Buffalo City Gun Club trap shooting league in full swing – Jamestown Sun

JAMESTOWN – If you like shooting guns, there is a place to go in Jamestown: the Buffalo City Gun Club.

The club has been in existence for over 50 years and has four trap shooting machines available for participants to use. The club hosts competitions throughout the summer, with two major competitions taking place each summer.

“The league is competitive, but not super competitive. It’s more about having fun than super competitive, it’s just about having fun,” said Tyler Goldade, president of the Buffalo City Gun Club. “The ATA (American Trapshooting Association) events … are extremely competitive, they’re just about business.”

Goldade said the club has about 50 members. He said the club is usually open from late April or early May through October.

Goldade said the biggest challenge for the club was the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Twenty years ago, the club had a lot of teams and a lot of people shooting,” Goldade said. “It went down a little bit and then COVID got us. I think it was like that in almost all areas, bowling, except golf, golf was going well. … After COVID, we went down a lot and now we’re back up. Our league was 20 teams at one point and then during COVID, the first year of COVID, I think we had about eight teams for our league, teams of five. Now we’re back to about 15 or 16 (teams).”

While the club’s membership has declined due to the pandemic, Goldade said the club was helped tremendously by having Jamestown High School’s trap team start around the same time as the University of Jamestown’s shooting team.

Goldade said the start of the season has been slow because of the weather. He expects the number of participants to increase after the Stutsman County Fair ends. The club did not meet during the Stutsman County Fair to avoid possible accidents.

Goldade has been president of the nonprofit for three years. His duties as president include handling finances, maintaining the grounds and planning events, Goldade said.

One of those events is amateur trap shooting. During trap shooting competitions, Goldade said competitors are divided into different classes: A, B, C, D, juniors and veterans. The class an individual shooter is placed in depends on the shooter’s average score. Goldade said scoring for the event is based on the number of clay pigeons the shooter hits. He said the highest class is for those who hit 96 targets or more, and it goes down to those who hit 89 targets or less per competition. Goldade said competitors shoot with either custom-built trap shotguns or field shotguns.

“We have our standard leagues and stuff like that,” Goldade said. “It doesn’t matter, it’s all within the club, it doesn’t go anywhere. When we have these shots at the American Trap Shooting Association, A, you have to be a member of the American Trap Shooting Association and B, once you shoot, all your scorekeepers are sent there and they track your averages and everything basically forever. So I can go back and look at my average from 10 years ago if I want to.”

This summer, the club is working on construction projects for a new skeet range and shade area. He said members are also working on other improvements to the clubhouse facility. Goldade said the differences between skeet and trap shooting are that in skeet there are more “stations” to shoot at and the machines that shoot at the targets move more.

“The biggest part of the improvements will be the skeet facility and that is almost first and foremost, 100% for the college and high school students because they have the opportunity to shoot skeet when they can,” Goldade said. “We just didn’t have the facilities until hopefully … towards the end of the summer of this year. So if they wanted to shoot skeet, the closest place would be Wimbledon.”

The club is not only attended by adults. Goldade said the Jimmies and Blue Jays also go there regularly. Goldade said the high school team has 38 athletes and the Jimmies team has between 15 and 20 athletes.

While the Blue Jays practice, Goldade said some Jimmies and other club members help the high school students. He also said the two teams have the same head coach, John Mazur.

“The high school thing blossomed a few years ago,” Goldade said. “A couple of towns around the state had trap teams for a couple of years. We had actually been trying to get the high schools to get involved for three years before they actually did. In the beginning, it was about 20 kids the first year and the last two years it’s been about 40, 40 kids shooting, which I think is a pretty good number for a club sport. It’s very popular with the youth, more so than the adults.”

The sport is related to hunting because the targets are called pigeons or clay pigeons, according to the American Trapshooting Association.

“The vast majority of members are hunters and a lot of people use it almost as a hunting practice tool,” Goldade said. “… Usually a handful of people show up throughout the year who want to warm up a little before hunting season starts.”

Goldade said there is no age limit for the club, but children must complete a hunting safety course before joining. Membership costs $65 for the entire season. The club provides hearing protection to its members and sells ammunition.

Hello,
My name is Max O’Neill. I’m a sports reporter for The Jamestown Sun. I’m a native New Yorker and a 2020 graduate of Ithaca College with a degree in television and radio.