McHenry Sportsman’s Club Newsletter (December 20, 2000)
Dear Members and Families:
Here we are again, at the end of another year.
It seems like we just finished composing last year’s newsletter.
When everyone was thinking about the year/2000 computer problem, and whether or not the lights would be on in the morning.
Well, the lights were on, and there were very few computer related problems relating to “Y2K”.
Having some knowledge of the extent of the year/2000 computer problem, and just what could have happened,
I can say with authority that thousands on men and women who gave up their personal lives in 1999 and before to address the problem did a great job.
If you are one of those who took part in this activity, thank you very much.
Now with the year 2000 coming to a close, we do not even think of the suspense of last year.
Things really do move fast these days.
Last year at a glance:
General Improvements at McHenry Sportsmen’s Club:
Switching our scope to the very local scene, year/2000 offered many challenges and accomplishments for your club.
As one can remember, this time last year we had a real serious personnel problem.
Both in costs and availability of willing and able teenagers to operate our equipment and make sure the shooting experience was enjoyable.
Additionally, we were in transition from using hand set trap machines to using fully automatic machines.
The club, except on rare occasion no longer has problems these areas.
We have a small group of good teenagers to work for us, and the full use of automatic trap machines have, with little exception, removed these issues.
Many improvements were made to our facility.
Some come to mind, such as the clubhouse was painted.
Minor repairs were made to the parking lot.
The clubhouse roof was fixed.
The roofs and floors in all five traphouses were either repaired or replaced.
The clubhouse and all five trap fields were rewired.The club now has four fully automatic trap
machines and we now know how to make them perform properly.
The Jackrabbit program:
McHenry once again took part in the Jackrabbit Shoot, with the same results as last year, being beaten by Woodstock by a couple of targets.
Hopefully, three times will be the charm and we will beat Woodstock this year.
The ATA Registered Shoot program:
We hosted four ATA registered shoots.
Two were in bad weather and two were picture perfect.
Ken Borucki, Tom Guerra, Tad Horton and Chris Bussan all shot one hundred straight during our registered Shoot program this year.
The 2000 Family Picnic:
The 2000 McHenry family picnic was every bit as good as last years and then some.
Again, special thanks to Rich and Chris Weeks, and many others who organized and provided for this event.
We had a raffle this year, which everyone seemed to enjoy.
Most of the money raised by the ticket sales was used to purchase what ever prizes which were not donated.
The remaining money was squirreled away in our fund raising account.
The shooting portion, as last year, was conducted with Belt Buckles for prizes instead of trophies.
It appeared last year the shooters were happy with the prizes, so we repeated it this year.
That helped make the 2000 picnic a success.
The following shooters took home prizes from the picnic shoot:
Sixteen yard winners were: Dirk Aissen, George Strode, Chuck Catanzaro and Brad Lewis
Mike Ghisselli won the long yardage handicap while John Lindquist won the short yardage.
Doubles winners were: Dave Nicholson, Tim Kraus and Al Kasovic
Lyle (Denny) Deniston was the High veteran.
Judy Wegner was the High Lady.
The Louis Pitzen handicap was won by Dirk Aissen.
High Overall Champion was Dave Nicholson.
The Club Champion was Dirk Aissen.
We want to thank all who participated in the Picnic Shoot.
New Members:
In 2000 we gained many new members and lost some of our valued
members.
We want to welcome our new members to our club.
Some are new shooters while others have been shooting for years.
Please make them welcome at the club.
As for the few we lost, some moved away while others are shooting at other clubs.
We wish them well and hope to see them soon, either at McHenry or at other clubs.
Shotgun raffle:
Because of the success of a previous raffle, another raffle was initiated this year.
A Browning BT99 was purchased at the ATA Grand American Handicap Shoot last summer.
Our goal is to generate one thousand dollars to be placed in our fund raising account.
This means we have to sell between one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty tickets
(depending on how many are sold three for fifty dollars versus individually at twenty dollars each).
To date the raffle has generated enough money to pay for the prizes and about one hundred and fifty dollars.
