# Lapeer County Sportsmen's Club



## Hamilton Reef (Jan 20, 2000)

Gun club reloaded
After ups and downs, Lapeer club on target with varied programs, classes

http://www.mlive.com/outdoors/fljournal/index.ssf?/base/sports-1/114675242756450.xml&coll=5

Thursday, May 04, 2006 By Elizabeth Shaw [email protected]  810.766.6311

ATTICA TWP. - It began 52 years ago as a 53-acre dream with a $500 promise. 

Today, the Lapeer County Sportsmen's Club is 250 members strong and boasts one of the area's most versatile and varied sporting programs - offering shotgun, rifle, handgun, muzzleloading and archery in venues including cowboy action shooting, bowling pin shoots, skeet, trap and sporting clays. The private club also offers year-round hunter safety and concealed weapons classes for the general public and hosts a variety of public events and fundraisers. 

"Quite frankly, we wouldn't be the club we are if we didn't offer so many different things to so many different people," said Vice President Joe Landry. 

"There's a lot of friendly rivalry, and sometimes it's tough making sure everybody gets their fair share. But most of us do more than one thing, so we're pretty good about getting along," agreed Bill Murphy, who heads the club's shotgun committee. "We are a multivenue club, and we know we need every one of them to survive." 

But it wasn't always such. Over the past half-century, the private club has seen its share of ups and downs and changed hats many times, from its birth as a simple rifle club to near-death in the 1980s. 

"We've got good leadership again and a more motivated membership willing to put in the volunteer-work effort," said Murphy. "We've done a lot of improvements in the last three to five years, but there's a lot more we want to do. We may get there more slowly than the big clubs open to the public that generate higher revenue. But we're getting there." 

Recent improvements include a new pistol range and building, separate storage facilities for each sporting venue and an 8-foot-high chain-link fence around the perimeter. The original clubhouse has been completely remodeled to house meeting and classrooms, storage facilities and a maintenance garage. 

The club is adding automated throwers and wheelchair-accessible stands on the sporting clay range, and is working with the archery group to buy new targets for its 3-D range. A beer and wine license is in the works, and in a few years they hope to offer a casual bar and dining area similar to many country clubs, although no one who's been served in the bar will be allowed on the range. 

It all began back in 1947, when Bob Baird was among scores of young Lapeer County men returning home from World War II. Many brought with them a hard-earned skill and affection for the rifles they had carried 

For the next several years, the Lapeer County Rifle Club got together once a week at the local armory, which set aside space for the men to shoot their .22 rifles on a 50-foot indoor range.

"We followed them from building to building as they changed locations over the years. But by about 1954, the armory didn't want to be bothered with us anymore so we were pretty much looking for our own place to stay," said Baird, 80, a retired Mott Community College math teacher. 

They finally found a 53-acre parcel of deeply wooded, gently rolling land in the remote heart of rural Attica Township between Lapeer and Imlay City. 

The problem was the club didn't have any funds of its own. So Baird volunteered to buy it himself for $2,300. 

"The agreement was I'd buy the land and sell it to them on time if they'd raise $500 to put a clubhouse on it," said Baird. "Our only expense was the materials. There were 25 or 30 of us, none more than 15 miles from Lapeer, and we put the building up ourselves." 

At first, the club consisted only of an indoor rifle range, with members occasionally using the rest as a private hunting preserve. 

Gradually, as ex-military men gave way to bird hunters, the riflemen moved over and shotgunning "became the tail that wagged the dog," said Baird. 

Archery came on board in the early 1960s, its popularity quickly transforming the former gun club into a general sportsmen's club. 

Over the years, archery, trap, skeet and sporting clays all took their turn as the club's main lifeblood as sporting trends came and went. 

By the late 1980s, the club had changed once again. But this time, not for the better. Revenues were down and membership was dropping away from the neglected grounds and rundown clubhouse. 

"It was in bad shape. For a while they even ran a bingo out there to raise funds, but it didn't work out very well," said Baird. "There was a good deal of problems over money and the use of the club. With all the competing interests, a lot of the problem was simply trying to figure out who was going to be in charge."

Murphy put it even more bluntly: 

"When I first came out here, it was a rundown dump," he said. "The financial troubles were so bad they sold off some of the machinery to keep it going." 

Finally, new leadership stepped up and got the organization back on track. 

"Some of us threw in money to pay off some debts. We owed one guy $1,500 just for fuel oil to keep the place warm," said Baird. 

In the past five years, the club has been on a new roll, with volunteerism high and a waiting list for new memberships. The monthly calendar is filled with a careful balance of regularly scheduled venues and free time for individual use. 

"The challenge nowadays is (that) hunting is getting to be a sport of older people because of the cost, and just the way society is changing," said Murphy. "Our biggest goal now is to promote the club more to women and younger people." 

"It's a real jewel, with a lot of friendly give and take between all the different groups," said Landry. "Where else can you go to find all this?"


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