cable and a wrench for the u-bolts.  In the future, if you break it, fix it.  Anything else at the ranges which needs repair, if you can’t take care of it, please let us know, this is where your extra eyes will help us better take care of what we have.

Notes:

Matches – Although we have not set any dates at this time, we expect to continue as in the past and have Pistol Matches on the third Saturday of each month March through June and then August through November.  As soon as we can figure out the right day of the month to do it we also plan on holding Rifle Matches then until probably May and the pick back up in October through the next May.  Competition is the only way you will ever reach your potential as a shooter and that is the foundation of our club.  If you are interested in any other forms of shooting competition, please let us know, it’s quite possible we have the nucleus necessary to start up some other matches that we simply are not aware of the interest necessary to fuel those events.

4-H Range Schedule - Don’t forget the 4-H Team trains on our Rifle Range every 3^rd Sunday of the month unless inclement weather forces them to the next Sunday. 

They normally run around 2:00 – 4:00 PM.  The Rifle Range is CLOSED while they are there.

CLASSES – We just had a Pistol Class and all of the participants had a great time.  We have never had a class specifically for the membership or their spouses or children but if the interest is there we will be more than happy to put together a class at our next opportunity so let us know if you have any candidates for a class.

OUR CONTACT INFORMATION:

Ray Looney - 2152732sam@charter.net

Russell Essary - russessary@hughes.net

Barry Fikes - barry@fikespix.com

phone – 205.553.7165 / 886.7165

Patrick Pettus - specaccess@aol.com

Jim Collins - jc1500zero@gmail.com

First are a few SAFETY ISSUES:

1.  Since the crest of the main drive into the range creates a blind spot and it seems that will forever be a washing area if cars are going out that way, we have that area repaired now and hope it will remain that way for a while.  THE DRIVE IN IS NOW A ONE WAY ONLY GOING INTO THE RANGE (going counter clockwise), CONTINUE ON PAST THE PISTOL RANGE AND EXIT OUT PAST THE FALLING PLATES RANGE.  This is an "All of the time" situation and even if you are the only one at the range, you MUST EXIT out past the Falling Plates to be safe and also help not damage our drive in.  You can think you are the only one there and exit up the hill and suddenly here's someone coming in thinking that's a One Way and we have a significant risk of an accident that we must deal with this way.

2.  We are using more and more portable target stands.  This is a good thing because it allows you to shoot at any distance you like.  Typically we are seeing these employed either on the Rifle Range or our new Casual Range (more on this later).  When using these stands THE MEMBER IS RESPONSIBLE TO INSURE THAT THE ROUNDS FIRED REMAIN INSIDE THE RANGE!  Make sure the rounds are not striking the ground and ricocheting out as we have neighbors all around us that we must insure their safety.

NEWS:

Let me start with a capsule of GOOD NEWS about the Range.  First, the NRA awarded us $3500 for our Range Grant Request for Safety Improvements and we just got $2,500 from the NRA Foundation also for safety improvements.  Our landlord has rented the house on the way into the range to Mo & Terri Moore ... these are two really first class people and we are very fortunate to have such good neighbors.  I am confident they will be assets to us in the future so please extend all courtesies towards them.  Although they are renting the house now, an additional advantage of this is they have intentions of purchasing the house & property to the sides and have no interest in the property we lease nor do they have any objection to our activities.  Hopefully, this will in time equate to an opportunity whereby we can purchase the property we now lease.  

I have updated our website and have a current Range Schedule posted on the "Events" tab.  I'm not finished and just learned I will have to redo the whole thing in the next two weeks due to some changes with our host, so check back soon as I hope to post a lot of pictures and information there.  Please be aware of scheduled Range Usage and plan your shooting time as to not conflict with these scheduled events.  While on the schedule, please note and spread the word about our "Free Pistol Classes" on April 9th & 30th.  These classes are primarily for ladies in our membership as well as the general public and any openings will be filled on a first come basis so you guys that are interested should register early to fill any unfilled slots.  We have not scheduled yet but will have an NRA Basic Pistol Class fairly early this Summer.  FYI, Alabama is pushing hard to require (as many other surrounding states currently require) shooters applying for Concealed Carry Permits to complete this class before being granted the CCP.  This is a one time class like the Hunter Safety Course that you will not have to ever renew.   It would be in your best interest to jump on this sooner than later since demand will drive the cost of this class up and we hope to provide this as a service to our membership as convenient & economical as possible.