We are hoping the money will be raised sometime during the Jackrabbit season so we can conduct the drawing.
We do have our work cut out for us.
Someone will win the gun.
When buying a raffle ticket, remember the purpose is two fold.
One being a chance to win the gun, the second, and important reason is you are helping your club raise money for costs
that would not justify or make raising fees to pay for undesirable, but are still very important to the club.
We are enclosing an attachment which may be used to purchase raffle tickets in the event that you may be interested in doing so.
Year/2001 goals:
Members actually shooting:
This was on our list last year.
Maybe when we look at it again we may realize the logic here.
You joined the club, and unless you joined simply to support the club, (and there are some who have), you should come out and shoot.
We want you to shoot.
We like you to shoot.
You really want to shoot.
It is fun to shoot.
So why not shoot?
We hope if you are not shooting at McHenry, you are shooting somewhere.
Better to shoot at McHenry.
If you do not, please, consider spending an afternoon or two with your friends shooting, hopefully at McHenry.
For the ones that do shoot, thank you for coming and good shooting to everyone.
Membership enrichment:
Continue to maintain our membership and help introduce more people to trapshooting.
Encourage shooters to continue to shoot and improve their ability with their loved sport.
We did host an Instructional Shoot with some high school students this year.
In 2001, we plan to do the same and possibly work with some Boy Scout troops.
The type of shooting done at McHenry is clean fun, and it is our duty to make sure our sport enjoys new participants, whether they join our club or not.
Young people may not go out and invest in time, equipment, membership dues and other expenses right away, but some time in their lives, they may want to do so.
Help give then a favorable experience and memory.
Monthly membership meetings:
The club conducts open membership meetings on the first Thursday of each month at 8:00 PM.
These meetings are provided as a means to steer the operation of the club.
Issues such as facility improvements, shooting events, and a complete accounting of all money raised and how it was spent are discussed openly.
We would like to see more members present at these meetings.
The meeting is a much better place to discuss issues, contribute your thoughts on the club’s operations and air out possible discontents.
Currently, the meeting is conducted with around ten members present.
This makes it difficult for those ten members to determine exactly what the majority of the members want out of their club.
If you would like to attend, we want you to do and would be grateful if you did.
Attend.
Please feel welcome to attend.
If you have ideas, suggestions or other comments and cannot attend, please write then down and give them to a club officer.
They will be opened and discussed during the meeting.
Counter help:
This has been a problem for a long time.
People seem to be busier and busier all the time.
We have attempted to address our counter help problems in many ways.
We know if people get called, they will usually come out and do it.
It does seem that even setting up a schedule and calling people appears to be problematic.
People forget when it is their turn, or people get incorrectly scheduled (which results in nobody one day and two people on another day).
The end result is the same group of people end up doing it on demand.
Perhaps it is best to hire someone to run the counter for us, perhaps have the trap help rotate through the position.
The membership has voted to allow us to experiment with hiring someone to run the counter, but has not made financial provisions to do this yet.
The club has experimented with dedicated counter help this by having our trap help run the counter (on occasion when enough trap help was present), which appears to have worked very well.
So, look to see the counter problem resolved during the next several months.
Building and Grounds:
We want to continue maintaining the clubhouse and our grounds.
There are many things which need to be done.
For one thing, obtaining a snow thrower would be nice.
If anyone knows anyone wanting to get rid of one (moving to Arizona ?), please let us know.
Something two stage in the seven to ten horsepower range would be ideal.
I know this is not a good time, but maybe someone is sick and tired of dealing with snow and is considering contracting the work out, and may want to sell (or donate) their snow thrower.
I for one am getting too old to shovel out trap fields before I shoot.
There are many other things which need to be done.
The board will discuss in a near future meeting what is to be done in 2001, so there is currently nothing to report on the matter in this newsletter.
Trap Machines… the next step:
After months of hard learning and work, we managed to get the automatic trap machines to work, and actually work real good.
On occasion they may throw targets that we do not really like to shoot at, but that is not a malfunction, it is a maladjustment.
Hand set machines have the same issues.
