Canadian Airgun Forum

Hello All,

I'm an executive at a smaller Rod and Gun Club (http://www.tdrgc.com) located between Kitchener and London ON and would like to gauge if you guys and girls field target shooters think there would be a demand for a field target range in my area.

Our club has a 30 acre property in a beautiful area and is heavily family oriented. roughly 25% of our memberships (200+) is a family membership.
We organize an annual kids fishing derby and every Summer we have weekly drop in family nights where we have our archery equipment and pellet guns out and we are having a fun night for the whole family.

With the ongoing gun bans and restrictions on firearms we are exploring other activities that we could offer at our club that might be less likely to be affected by future gun grabber bans and would be a nice addition of activities for our members so I was thinking of field target shooting as I like air rifles a lot myself : )

Looking on the Cafta website it appears that there are no field target clubs in Ontario West of Hamilton, is this correct? Or are there clubs that have a field target range but are not affiliated with Cafta?

So a few initial questions;
Of the couple field target clubs that are located in Ontario, how many members do they roughly have?
How many targets are needed for a decent setup?
What would be the expected startup cost for targets etc. to get going?

I see a lot of very fancy air rifles on the Cafta website and don't think our members will be running out to the store to upgrade their break barrel springers etc. so I assume we need to start at a lower level FT shooting to get people at our club interested in FT shooting before we would get to a level that is seen on the Cafta website. What is your take on this?

I think there will be many more questions popping up in the future but enough for now and I hope you will take some time to share your thoughts.

Thanks,

Bert

Hi Bert.
Great to see your questions and your interest in starting FT in your club.
I am not on the CAFTA board, but I am the match director for the FT matches in Port Colborne.
You may have seen some of my posts where I mention that I started shooting FT with a $130 break barrel rifle from Princess Auto ( I spent another $20 to upgrade the spring) so you definitely can start simply.
We usually run 60 shot matches with 2 shots per target so that means 30 targets. You certainly could start with fewer.
Many of our members have personal supplies of targets and at Port Colborne we rely ( very gratefully) on a few very dedicated members to bring their targets to each match.
I would very much like to talk to you more about how we can help to get you started and get more people into this sport.
Rob27
(Otherwise known as Rob Wright)

Hi Rob,

Thank you for your reply and your offer to help get us started.
One of our members has already reached out to Tim from Cafta a couple days ago I think for some more information so we'll see how that goes first.

30 targets is a substantial investment for our club if we don't know how well FT shooting will pan out for the club.
We have some members at our club who have access to metal laser cutters and I am a pretty handy guy so perhaps we can build some targets ourselves to keep the cost down if I can find a good design for the drop down system.

I have a Diana 34 in 177 so that should get me started and if I like it a lot I would not be opposed investing in a pretty decent pcp rifle but have no idea about others at the club.

Do you know what Cafta does to promote the FT sport and to get more clubs interested?
With the current cost of factory ammo and even reloading components for firearms I can see that shooting airguns might pick up in the near future.

Hi Bert
You do not need to do this all on your own! Google tells me that you are 1.5 to 2 hours away from me and less than that for a few of our regular shooters.
I am sure that a few of us would be willing to come out, bring some targets, and help you to run a couple matches (or perhaps not call it a "match" but an "introduction to Field Target ").
My goal would be to have another great club that we can visit to shoot FT matches and to have a few of your members get so excited about FT that they travel the other direction down the highway and come to some other matches.
More shooters plus more places to shoot = more fun!

Just bumping this for a bit more exposure.

Any Field Target shooters or people interested in FT here from this neck of the woods?

I'm in Baden. I'd come out to the matches.

My wife and I recently moved to London and would definitely be interested in some more casual matches. Can’t say we have any FT experience or fancy rifles… yet

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The rifles used at matches cover the whole range from inexpensive to higher end. Come out and try it, you'll have fun. Shooters compete in different categories, WFTF, Open and Hunter and these are broken down further into piston and pcp classes. You'll find someplace where you feel comfortable

Robg and Porkinator177, I will keep you posted in case we go ahead with the FT development at the club.

Most likely it will at least start off a bit more informal as FT would be completely new to our club.
Also pretty much everything (for instance 3D archery shoots, Trap tournaments etc.) is a bit more laid back and informal at our club lol.
We have a great group of people who all want to have fun and improve themselves but there is not a very competitive vibe.

Thanks guys, I hope more FT shooters or people interested from this area will add their name to this thread!

I would be happy to have another place to shoot , meet some new people and enjoy FT with.

I am from Guelph, you are closer to me than Port Colborne. Rob G is a target expert. He sure can help you on the target situation.

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