Welcome all members, new and older members alike, to another year with the Lake of the Woods Gun Club.
It was a good year, regardless of all the ever changing Covid-19 rules and restrictions, and thanks to all of you we made our club as good as it could possibly be.
I believe we may be in for some further restrictions this year so be safe and keep your distance and hopefully we can all get through this as painless as possible.
I would like to start with a couple of things your board of directors has been working on:
- Housekeeping: this is very important, if we can keep our club clean and tidy, it should help prevent accidents, i.e., pick up your brass and hulls, simple thing to do and no one will slip trip or fall on stuff left on the ground, make sure your trash hits the garbage can, no points for near misses in this case.
- The club has a zero-alcohol-drug policy, so please do not attend if you are under the influence of either drugs or alcohol. Safety is not a punchline at this club.
- Orientation: Mr. Phil Nick has done a marvelous job by donating his time and coming out and giving orientations to our new members, and I am sure it is a lot of information to assimilate, last year we had an influx of new members and at times, there seemed to be some confusion on club procedures, As I have mentioned before at any time there is something, you’re not sure of, feel free to call me or ask any other member for help, we are all in this together. The board is working on an orientation handout to be a quick reference to some questions on all the ranges. Read our safety and procedural documents on our webpage lwgc.ca, they are a good source to start improving safety and understanding/learning LWGC policies.
- Club information: We have worked toward keeping every member informed to what is going on at our club, our webpage at lwgc.ca has just a ton of information, as I just mentioned our safety policy, our club calendar that will show what is happening every day we are open. It shows events, regular shooting days, special shooting events and rentals so you will not come out and find you can’t shoot because of an event or regular shooting night.
- Donations/refuse policy: We as a club always appreciate when a member likes to donate something BUT just to be sure, talk to a member of the board, to see whether or not we can use the article you are offering. We do not want to have things we cannot use, when someone else could use.
We also must remember that all garbage that is generated at the club must be hauled away, so please keep your garbage at home and as for donations, please don’t leave anything without checking with the board.
- Guest policy: If a member brings a guest, that member is completely responsible for their guest(s). We would like new members to be a member for at least 6 months and have completed all orientations required before bringing a guest. This will help with policy requirements and club safety protocols.
- Covid-19: The board of directors of the Lake of the Woods Gun club closely follows the ongoing Covid-19 restrictions as put in place by our government. We will do our best to keep everyone informed of any changes that come about that effect our club.
I know this is getting a little long winded but, we are trying to keep everyone informed regarding the ongoing challenges your board are working with.
Archery: We do have a static archery range on the left side of the hill leading into the club. We still do not have someone interested in stepping up and taking responsibility for this range. I believe we could do more if someone wanted to put some skin in the game. If you have an interest just give me a call and we can try to get something started.
Pistol, if at any time the regular Pistol Range is busy, we do have a second range which is the Action Range located just before the regular Pistol Range on right side of the road.
The Action Range has 2 static shooting locations.
During the active season, the Action Range is occupied every second Saturday with IPSC shooters in the morning.
This year we have added Mr. Craig McTaggart as our new pistol chairman, can we all give him as much help in his new position as we can.
This spring we will be inspected by the CFO to ensure our compliance with all government standards, our range is looking in good shape so let try to keep it this way.
I hope you all have had a good start to your year, and I hope to see you out on the range.
So, in closing remember if you are shooting, there must be a sign(s) or flag displayed, and they must be closed when the shooting has ceased.
Please look to see if someone else is on the range before closing sign at gate.
I hope you all have an excellent year enjoying our club, stay safe stay healthy.
Thank-You!
Steve Zabloski
President LWGC
on behalf of the board of directors
