Tucked behind the rifle range run by the Port Clements Rod and Gun Club is a second range fewer people see.
Made for trap shooting, it has five open-air shooting stations laid out in a crescent shape.
When the first shooter yells “pull!” someone fires a launcher that flings a clay pigeon into the air.
One by one, five shooters compete to blast the target out of the sky with their 12-gauge shotguns.
“If you don’t have a sore shoulder after 25 shots, you’ve probably been doing it right!” says Doug Daugert, long-time member of the Rod and Gun Club.
Trap shooters have to be quick. The clay pigeon is bright orange, but it gets launched at 70 km/h and is only four inches across.
The sport got its name back in the late 1700s when people shot real pigeons released from a trap. For Haida Gwaii hunters, it’s good practice before duck season.
Jason Rupke, one of the newer members of the Rod and Gun Club, said trap-shooting has its own subculture, and some dedicated trap shooters carry $10,000 shotguns.
“None of us are those people,” Rupke said. At the club’s Sept. 15 trap shoot, the clay pigeons had about a 20-to-1 chance of flying away un-blasted.
“We were all not great, to be fair, except for one guy: Ed Stevens,” Rupke said.
“He was an incredible shot. He’s no longer with us, but we try to celebrate him whenever we can.”
The September trap shoot is one of nine community shoots the Rod and Gun Club will host this year. Next up is a Nov. 3 Pumpkin Shoot where Halloween jack-o-lanterns get a glorious, splattery end.
Also coming up is the club’s Annual General Meeting — maybe the tastiest AGM on Haida Gwaii.
Urs Thomas, an avid hunter and fisher who first joined the club in 1995, said besides club business, the AGM is a time to gather everyone for a potluck.
People bring dishes they hunted or gathered and cooked themselves, said Thomas, such as venison, fish, chanterelles, homemade sausage or home-baked bread.
Dating back to at least 1981, the Port Clements Rod and Gun Club started celebrating local food long before it was cool.
“You know, it’s an important part of living, not just for our community Port Clements, but for the whole island,” Thomas said.
The gun club runs what is now the only certified shooting range on Haida Gwaii.
It’s much safer for hunters to practice or sight their rifles at a range rather than shoot willy-nilly in the bush, said Daugert, which would also leave the forest littered with bullets and spent shells.
Not only that, said Thomas, but the islands need a certified range for local police, fisheries officers and the Canadian Rangers to train. Without one, they would all have to go off-island.
“They can’t just go to a gravel pit and shoot around,” Thomas said.
A couple years ago, the gun club was running so low on directors it was at risk of closing down, as other Haida Gwaii gun clubs have in the past.
Several of the key people who kept the club going passed away.
Ron Haralson, who for many years taught the firearms and hunting safety courses that all new hunters need, also had to step back from instructing.
But a new crop of club members is stepping up, including Jason Rupke and Pam Greenstock.
“It’s been a really, really great way to meet people, a really great way to feel a sense of community pride,” said Pam Greenstock. She and her partner GiO, adventurous foodies who like to hunt and forage, moved to Port Clements partly because it has a gun range nearby.
People from ages six to 80 come out to the club’s community shoots, Greenstock said, and the club has a long and growing list of local sponsors. Prizes at the September trap shoot included gifts from the Axe & Anchor Pub, The 626, Tlell River Fly & Tackle, Bayview Market and the BC Wildlife Association.
A girl from Sandspit recently asked her family to hold her 14th birthday party at the rifle range.
Greenstock also said the BC Wildlife Federation has offered to train a new hunting safety instructor for Haida Gwaii once someone is ready to take it on.
Thomas and Daugert said the club has continued a long time because people feel strongly about continuing the traditions of hunting and food-gathering on island, and doing it in a safe and legal way.
“We want those resources to last forever,” Daugert said.
Thomas agreed.
“I hope for our generation that the future generation — my children, grandchildren and great-children — that the gun range, our hunting rights, and our fishing rights be maintained.”