Local club hosts trapshooting nationals

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This article was published 29/06/2023 (952 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brandon Gun Club members Melanie Gordon is working at her third Canadian Trapshooting Championships, but this time there’s a giant difference.

Gordon helped out previously when her husband and son were shooting, but had never fired a gun in her life when she picked up the sport a couple of years ago.

This year she’s also competing at nationals, which started with preliminaries on Wednesday, although those results don’t count toward the high overall title. That begins today, with competition continuing Friday, Saturday and into Sunday afternoon.

“I want to try to have fun and do the best I can,” Gordon said. “Some days you shoot really well and some days you don’t, and some days it’s in the middle.”

She’s been focused on a lot of the behind-the-scenes planning — “Whatever you need to do, you do, right?” — although she added with a chuckle she leaves the heavy lifting for others.

It’s also the first nationals for Dallas Lesy, who is among a group of about a dozen local competitors expected to participate. He’s also helping out.

“There is always some excitement to it,” Lesy said. “The nervousness comes on the day. You can stay relaxed until then.”

At least it’s at home. Lesy said being in familiar surroundings should be a boost, but the familiar faces are even more important.

“You’re always around the group you’ve known for a long time,” Lesy said. “You’re not just by yourself somewhere where you don’t know anybody. It will be easier for sure.”

Brandon will be hosting the event for the 11th time, after also doing it in 1984, 1985, 1988, 1991, 1994, 1997, 2001, 2007, 2015 and 2018.

That trails only Vancouver, which has held it 14 times since the event’s inception in 1956, and Hamilton with 12.

The Brandon Gun Club has one major new addition since they last hosted, a 45-site campground. They had a more rudimentary campground on the site before but now they’ve run electricity to it, a job that was finished on Monday afternoon.

It was made possible by a $27,976 grant through the provincial Building Sustainable Communities program.

The club also has information packages gathered for visitors to the city, which is targeted at family members who don’t shoot and want to find things to do.

While there isn’t a fundamental difference between preparing for a provincial event and nationals, club president Pat Lamont admitted there is an extra level of attention to detail.

“It’s just the magnitude,” Lamont said. “You say it shouldn’t be any different but it is. You have a lot of people who don’t normally come here. You want people to come back and bring a friend, to tell people how much fun they had or how well run a shoot it was.”

The Brandon Gun Club, which is located just two kilometres south of Brandon on Highway 10 near the Intersection with Highway 110, was established in 1962, with the clubhouse added in 1995.

The club hopes to draw 125 shooters on the weekend, with most participants based in Western Canada. When the event drew nearly 500 shooters in 1984 — the largest national championship ever — a quarter of the shooters were from the United States.

This year, they might have around five to 10 Americans attending.

“That makes it tough, but there’s a perception that you’re not going to be able to get your gun across the border and get it back,” Lamont said. “While, with Americans it’s so simple. You pay your $25, bring your gun across and you can bring it right back over. There’s nothing to it.”

Initial planning on nationals began a year ago, with the work beginning in earnest on things like the program, T-shirts, borrowing machines from clubs around Manitoba and trophies around Christmas.

This week, there have been groups of people making the final preparations on the site on things like groundskeeping. On Monday evening, a truck even dumped fresh gravel on the road.

The club has also put in a new trap house, and during COVID, installed new floors in the other nine. They also did a lot of concrete work on walks, and dug new drainage in front of the traps.

The event will be looked after by eight to 10 people, many of whom will also be shooting. They also bring in 10 to 15 people to do scoring and load the traps during competition.

Trapshooting is a repetitive motion event that requires intense concentration, just like other sports such as golf and bowling. Lesy doesn’t think his work at the event will affect his shooting

“You just put it out of your mind,” Lesy said. “I think for the board members, it’s going to be more at the end of the day because you already have everything started at the beginning of the day. Once the day starts, it should flow.”

That’s music to the ears of Lamont, who has done both at a lot of events over the years.

He said the key to balancing duties as host and shooter is simple. You have to compartmentalize things and live in the moment.

“You have to be able to separate it,” Lamont said. “When it’s time to shoot, your mind can only be on shooting. You can’t worry about what else is going on, you have to trust and depend on the other volunteers. It adds a different dynamic to it when you’re hosting but you have to focus on the task at hand.”

The event begins each morning at 10 a.m. — the sun can be hard on shooters on the east-facing traps if they go any earlier — and ends around 6 in the evening, depending on how many shootoffs are required.

A food truck from East Side Eatery will be onsite during the event, and they will also be preparing the meal for Saturday evening’s banquet.

They will also have fireworks to celebrate Canada Day on Saturday.

There will be a special component to the event that’s utterly unique. The Canadian Trapshooting Association started a Hall of Fame in 2022, and added 13 people who were instrumental to the sport prior to their deaths.

This year, they’re inducting just two, Lamont and former Olympian Susan Nattrass, who will both be on hand to accept the awards at the banquet.

“This is the first year there’s actually an induction ceremony,” Lamont said. “I’m going with Susan Nattrass. That one is cool. It’s an honour to be recognized by your peers and put in there.”

To make it even more special, he’s also being inducted into the American Trapshooting Association’s Trapshooting Hall of Fame on Aug. 8 when he heads down to Sparta, Ill., for the Grand American World Trapshooting Championships.

He has 10 titles in the largest shooting event in the world, third most among living shooters and in the top half dozen overall since it started in 1900.

In 2017, the Brandonite won the high overall and the high all around title, giving him career championships in all five events. He was just the second person in history to accomplish the feat.

The local shooters have the opportunity to train alongside Lamont and another decorated shooter, Lamont’s father Rob, which Lesy said is a nice benefit.

“If you have a question, it’s easy to get an answer,” Lesy said. “They’ll always be willing to help anybody, and anybody who is a new shooter who comes out here, they’re always the first to come out and help them. They would rather see somebody succeed and hopefully they keep coming back rather than get frustrated with themselves and never return.”

At nationals, that’s the nice thing about the more relaxed start on Wednesday. In theory, the preliminaries should allow shooters to settle in and get comfortable.

“You can get out there and practise and warm up,” Gordon said of Wednesday’s schedule. “That’s a good thing.”

In theory, as many as 50 shooters could be active at one time, since five are assigned to each of the 10 traps.

While Lesy is eager to see other shooters from across Canada in action, he quickly added that it’s probably not the time to make any alterations to his style.

“I think everybody works with their own, what works for you,” Lesy said with a chuckle. “You don’t want too much input sometimes. Correcting wrong things is one thing, but to try something new, you definitely wouldn’t want to try it this weekend.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

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