Permission to shoot wanted

benhurt1

If anyone hears of any landowners within an hours drive of Dublin that needs vermin controlled I would be happy to oblige! I have over 20 years experience and insurance. PM me.........
Or somewhere for target practice apart from a club...too dear and political

Sparks

benhurt1 wrote:

Or somewhere for target practice apart from a club...too dear and political

I know there's a fair bit of politicing in a lot of clubs at the moment, but it's not mandatory to get involved in it! Most people don't, either. And frankly, it's no loss for those that don't get involved in it...

woody

I have noticed clubs are between 350 and 500 to join per year this is outrageous since, my local Gun club whilst not having a range but a lot of reserved land is only 75 per year.

Is there such a thing as a working mans club which does'nt cost a mint.

for the above money I would get a decent pistol

benhurt1

woody wrote:

I have noticed clubs are between 350 and 500 to join per year this is outrageous since, my local Gun club whilst not having a range but a lot of reserved land is only 75 per year.

Is there such a thing as a working mans club which does'nt cost a mint.

for the above money I would get a decent pistol

Couldnt agree more woody! and I know a club that charges €750!!! I too am a member of a gun club for €75 but its over an hours drive away....I want somewhere I can go in the evening after work in the summer or if I have a couple of hours to spare on a saturday or sunday.....

Sparks

Ben, does that €750 include capitation fees? I mean, looking at golf clubs, you tend to pay an annual fee after joining, but also a capitation fee (usually incredibly high, I've heard figures in the tens of thousands) within the first few years after joining as a once-off payment.

Mind you, the end result is that these golf clubs have magnificent clubhouses and facilities... so I pretty much have to think that if it was for a range like that in Comber or Bisley or the Isle of Man or Munich for example, that a high annual fee is somewhat justified. To an extent of course!

Also, do those membership fees include other fees, like insurance or membership fees in NGBs or whatever?

rrpc

Sparks wrote:

Ben, does that €750 include capitation fees? I mean, looking at golf clubs, you tend to pay an annual fee after joining, but also a capitation fee (usually incredibly high, I've heard figures in the tens of thousands) within the first few years after joining as a once-off payment.

I can give the breakdown for Rathdrum, of which I am a member. There is a capitation fee (once off) of €150, and an annual sub of €220 (for 2004). €50 of that is for personal insurance, €15 is NTSA affiliation, and approximately another €5 for NASRC affiliation. This leaves €150 as the sub. For that you get unlimited targets (approx .25c each for 25 yard), a key to the range which you can use at any time and cheap ammunition. (trade price plus about 5% markup for transport costs)

The club has to pay rates every year, upkeep of the premises, electricity, fire insurance, public liability etc. etc. etc.

Game clubs have very little overheads, so the sub is correspondingly lower, but relatively speaking quite high when you look at what you get.

We are not in it for a profit, the money (what little is left over) goes back into the club, for facilities for members.

We will be increasing the subs and fees next year, because the new range is going to cost a lot more to run.

benhurt1

Sparks wrote:

Ben, does that €750 include capitation fees? I mean, looking at golf clubs, you tend to pay an annual fee after joining, but also a capitation fee (usually incredibly high, I've heard figures in the tens of thousands) within the first few years after joining as a once-off payment.

Mind you, the end result is that these golf clubs have magnificent clubhouses and facilities... so I pretty much have to think that if it was for a range like that in Comber or Bisley or the Isle of Man or Munich for example, that a high annual fee is somewhat justified. To an extent of course!

Also, do those membership fees include other fees, like insurance or membership fees in NGBs or whatever?

yes the €750 included all those fees but no matter how its broken down its still €750 out of my pocket yes i realise the money is spent making the ranges comfy, but all I want is a safe place to zero or hunt with no frills and no BS (cs and ss acceptable! ) I was a member of a rifle club for 3 years and found it was not for me, it interfered with my enjoyment of shooting

Sparks

benhurt1 wrote:

i realise the money is spent making the ranges comfy, but all I want is a safe place to zero or hunt with no frills and no BS

Well, if all you're looking for is a single firing point for zeroing and land to hunt on, then yes, €750 is far too much money
Rifle clubs tend to be different - covered firing points, target frames, clubhouses and so on and so forth. It's sortof the difference between a driving range and a golf course I suppose.

I was a member of a rifle club for 3 years and found it was not for me, it interfered with my enjoyment of shooting

:eek:
Good grief, surely it wasn't that bad! I mean, an hour or two of training or plinking away on a covered firing point, then a nice cup of coffee and maybe a sandwich (after washing the lead off your hands of course) - how bad can that be?

gouda

rrpc wrote:

Game clubs have very little overheads, so the sub is correspondingly lower, but relatively speaking quite high when you look at what you get.

We are not in it for a profit, the money (what little is left over) goes back into the club, for facilities for members.