Sometimes the machines do not get adjusted for wind variations, or worse, on windy days they are adjusted and not readjusted back when things go back to normal.
We have four of these machines, three are operational, while one is a backup.
In a perfect world, these machines would be rotated so each one gets pulled out of service and gone over one by one.
We purchased these machines as a desperate attempt to address the personnel shortage problem.
We projected that the first machine would pay for itself within six months (in personnel savings), the second nine months, the third one year and the fourth two years from the first day.
We continued to maintain the full crew (or what we could muster up) for the first three months because we had to learn how to make the machines work.
We are pleased to report that the first three have already paid for themselves, and the forth will pay for itself within a couple of months.
Remember, the fourth machine is a backup only device.
It would be on rare occasion that all four of these type machines would be used at the same time in four discrete fields.
This is because of their inability to throw doubles.
The problem is these machines are only capable of throwing regulation trap singles targets.
We have no wobble capability, and to shoot doubles, we have to use a hand set machine and it must be operated (“set”) by a member.
This means we need hand set machines in two trap houses.
A member is required to set because the setter must be eighteen years or older to legally set targets in the state of Illinois.
Currently fields one and five have hand set machines normally used for doubles, while the other three have automatic machines.
This spring we want to purchase and install a additional machine capable of throwing ATA regulation singles, doubles and wobble trap.
The machine we are looking at is a PAT trap.
It is expensive, but we did so well on the others that it makes sense to go ahead with the PAT trap.
Many members want to shoot doubles and wobble trap.
McHenry Sportsmen’s Club, for all practical purposes cannot provide enough doubles and has no wobble capability at all.
Do not expect your board to tell you this machine will pay for itself as quick as the others did.
It is being bought for another reason.
It probably will be several years to realize a financial payback.
When we get it and it proves out, we will sell one of the four machines we bought (for the same price we paid for it).
This means we enjoyed the use of a machine for no cost.
Because the PAT trap will be used all the time, it will however logically end up paying for itself (versus using a hand set trap).
The real benefit for you is we will be able to shoot doubles and wobble trap any time we are open.
The PAT trap also has a three round target capacity, (provided we can install it in our traphouse in this configuration), this will reduce setup the time between squads.
Membership and line fees:
The McHenry Sportsman’s Club is a not for profit operation.
The only paid personnel are the Trap Field personnel, consisting mainly of local teenagers.
Actual club operations are currently performed by club members on a voluntary basis.
The club is definitely NOT used as anyone’s career or business.
Unlike normal enterprises, there can be no profits and we are limited in what we can do with revenues generated under this type of organization.
Even if the membership had no objection to generating large sums of money, we may not be in a legal position to retain it.
The objective is to generate the money required to operate, maintain and improve the club. (your board responding to membership comments regarding the club’s past operation).
If in the event too much revenue is generated, it must be allocated to a project or somehow returned to the membership (in the form of services, events, etc)
One way to properly deal with this type of operation is to set fees a little higher than what is requested initially and keep them at that level until it becomes almost financially impossible to continue.
Fees are then adjusted and the cycle continues.
Hopefully, the majority of the membership understands this process.
The McHenry Sportsman’s Club currently has a base membership dues of forty dollars per year and charges its members three dollars to shoot a round of trap.
Other memberships are available at a discounted rate such as senior renewals.
Other shooting events are hosted with fees set in accordance with operating costs.
I really do not know how long these fees have been in effect, at least five years.
Others have mentioned much longer.
Last year the club did increase the non-member rate by one dollar.
This year the membership (during a vote) authorized the board to review and revise the fees charged at the McHenry Sportsmen’s club.
This action was required to address numerous requests made by the membership for upgrades as well as a means to deal with certain cost increases which were not able to be addressed by other means.
Trap help costs actually went down this year and were not included in any fee increase, to the contrary, the decrease make it possible to delay the adjustments and actually reduce the requirement.
Membership fees:
Effective February 1, 2001, the regular membership fees will be increased from forty dollars a year to fifty dollars per year.
The grace period allows people the option to renew their 2001 membership before February 1 at the old rate.