This year we are happy to host two Appleseed Project Shoots on March 26-27th as well as May 28-29th.  Last year this WAS A HUGE SUCCESS and this year should be even better.  To register, just hit the "Register" link on the Range Calendar and this is the best thing in the world for kids .. on up to their 70s, I plan to make one of them and I'm sure you will agree with me what a great program they have.

Our ANNUAL BUSINESS MEETING & LUNCH will be on June 4th this year and the Business Meeting will start at 10:30 with lunch right after that.  Please plan on coming and joining us, get to know some of our new club members and pig out on some of my "Fine Cuisine" ... oh yea!  Help me with a head count to know how much to cook and just drop me an e-mail on how many you will bring.  Thank you!

I have scheduled May 7th & 14th as Work Days at The Range.  We have accomplished a lot of work already this year and we have a list of little projects to knock out.  None of these are going to be real hard work and is mostly going to be straightening up areas, cutting and screwing together portable target frames, cleaning up grill and storage trailer, weed eating, pruning some trees and some help fixing the flooring & hanging some blinds in the Club House.  If we have a good turnout on the 7th we shouldn't need the 14th but I know how the weather has been in May so I figured best have an alternate day.

I mentioned above a "Casual Range" and thanks to Lennie Schmandt, we have found a great usage of an area that had been unused.  It is the area on the way out on the left just beyond the Falling Plates Range.  There are portable target stands that Lennie has built (and we will build more on the Work Days) that you can set up any kind of shooting scenario you would like.  Please do your best to not shoot up these frames.  This is a great area to use when you are not going to use the Pistol Range at 25 or 50 yards and it's great for guns like 9MMs & AR-15s where you can easily see & recover your brass.  Hopefully this will provide an area for those of you who have been wanting an area to do IDPA or IPSC type tactical shooting and perhaps grow into some of that competition here in our facilities.  HERE ARE THE RULES FOR USING THIS RANGE:  SAFETY FIRST!! As at all of our other Ranges, Insure all rounds fired stay inside this Range, use caution with the angles you are firing at targets to not allow rounds to miss the banks surrounding this area.  ANY Caliber Pistol, Rifle or Shotgun is permitted here.  As on the other Ranges, except for .22 Rimfire, shooters are responsible to police their brass and shoot at ONLY cardboard targets.  When more than one shooter is using the Range, use common sense & courtesy and work together.

Patrick Pettus is working towards helping us get started with some Rifle Competition and is putting together some casual club Rifle Matches scheduled for April 23rd, June 11th and October 1st.  Once we get another batch through the Appleseeds we should have a good core of people hot to do some shoots.  If you have any interest in this please let me know and I will be happy to hook you up with Patrick.  I would rather you come through me than go straight to him where I can gauge the interest and be able to better support The Rifle Program.  I am serious when I say this Club wants to promote a Competitive Rifle Program here and further round out what we can offer our membership.  We are limited by our geography and can neither support a skeet program nor a very long range rifle program but there is no reason we cannot do almost anything else.  Please help us make this all of the Gun Club you want it to be.

Wrapping up now, as Secretary/Treasurer you trust me to manage and protect the Club's money, something I do my best to do faithfully.  There is a side of this job I don't do well and that's being the "Tax Collector" or "Sheriff" and lately I've been in a uncomfortable situation of having to deal with members not current on their dues and using the range.  I fully understand that 99.9% of the time this is an innocent oversight and even found it to be my fault for failing to record a cash payment.  I am far more lax on enforcing dues collection than I should be thinking it's better to catch those dues on the next cycle and keep everybody happy.  That's typically no problem since there is a large segment of the membership who rarely or never use the range, so no major foul there.  If on the other hand you are using the range and you have not paid your dues that were due last June, please send me a check.  If you don't know your status, please feel free to shoot me a note and I will be glad to let you know your status.  I will mail out a newsletter (probably this text with any updates) before June and will include a card with your information on you and it will indicate your last payment and how much you owe then as well as address, phone numbers & e-mail address ... many of you need to update your contact information and I would appreciate your making sure and get that updated then.  I also want to get more of the Tuscaloosa Gun Club "Indian" decals before that mailing and include them to all current members.  I believe I want to issue decals to tag numbers where we can put them on our rear bumpers or windows where any member can quickly and easily recognize genuine members at the range and be able to help us police non-members who are coming in and just flat trespassing on us. 

Please feel free to call or drop me a note if you have any thoughts, ideas or questions about our Club and thanks to all of you for working with me on making this a  Better & SAFER Club!