Game clubs do have quite a lot of varied overheads,hall rental for meetings,postage,phone calls,printing,release pen building,digger hire,feed,feed storage,predator control equipment,land leasing,general upkeep and repair of pens, etc. Predator control on over 8,500 acres involves a lot of man hours and travel expense and like all clubs this falls on a very few people. We are not in it for profit either but we have turned over €3,500 in less than 12 months. All this from €23.50 membership excluding insurance which is €51.50. All hobbies are expensive but €750 for range use for a couple of hours per week is seriously ripping off people,regardless of whether it has covered firing points and coffee available.

Target shooting clubs are doing their best to be exclusive rather than inclusive i.e. how many clubs offer reduced rates for young shooters? I know of at least one club which is very limited as to times available to shoot and they charge the same high fees for young and unemployed shooters as they do for working adults. I don't think there are any clubs offering family membership discounts yet all these clubs maintain that they are promoting shooting. Yes indeed but only among the priveliged few. Roll on the introduction of lots of pay as you shoot clubs, then maybe shooting will be opened up to all responsible shooters and the "elites" can sit around drinking coffee and talking about the good old days when shooting was an elite sport for the priveliged few, while ordinary shooters do what they do best, have fun shooting guns.

Sparks

That's a bit harsh, don't you think Gouda? Pretty much every club I've ever been to has a student/senior citizen discount on membership, and the only club I know of with strict limits on shooting time is the trinity rifle club where time is parcelled out in half-hour details - but there that's because they've got two .22 firing points and three air rifle ones (which can't be used at the same time) and 250 to 350 members (depending on the year), so there it's by necessity. (And they charge each of them a fiver to join and then they pay for their ammo as they go). And that's a rather odd case, really.

gouda

Sparks wrote:

That's a bit harsh, don't you think Gouda? Pretty much every club I've ever been to has a student/senior citizen discount on membership, and the only club I know of with strict limits on shooting time is the trinity rifle club where time is parcelled out in half-hour details - but there that's because they've got two .22 firing points and three air rifle ones (which can't be used at the same time) and 250 to 350 members (depending on the year), so there it's by necessity. (And they charge each of them a fiver to join and then they pay for their ammo as they go). And that's a rather odd case, really.

No,I don't think it's harsh at all. Considering that most clubs whinge about poor attendances at competitions at the NRPAI AGM and claim they are promoting shooting but not getting any response the question must be asked "why is this"? Perhaps because they have failed to make any real effort to entice people to take up target shooting as a sport or perhaps because they want to keep the sport "exclusive". Example; I have recently spoken to a long standing member of a well known Dublin club (approx. 23 years membership) who expressed an interest in Deer stalking to people who were stalking Deer. He was told that it was almost impossible to get started,was extremely expensive,unlikely he would get a lease in the Dublin/Wicklow area and was basically told a pack of lies and was not offered any help in getting started. That same attitude of unhelpfulness was very prevalent during my days in a Dublin club, where prior to joining I was told that as a novice shooter I would be helped by members and coached until I was a reasonably competent shot. It never happened. Members from the Chairman down had no interest in helping me or any shooter to improve lest it took from their chance of winning a competition. Knowledge was not shared and coaching never happened to any member while I was a member there. If asked for help, members delegated my question to other members with the result that my questions were never dealt with. What I learned was self taught and over the years I have gathered information from a variety of sources, none of whom shoot competitively but are extremely knowledgeable and are more than happy to share their knowledge, we also try to solve any problems by pooling information and this is then passed on to friends and any other shooters interested. Perhaps not expert advice but tried and tested and aimed at helping shooters reach their own and their equipment's full potential. This is what should be happening at club level. Perhaps it happens at your club,Sparks, but it is not happening in enough clubs around the country. Irish shooters seem to be a selfish bunch and can be very reluctant to pass on knowledge. Sure,there will be exceptions but how do you find them and what will it cost in club memberships and other expenses to find a club that offers proper coaching,reduced rates for young or unemployed people,family discounts and actively seeks members from their local community? Just a thought, as a member of the NTSA, how many clubs have you approached to publish details of how to join their club;the disciplines they shoot;annual fees;availability of coaching/equipment;opening hours;firearms handling courses etc? No use keeping this info to themselves,otherwise people may start to think that they are an elitist club and that would be incorrect,wouldn't it? Look forward to reading your response.

Sparks

gouda wrote:

No,I don't think it's harsh at all. Considering that most clubs whinge about poor attendances at competitions at the NRPAI AGM and claim they are promoting shooting but not getting any response the question must be asked "why is this"? Perhaps because they have failed to make any real effort to entice people to take up target shooting as a sport or perhaps because they want to keep the sport "exclusive".

That's certainly possible gouda, I just wouldn't have said right off the bat that it was the most likely answer.