This increase, (which if everyone renewed after the grace period), amounts to around nine hundred dollars per year and will be used help to cover general non-target related expenses such as utilities, insurance, grounds maintenance equipment and other costs of that nature.
Line fees:
Line fees are scheduled to be changed Saturday January 6, 2001.
The goal is to generate additional revenue to make improvements to the actual shooting facilities and our grounds.In the future we will be reviewing our
current revenue status with the responsibilities associated with operating a successful sportsmen’s club.
Maybe the fees will be lowered, but at this time no promises can be made.
Basically all line fees paid in cash at the counter will be raised by fifty cents.
This means a line of singles trap will now cost three dollars and fifty cents.
The coupon books which contain fifteen paid shoots and a bonus free shoot for forty five dollars will continue to be available for sale at the counter for the same price until the end of January, 2001.
These coupons themselves will be honored until they are all used up.
New coupon books will go on sale starting Saturday February 2001 which will contain ten paid shoots and one bonus free shoot for thirty five dollars.
These books reflect the new line fee with one bonus free shoot coupon.
The money raised from the increase will serve three purposes:
First a small portion will be used to defray the increased cost of targets.
The second usage is to help pay someone to run the counter so the club opens on time and is manned by someone behind the counter on a consistent basis.
Paying someone to run the counter has the potential to sometimes break even when you consider if someone is running the counter they are not shooting.
The third and the lion’s share usage will be to complete the improvements to the club and possibly subsidize the purchase of a PAT trap.
Our line fees were very low.
There are other clubs with even lower fees, but their membership fees are real high, or they are too far away.
McHenry, which has responsibilities to its members feels this action was required to maintain and improve the club’s operation.
As stated previously, our lines fees will be reviewed periodically during membership meetings and adjusted accordingly.
For your information
Membership renewals:
Your 2000 membership expires January 1, 2001.
There is a one month grace period where you can shoot using your 2000 membership for the month of January, 2001.
We have enclosed a pre-printed application for your year 2001 membership.
You may renew now, or later (remember, the dues is scheduled to increase in February 1, 2001).
We would appreciate it if you look over the form and make any corrections that may be necessary and return the form with your dues when you renew.
If you are a senior, you may be entitled to a discount.
Seniors, that is people sixty five years or older may RENEW their memberships for one half the current membership price.
If you have already renewed your membership, you receive a membership verification instead.
Its purpose is to insure the information we have about you and your shooting interests are correct.
Look over the form and make any corrections you feel are appropriate and mail the form back or bring it to the club next time you are in.
This will help us keep our mailing list current so you can receive all kinds of goodies, (like this letter) as well as know the type of shooting activities you are interested in.
Upcoming Events
2001 McHenry ATA Registered Shoot Schedule:
| Date | Information |
| May 20, 2001 |
| July 10, 2002 | (Belt Buckle Shoot) |
| Auguse 5, 2002 |
2001 Jackrabbit Schedule:
The JACKRABBIT Shoot is upon us.
Everyone can come out and have a lot of fun shooting this event.
If you have not participated because you feel that you are not as good of a shooter as you think you have to be,
and are afraid you may hurt the club’s chances of winning, this is the farthest thing from the truth.
The actual “team” which the scores are used are the top five shooters from each club.
If you shoot good and make the team, then you help the club.
If you have a bad day, well, your score does not get used, (unless your bad day is one of the top five for your club).
You never know what kind of score is going to win at the Jackrabbit Shoot.
Yes, we know it is very cold this year, but remember:, what does not kill you makes you stronger.
| Date | Hosting Club | Date | Hosting CLub |
| January 7, 2001 | Northbrook | February 11, 2001 | Woodstock (at Mchenry) |
| January 14, 2001 | Glenridge | February 18, 2001 | St. Charles |
| January 21, 2001 | Woodstock (at St. Charles) | February 25, 2001 | Northbrook |
| January 28, 2001 | St. Charles | March 4, 2001 | Glenridge |
| February 4, 2001 | McHenry | March 11, 2001 | McHenry |
GOOD SHOOTING TO ALL
Sincerely,
Tom Carneal, Club Treasurer