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All across America, coast to coast and border to border, gun clubs offer RV sites to their shooters, ranging from primitive to full hookups. Although these campgrounds can fill to overflowing on tournament days, during most of the month they normally sit vacant. And since many of these facilities are located in areas of extreme beauty and historic significance, they remain an untapped resource for the traveling sportsman and his entire family.

The shotgunner does not need to be of competitive caliber to take advantage of these camping opportunities. Gun clubs are businesses, and as such, are always looking for new faces, and will welcome customers at any level of personal skill. For those who participate in their shotgunning games of trap, skeet or sporting clays, camping fees can vary from free to very reasonable.

For many years I have pulled a fifth-wheel, dubbed Dream Chaser, into gun clubs all across the nation, on a nearly full-time basis. My main purpose for this activity is to gain material for columns in shotgunning publications, but along the way, I've enjoyed camping in some of the most picturesque settings imaginable. Barren deserts, tropical swampland, snow-capped mountains and rolling grasslands have all been a part of the landscapes from my gun club campgrounds.

A good example of these multiple-purpose facilities would be the Double Adobe Campground/Gun Club in southern Arizona. Full hookups are available there, with trap and sporting clays shot on a regular basis. The historic haunts of Geronimo and Cochise are all around this high-desert location, with the Wild West towns of Tombstone and Bisbee only a few miles away.

Admittedly full hookups are the exception at gun club campgrounds. More often electricity alone is provided. Sometimes water is also available, either at each site or centrally located. Though few clubs have dump stations for their campers, members there can usually direct you to one in the immediate vicinity.

Solitude, however more than makes up for a lack of frills at these shooting club campgrounds. As mentioned earlier, many of these facilities sit in the midst of wild, beautiful terrain, and once the shooting ends and the members depart, a blanket of tranquillity falls upon the entire area. Often you will be the only camper on the property, and a sense of true wilderness will envelop you along with the shadows.

Wildlife, too, can be an added atu-action while camping at a gun club. Nor do these creatures always wait for the shooting to stop to make their appearance. Once, while my wife and I were camping at the Cheyenne Trap & Skeet Club in Wyoming, antelope had to be shooed from the grounds before shooting could continue. Pronghorns are almost this bold at the Prescott Gun Club in Arizona as well, and at the Remington Gun Club in Arkansas, deer can cause the same delay.

This past summer, while my wife and I were using an RV hookup at the Fairbanks Trap Club in Alaska, our breakfast was interrupted by two huge moose that wandered right by the clubhouse. And during our stay at the Okefenokee Sporting Clays in Georgia, owner Roni Murray captured a small but ferocious alligator and brought it to Dream Chaser for Donna and me to hold and photograph. I wouldn't have wanted to hold the big one, however, that watched us from a pond bank at Florida's Polk County Skeet & Trap Club. It being there, though, added a decided touch of adventure to the use of their campground.

The sights and sounds of nightfall can be a special treat at these isolated gun clubs. Sometimes the calling of quail or the crow ing of pheasants can be heard as broods are gathered for a night's rest. Overhead, ducks and geese often silhouette against a darkening sky, and in the south, fireflies dance by your campsite to entertain you. And if you're real lucky, the singing of distant coyotes will lull you to sleep.

For the past 15 years shotgunning has been a fast-growing sport in the United States, and because of this, gun clubs are proliferating, many with RV accommodations, all across the country. Finding them can be a little difficult for the uninitiated, but there are some publications which can help. Trap & Field magazine, (317) 633-8802, publishes a yearly list of some 200 clubs, with precise directions for reaching them. Sporting Clays magazine, (407) 268-5010, includes in each of its issues the addresses and phone numbers of all clubs affiliated with the National Sporting Clays Association. The most extensive listings, however are in a yearly publication called Black's Wing & Clay, (800) 224-9464, which includes 1,636 skeet, trap and sporting clays facilities, listed state by state. This information does not include camping possibilities at each location, but the phone numbers are given so that the traveler can call ahead.

And again, personal shooting expertise is no criteria for staying at one of these gun club campgrounds. Most of these shooting ranges have "good ol' boy" members, in fact, who are ready and willing to help a beginning gunner get started. Also, the rapid growth of consumer interest in shotgunning has hatched a new industry of professional shooting instructors, who headquarter at various gun clubs. For a few dollars per hour, these expert coaches will jump-start the novice, or fine-tune the more advanced shooter. Your recreational vehicle gives you ready access to these services as you move from club to club.

Nationwide, there are thousands of RVers who already own shotguns and shoot clay targets at their local ranges, but have never integrated this sport into their travels. For even the casual shooter, these gun club campgrounds can give purpose to your wanderings, and offer inexpensive places to stay along the way Once you try them, you will never leave home without your shotgun.

Copyright T L Enterprises, Inc. Jun 2000
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