Members from the Chairman down had no interest in helping me or any shooter to improve lest it took from their chance of winning a competition. Knowledge was not shared and coaching never happened to any member while I was a member there. If asked for help, members delegated my question to other members with the result that my questions were never dealt with. What I learned was self taught and over the years I have gathered information from a variety of sources, none of whom shoot competitively but are extremely knowledgeable and are more than happy to share their knowledge, we also try to solve any problems by pooling information and this is then passed on to friends and any other shooters interested. Perhaps not expert advice but tried and tested and aimed at helping shooters reach their own and their equipment's full potential. This is what should be happening at club level. Perhaps it happens at your club,Sparks, but it is not happening in enough clubs around the country. Irish shooters seem to be a selfish bunch and can be very reluctant to pass on knowledge. Sure,there will be exceptions but how do you find them and what will it cost in club memberships and other expenses to find a club that offers proper coaching,reduced rates for young or unemployed people,family discounts and actively seeks members from their local community?

That's certainly something that the NTSA's been looking at and trying to fix by developing coaching - we've gotten two ISSF 'C' Coaches in Wilkinstown and we've another preparing to go off to an ISSF 'B' coaches course at the moment. There's also a lot of air rifle coaching going on, both between the NTSA and the Pony Club Tetrathlon shooters and between the ISSF coaches and the other air rifle clubs (the coaches are qualified in air rifle coaching). But it's certainly true that we haven't finished the job yet and smallbore is far behind air rifle in the amount of effort going into coaching on a national basis. That's something the NTSA's looking at fixing at the moment. I'm not sure that it should be the sole responsibility of the individual clubs, because a national coaching programme is what the Irish Sports Council wants to happen in coordination with the National Coaching and Training Center in Limerick, and that approach gives some serious advantages - you take one person or two from each club and run them through a coaches course and overnight you have a coach in each club. Do that every so often and you get a small cadre of trained coaches (as opposed to instructors) in every club.
Again, it's something that needs more time put into it.

Just a thought, as a member of the NTSA, how many clubs have you approached to publish details of how to join their club;the disciplines they shoot;annual fees;availability of coaching/equipment;opening hours;firearms handling courses etc? No use keeping this info to themselves,otherwise people may start to think that they are an elitist club and that would be incorrect,wouldn't it? Look forward to reading your response.

Actually, I put together two surveys to be sent around earlier this year; one to all our members and one to all our clubs, to get baseline data on things like shooter's preferences and so on; and the club one specifically asked all the questions you've asked. I haven't been able to send it out yet though, for reasons beyond my control and which I'd rather not go into here for now. But it is on the to-do list, and I have spoken with some of the clubs about it and gathered a small amount of data. Obviously, many of the clubs have concerns regarding security - they won't release things like members' details and for good reason, but the sort of information you're talking about should be public domain really. The website was set up to host that information; and it is in the pipeline; it's just a matter of time.

BlackDot

gouda, I have to disagree, I mainly did shotgun myself, recently I've done a bit of target shooting and I would have to say the exact opposite to what you claim. The target shooting community seems to be fairly small and from what I've seen, if you show any enthusiasm at all they'll give you as much help as they can. But equally if you want to just shoot they won't interfere. Are you sure your comments are truely representative of these people?

BD

gouda

BlackDot wrote:

gouda, I have to disagree, I mainly did shotgun myself, recently I've done a bit of target shooting and I would have to say the exact opposite to what you claim. The target shooting community seems to be fairly small and from what I've seen, if you show any enthusiasm at all they'll give you as much help as they can. But equally if you want to just shoot they won't interfere. Are you sure your comments are truely representative of these people?

BD

Absolutely representative of the shooters and clubs of which I was a member. Also, shooters I spoke to who are or were members confirmed that the situation is pretty well unchanged from my time. Perhaps as Sparks said what is needed is dedicated coaches,perhaps members who for one reason or another are no longer competing but wish to remain involved and are willing to pass on their knowledge. I still occasionally go to clubs and still see novice shooters left to their own devices while the "good shooters" continue to hone their skill and are unwilling to assist new or novice shooters. Perhaps this does not happen 24/7 but I notice it when I am there. Why can't clubs have novice or coaching days? Perhaps no "good" shots would turn up on these days to help out? Practice days should include coaching at some level and perhaps if clubs made it a condition of membership that all members are expected to assist new members to achieve a reasonable standard, it may help all shooters in the long term. Some clubs in the UK actually appoint a member to supervise and work with new members while they are on probationary membership. This allows novices to receive one on one coaching and also proper safety training. It could be done here also, if clubs were committed to promoting the sport.

rrpc

gouda wrote:

No,I don't think it's harsh at all. Considering that most clubs whinge about poor attendances at competitions at the NRPAI AGM and claim they are promoting shooting but not getting any response the question must be asked "why is this"? Perhaps because they have failed to make any real effort to entice people to take up target shooting as a sport or perhaps because they want to keep the sport "exclusive". Example; I have recently spoken to a long standing member of a well known Dublin club (approx. 23 years membership) who expressed an interest in Deer stalking to people who were stalking Deer. He was told that it was almost impossible to get started,was extremely expensive,unlikely he would get a lease in the Dublin/Wicklow area and was basically told a pack of lies and was not offered any help in getting started.

Well I think it's harsh considering your first example is about deer shooting, which is not a target shooting sport.

As for the question "why is this", I can give some reasons that I have come across in the time I have been involved in target shooting. Cost is the main one. Target shooting equipment is expensive. A good second-hand rifle and the rest of the equipment can add up to a grand. Membership fees, insurance and ammunition add up to further ongoing costs. If you are serious about training, you can use up to 10000 rounds a year and there is a fair bit of travelling to competitions. A lot of new shooters come through the universities, but we usually lose about 90% of these when the time comes for them to buy their own equipment having used club equipment up till then.

Most non-university clubs try to have a certain amount of 'club equipment' for their new members to use, but it is expensive to provide, especially clothing.

Target shooting is also quite an individual sport. Some people take to it well and enjoy the mental challenge, others don't. I have seen many people pass through the sport over the years and there are varying reasons as to why they quit. Very few if any have cited lack of support or training as the reason for quitting.

The main difficulty with target shooting is that it requires ranges to shoot in. There are precious few of these in the country and the numbers are dwindling all the time. Even if they were not, all require some degree of travel to get to, and not everyone can do that easily. On top of that is the difficulty of shooting on outdoor ranges during the winter with short hours of daylight.

I agree that some clubs can be over the top with rules, but the majority of shooters I have known have always been anxious to encourage and help new members, giving their time and advice freely. Coaching can be difficult to organise as there has been a dearth of coaching talent in the country with the NTSA having to import their coaches from Britain. According to Sparks this will be changing in the future, with home-grown coaches being trained to the required standards.

There are so few of us, that when somebody evinces an interest in the sport, they are overwhelmed with assistance and advice. I received a phone call today from a putative member, who wanted a letter to his Garda Station for him to get a license for a target rifle. He had the letter dropped in his letterbox two hours later. (and that was a fourteen mile round trip drive for me).

We're not all selfish b'#&$'s

gouda

rrpc wrote:

Well I think it's harsh considering your first example is about deer shooting, which is not a target shooting sport.

As for the question "why is this", I can give some reasons that I have come across in the time I have been involved in target shooting. Cost is the main one. Target shooting equipment is expensive. A good second-hand rifle and the rest of the equipment can add up to a grand. Membership fees, insurance and ammunition add up to further ongoing costs. If you are serious about training, you can use up to 10000 rounds a year and there is a fair bit of travelling to competitions. A lot of new shooters come through the universities, but we usually lose about 90% of these when the time comes for them to buy their own equipment having used club equipment up till then.

Most non-university clubs try to have a certain amount of 'club equipment' for their new members to use, but it is expensive to provide, especially clothing.

Target shooting is also quite an individual sport. Some people take to it well and enjoy the mental challenge, others don't. I have seen many people pass through the sport over the years and there are varying reasons as to why they quit. Very few if any have cited lack of support or training as the reason for quitting.

The main difficulty with target shooting is that it requires ranges to shoot in. There are precious few of these in the country and the numbers are dwindling all the time. Even if they were not, all require some degree of travel to get to, and not everyone can do that easily. On top of that is the difficulty of shooting on outdoor ranges during the winter with short hours of daylight.

I agree that some clubs can be over the top with rules, but the majority of shooters I have known have always been anxious to encourage and help new members, giving their time and advice freely. Coaching can be difficult to organise as there has been a dearth of coaching talent in the country with the NTSA having to import their coaches from Britain. According to Sparks this will be changing in the future, with home-grown coaches being trained to the required standards.

There are so few of us, that when somebody evinces an interest in the sport, they are overwhelmed with assistance and advice. I received a phone call today from a putative member, who wanted a letter to his Garda Station for him to get a license for a target rifle. He had the letter dropped in his letterbox two hours later. (and that was a fourteen mile round trip drive for me).

We're not all selfish b'#&$'s

Interesting! My first comment related to the failure of an individual with 20 plus years experience not being given factual information,perhaps I should also have said I was a new member of the same club as this person and witnessed experienced shooters,some with Bisley medals, failing to help either of us,and other newbies, in any way. Full credit to this shooter who has taught himself how to shoot well and has taken prizes in competition despite the lack of assistance from club members. Your later remarks only confirm what I have found to be the case,clubs pretend to be serious about promoting the sport but are reluctant to do so for a variety of reasons. My problem is that clubs will not often admit this is so and have comprehensively failed to provide a solution to the difficulties which arise. If ranges are dwindling,perhaps you could name the ranges which have closed? My information would indicate that there are more ranges now than there were in the eighties. Clubs of which I know are:MRC,Fermoy,Wilkinstown,Fassaroe,BRC,Eagles,Kerry Rifle Team,Lifford,TCD,DURC,Dublin Rifle Club,Fingal,Courtlough,Rathdrum RPC and possibly others. At least six of these did not exist in the eighties.
So you travelled 14 miles for a prospective member,congratulations, he is very lucky to have been able to find details of your club. Most clubs will not advertise their existence for some odd reason.
Selfish B"&^%$)*s? Nothing could be further from my mind. Just want clubs and their reps to put their hands up to a catalogue of cock ups regarding promoting the sport and try harder to be inclusive of all shooters,regardless of disciplines. I don't believe that people who reply to my posts are seriously stating that they are doing all they can. A lot of shooters who post here have experience of shooting abroad,can it really be possible that other countries have the same seemingly insurmountable difficulties we have and have also failed to find a solution within the law without going bankrupt? I don't believe so,perhaps they just try harder or are more willing to put the sport first. Worth a try,don't you think?

Sparks

gouda wrote:

Your later remarks only confirm what I have found to be the case,clubs pretend to be serious about promoting the sport but are reluctant to do so for a variety of reasons.

Hold on there now a moment gouda - I can't speak for every club, but I can point to some examples like RRPC and Wilkinstown and DURC who have promoted the sport above and beyond what you could reasonably expect!

My problem is that clubs will not often admit this is so and have comprehensively failed to provide a solution to the difficulties which arise.

I dunno - I could point to RRPC who've spent five years working on getting a new range and now have a range in the pipeline that will be perhaps the best in the country, its only limitation being that it can't cater for calibres higher than smallbore. I could point to DURC and UCDRC who haul in hundreds of students into shooting every year (varying between 300 and 800 depending on the year). Though there's a high turnover, both clubs will produce from 10 to 30 shooters coming out the far end of college every year who are not only interested in the sport but trained and competitive. But there's no mechanism there to catch them - but that's down to the NTSA to fix, not DURC or UCDRC. And there's Wilkinstown, which has the best Junior programme in the country and which has achieved some of the best air rifle results we've ever seen in Ireland. And DURC, UCDRC and Wilkinstown all train Pony Club shooters as well as their own and that brings the Pony Club shooters into our air rifle competitions, with some remarkably high scores in many cases.

I'm sure that there are clubs that for various reasons don't do as well as perhaps they might, in a perfect world, but I'd rather help fix the problems if possible than to write them off.

If ranges are dwindling,perhaps you could name the ranges which have closed?

The air rifle range in Delgany is closed and gone, Fassaroe was closed for quite some time - the past two years if memory serves. The CACD club seem to have vanished - they had folks from Limerick, Waterford, Tralee, Galway, Donegal and so on, I've not heard from Phoenix or Eastern Command in some time... well, you get the idea.

There are ranges that have just closed, basicly. Others have been moved (Fassaroe, DRC), but thankfully others have opened up - MRC for example.

So you travelled 14 miles for a prospective member,congratulations, he is very lucky to have been able to find details of your club. Most clubs will not advertise their existence for some odd reason.

True, we need to advertise contact details more - but that's down to the NGBs as well as the clubs - a single point for someone to go to to get details on the web, for example.

Selfish B"&^%$)*s? Nothing could be further from my mind. Just want clubs and their reps to put their hands up to a catalogue of cock ups regarding promoting the sport and try harder to be inclusive of all shooters,regardless of disciplines.

On a point there - few clubs actually have dedicated PROs. RRPC does, DURC and UCDRC do, Fassaroe do. Don't know about the others. I know that a few years ago, it would have been rather rare.

I don't believe that people who reply to my posts are seriously stating that they are doing all they can.

All they reasonably can and all they possibly can are different things though! I mean, I'd enjoy spending a year doing nothing but working to promote shooting and coaching and so on; but who'd pay for the food on my table then? All our NGBs and clubs work on a volunteer basis, don't forget.

A lot of shooters who post here have experience of shooting abroad,can it really be possible that other countries have the same seemingly insurmountable difficulties we have and have also failed to find a solution within the law without going bankrupt? I don't believe so,perhaps they just try harder or are more willing to put the sport first. Worth a try,don't you think?

As you may have seen in the states, even they have problems with competitive shooting. And so do Germany, the UK, actually pretty much everywhere. Some places have more money - but they also have more people. In the UK, for example, until you make it onto the GBTSF team, you have pretty much no state funding so not only do you have to train and progress, you also have to find a way to pay for it. And the GBTSF has had its budget cut so it's not as able to do the things it used to, like a funded Junior squad. In the US, you're in the USAMU or you're self-funded. Ireland's got similar problems, just with fewer people and less money. What we need is more money put into the sport, more people putting time into it - but those are hard to find and hard to arrange. We're trying though. Your experiences show we're not there yet, but we are moving in the right direction.

Gouda, do you run or help run a club or an NGB?

gouda

Sparks wrote:

Hold on there now a moment gouda - I can't speak for every club, but I can point to some examples like RRPC and Wilkinstown and DURC who have promoted the sport above and beyond what you could reasonably expect!


I dunno - I could point to RRPC who've spent five years working on getting a new range and now have a range in the pipeline that will be perhaps the best in the country, its only limitation being that it can't cater for calibres higher than smallbore. I could point to DURC and UCDRC who haul in hundreds of students into shooting every year (varying between 300 and 800 depending on the year). Though there's a high turnover, both clubs will produce from 10 to 30 shooters coming out the far end of college every year who are not only interested in the sport but trained and competitive. But there's no mechanism there to catch them - but that's down to the NTSA to fix, not DURC or UCDRC. And there's Wilkinstown, which has the best Junior programme in the country and which has achieved some of the best air rifle results we've ever seen in Ireland. And DURC, UCDRC and Wilkinstown all train Pony Club shooters as well as their own and that brings the Pony Club shooters into our air rifle competitions, with some remarkably high scores in many cases.

I'm sure that there are clubs that for various reasons don't do as well as perhaps they might, in a perfect world, but I'd rather help fix the problems if possible than to write them off.


The air rifle range in Delgany is closed and gone, Fassaroe was closed for quite some time - the past two years if memory serves. The CACD club seem to have vanished - they had folks from Limerick, Waterford, Tralee, Galway, Donegal and so on, I've not heard from Phoenix or Eastern Command in some time... well, you get the idea.

There are ranges that have just closed, basicly. Others have been moved (Fassaroe, DRC), but thankfully others have opened up - MRC for example.


True, we need to advertise contact details more - but that's down to the NGBs as well as the clubs - a single point for someone to go to to get details on the web, for example.


On a point there - few clubs actually have dedicated PROs. RRPC does, DURC and UCDRC do, Fassaroe do. Don't know about the others. I know that a few years ago, it would have been rather rare.


All they reasonably can and all they possibly can are different things though! I mean, I'd enjoy spending a year doing nothing but working to promote shooting and coaching and so on; but who'd pay for the food on my table then? All our NGBs and clubs work on a volunteer basis, don't forget.


As you may have seen in the states, even they have problems with competitive shooting. And so do Germany, the UK, actually pretty much everywhere. Some places have more money - but they also have more people. In the UK, for example, until you make it onto the GBTSF team, you have pretty much no state funding so not only do you have to train and progress, you also have to find a way to pay for it. And the GBTSF has had its budget cut so it's not as able to do the things it used to, like a funded Junior squad. In the US, you're in the USAMU or you're self-funded. Ireland's got similar problems, just with fewer people and less money. What we need is more money put into the sport, more people putting time into it - but those are hard to find and hard to arrange. We're trying though. Your experiences show we're not there yet, but we are moving in the right direction.

Sparks wrote:

Gouda, do you run or help run a club or an NGB?

Yes. Regarding the other points you make,I will take them on board. I just find it frustrating that so many whinge and so few try to improve things. The only way to move forward is to keep trying to build on what is there and this is hard to do if people are excluded,money is necessary for some things but it does not cost a lot to talk to people and try to enlist their help. Clubs need ranges and farmers have land, no reason why both can't work together. Some members do vermin control,some help with whatever skills they have. Possible result, range facilities for club at reasonable cost or free. This won't work everywhere but until it has been tried and failed it should not be dismissed as unworkable. Lots of landowners have disused sand or gravel pits which could make ideal outdoor ranges with a little work. That is just one suggestion. I know of a small group who regularly find land to shoot on at no cost using this method. It could work in a club situation. Perhaps it has already been done,if so,where? If not,why not? Perhaps a thread should be started for people to put forward ideas on how more ranges could be started?

rrpc

gouda wrote:

Yes. Regarding the other points you make,I will take them on board. I just find it frustrating that so many whinge and so few try to improve things. The only way to move forward is to keep trying to build on what is there and this is hard to do if people are excluded,money is necessary for some things but it does not cost a lot to talk to people and try to enlist their help. Clubs need ranges and farmers have land, no reason why both can't work together. Some members do vermin control,some help with whatever skills they have. Possible result, range facilities for club at reasonable cost or free. This won't work everywhere but until it has been tried and failed it should not be dismissed as unworkable. Lots of landowners have disused sand or gravel pits which could make ideal outdoor ranges with a little work. That is just one suggestion. I know of a small group who regularly find land to shoot on at no cost using this method. It could work in a club situation. Perhaps it has already been done,if so,where? If not,why not? Perhaps a thread should be started for people to put forward ideas on how more ranges could be started?

The difficulty with that scenario, is that a club in such a situation has no security of tenure. DRC has has three ranges in six years and each time they moved on, they have left behind considerable sums of money in fixed firing points. Their range in Blessington had just had €3000 spentg on it when they were effectively evicted. The next one had much the same spent on it and that was gone also within two years. The current one has them shooting out of a 40' container, which is extremely tight and difficult to shoot from, but the club are reluctant to spend money after the debacle of the previous two ranges, and you can't blame them for that. With seven active members, the burden is extremely high.

Rathdrum is lucky in that we had a range that was built in 1963, but when you look at what was invested at that time they were relatively large amounts of money for the time at £100 per member. This would probably be at least €5000 per head in todays money. Ask yourself, would you be willing to part with that kind of cash today?

The new range, has been estimated by our architect to cost in the region of €750,000 if being built by a contractor. The site alone will cost €130,000.

Who has that kind of money to invest in a range today?

gouda

rrpc wrote:

The difficulty with that scenario, is that a club in such a situation has no security of tenure. DRC has has three ranges in six years and each time they moved on, they have left behind considerable sums of money in fixed firing points. Their range in Blessington had just had €3000 spentg on it when they were effectively evicted. The next one had much the same spent on it and that was gone also within two years. The current one has them shooting out of a 40' container, which is extremely tight and difficult to shoot from, but the club are reluctant to spend money after the debacle of the previous two ranges, and you can't blame them for that. With seven active members, the burden is extremely high.

Rathdrum is lucky in that we had a range that was built in 1963, but when you look at what was invested at that time they were relatively large amounts of money for the time at £100 per member. This would probably be at least €5000 per head in todays money. Ask yourself, would you be willing to part with that kind of cash today?

The new range, has been estimated by our architect to cost in the region of €750,000 if being built by a contractor. The site alone will cost €130,000.

Who has that kind of money to invest in a range today?

Perhaps if clubs got together (all disciplines) and pooled resources to build a large range catering for all disciplines it could work. Some UK clubs share facilities and it works pretty well. As I have said in previous posts,people need to put their thinking caps on and if one idea fails try something different. Clubs seem to be experiencing the same difficulties over and over again so new ideas are needed and a different approach, rather than continually banging their heads off the same wall time and time again. Go through the posts again,full of doom and gloom and this is continually the situation with shooting. Perhaps we are all only involved in shooting because we otherwise have a great life but need to have something to whinge about so we take up shooting,guaranteed to provide a plethora of whinging opportunities for all concerned. Think what a disaster it would be if everything on our wish lists was available,no more worrying about where to shoot,no expensive clubs,all calibres available,no anti shooting lobby,Government actively supporting shooting etc. What a nightmare! We have pistols back,large calibres back,and to look at some of the posts relating to these issues you would be forgiven for thinking that it was the opposite of what people struggled over a long number of years to achieve. We need to do a little soul searching and find out exactly what we are trying to achieve long term. If it's to improve our own club facilities to the exclusion of other clubs/disciplines it is possibly doomed to failure. However if we are prepared to combine and work to improve facilities for all clubs/disciplines we would possibly be more likely to succeed. Just my few cents worth.

Sparks

gouda wrote:

Perhaps if clubs got together (all disciplines) and pooled resources to build a large range catering for all disciplines it could work. Some UK clubs share facilities and it works pretty well.

But where would you put it? And you'd be left with a single large range that some people have long distances to travel to get to. Personally, I'd rather see a lot more smaller ranges scattered all over the greater Dublin area to start with (purely because that's where the greatest population density is, so a single range can reach more people). Right now we have a handful of small ranges in that general area - WTSC, Fingal, DRC, BRC, RRPC, soon Fassaroe again - that are open to the general public (the college clubs are prohibited from having non-students or non-alumni as members by the colleges). RRPC's new range will probably become the largest range in Wicklow; the range that WTSC are working on for Kells would become the largest one in Meath; then you'd need a third to cover the area just west of the city (but before you run into the catchment area for MRC) and then we'd have three major shooting centres within an hour's drive of everyone in the city. That third one could be Abbotstown, but that should really be the NGB's job.

As I have said in previous posts,people need to put their thinking caps on and if one idea fails try something different. Clubs seem to be experiencing the same difficulties over and over again so new ideas are needed and a different approach, rather than continually banging their heads off the same wall time and time again.

First off though, you'd need a list of the problems themselves and the solutions that have been tried and which failed and why and whether they failed because of the solution or the circumstances. And I've never seen one of those, just people who have been banging their head for so long that they've taken on a defeatist or isolationist attitude as a result. And that's not their fault - from having done it myself, I know that it's a soul-destroying thing. But it does mean they need to take a break and let someone else get a sore forehead for a while.

Go through the posts again,full of doom and gloom and this is continually the situation with shooting. Perhaps we are all only involved in shooting because we otherwise have a great life but need to have something to whinge about so we take up shooting,guaranteed to provide a plethora of whinging opportunities for all concerned.

*hehehehhe*

Think what a disaster it would be if everything on our wish lists was available,no more worrying about where to shoot,no expensive clubs,all calibres available,no anti shooting lobby,Government actively supporting shooting etc. What a nightmare!

Er, just to point out - there really isn't any anti-shooting lobby in Ireland to speak of. Yes, technically IANSA has a presence but it's mostly on paper and aimed at military assault weapons rather than hunting or sport shooting; and yes, the anti-blood sports lobby catches shooting in it's collateral damage, but they aren't exactly the Red Menace; but a group who have devoted themselves to eliminating shooting, like the GCN in the UK? Haven't seen them yet.

And there are inexpensive clubs; and the Governement isn't a single monolithic group - some parts support shooting, some don't; some TDs shoot, others don't. The trick isn't "beating" the Gov'mint... it's getting the majority of those who count in there to see your side of things and be willing to work with you. And yes, there's a poor history there, but if we're being honest here then we have to admit that that's not all their fault.

The ranges are the main problem for us at the moment, accompanied by the under-16s issue and the resolution of the pistols issue (which isn't, at least to my mind, settled until this Criminal Justice Bill thing is laid to rest).

We need to do a little soul searching and find out exactly what we are trying to achieve long term.

Yes!

If it's to improve our own club facilities to the exclusion of other clubs/disciplines it is possibly doomed to failure. However if we are prepared to combine and work to improve facilities for all clubs/disciplines we would possibly be more likely to succeed. Just my few cents worth.

I would point out though, that while inter-club cooperation is something we need, we also need inter-club rivalry. I mean, the most successful competition from an attendance point of view for the colleges is the intervarsity, because there it's the alma mater versus the old enemy and pride is on the line. And you'd be surprised how motivating that can be if harnessed - I've seen kids show up at the gym for four hours a week, and technical training for six hours a week, and then go off and train on their own for a few more hours, and all on top of forty-hour weeks of lectures and labs, and then studytime shoved in around that somehow, all to beat UCD's team (and the fact that they did exceptionally well in the Nationals that year didn't hurt either).

And yes, there are a handful of people now who do that as adults for to represent their country; but I could count them off on my fingers and still type afterwards.

A little rivalry isn't a bad thing. (so long as it remains friendly rivalry, of course - if our kids started planning on how to slip laxatives into the UCD team's coffee, we'd know we were after crossing that line )

And of course, once we get the pistols question laid to rest, we'll see a lot more ranges popping up because air and .22 pistol don't need outdoor facilities and are easier to set up. In fact, we should be working on the airgun ranges already, really, because an air rifle range and an air pistol range are virtually identical. Problem is the lack of exposure of the sport means that there's the whole "fear of the unknown" element to overcome when seeking facilities. A few large shooting centres, well publicised (like RRPC) could help with that enormously. Smaller satellite clubs might start up where they exist without facilities for a short time, their members shooting at the larger parent club, while they sort out a room somewhere to put up some target changers. That's happened before quite a bit in the UK.

rrpc

gouda wrote:

Perhaps if clubs got together (all disciplines) and pooled resources to build a large range catering for all disciplines it could work.

That may be possible, but it would be prohibitively expensive. The new ranges in Bisley cost in the region of £6 million, and that just caters for smallbore. I don't know what the shotgun ranges cost, but that was a bit of a cock-up in that the first 100 firing points on century range are out of bounds when the shotgun range is being used. If we were to build something on that scale here to include shotgun, we would need at least €10 million, and we would also need land that would get planning permission, which would also be extremely expensive. Is it likely, that we can get that kind of money together from the shooting community, or even 30% of it to get lottery funding?

Some UK clubs share facilities and it works pretty well.

And many UK shooters complain about the high cost of using Bisley. Now that's whingeing

As I have said in previous posts, people need to put their thinking caps on and if one idea fails try something different. Clubs seem to be experiencing the same difficulties over and over again so new ideas are needed and a different approach, rather than continually banging their heads off the same wall time and time again.

Well lets have a few then, this is a forum after all. What solutions do you suggest to overcome the high cost of entry into the sport for example?

We have pistols back,large calibres back,

For the moment only. Forgive my pessimism/cynicism, but we still have the sword of damocles of the CJB 2004 hanging over our heads which could put into law what has been reality since 1972

and to look at some of the posts relating to these issues you would be forgiven for thinking that it was the opposite of what people struggled over a long number of years to achieve.

And I remember 1972, and I remember the numerous representations/meetings that went on over the years to try and reverse 1972 which met with stony silence or outright rebuff, and I wonder has anything really changed or is it just another government legal cock-up that will be rectified ASAP and restore the status quo ante.

We need to do a little soul searching and find out exactly what we are trying to achieve long term. If it's to improve our own club facilities to the exclusion of other clubs/disciplines it is possibly doomed to failure.

How does improving one clubs facilities exclude another from doing the same thing?. In fact, the opposite could be true. In the case of Rathdrum, I know for a fact that if we had included a shotgun or fullbore range, we would have been refused planning permission.

However if we are prepared to combine and work to improve facilities for all clubs/disciplines we would possibly be more likely to succeed. Just my few cents worth.

You're probably right. However, that is what NGB's are for as they can take a global view, liaise with each other and will have more direct access to government funding without which no real development can take place.