There is a hunting preserve located in Snow Camp, NC called Beaver Pond Sporting Club. I've been fortunate to have the opportunity to hunt there several times already this year, doing mainly driven Pheasant hunts. This weekend on Saturday they sponsored an Enduring Freedom event to honor our Military Veterans and the Wounded Warriors. My friend Alan who works at the club mentioned it to me a few weeks back, and said they needed volunteers, so I signed up to help out. The expected group was large enough to split in two, with a morning and afternoon Pheasant Tower Shoot. When it wasn't their turn in the field, the guys participated in a Five Stand Competition, or could shoot on either the pistol or rifle range. Alan asked me to be in the field, and I spent my morning walking around to the different stations offering coaching/assistance to those who had never shot live birds before. When he first told me what I'd be doing, my immediate thought was how silly I was going to feel walking up to these soldiers and asking them if they needed help shooting a firearm. As it turns out Alan was right, and there were quite a few that had never done any wingshooting before, and they were very appreciative of the assistance. As you'll see from the pictures below, I also took my camera and snapped a few photos of the hunts.
There were less shooters for the afternoon Tower Shoot, so several of the volunteers including me were asked to "bat cleanup", positioning ourselves throughout the field, about 40-50 yards behind the stations. Our job was to pick off any birds that managed to make it through the first wave of shooters. After watching the morning hunt and seeing how high and fast the birds were flying in the stiff winds (especially that far behind the front line) I decided that this would be a great time to try out that new O Grade Hammer Gun I picked up from Gary last weekend. I brought it hoping to maybe squeeze in a round of Five Stand at the end of the day to try it out, so getting to shoot it for the first time at some live birds was definitely a bonus! The last two pictures at the bottom are of the first of four pheasants that I took with it that day. Even more priceless were the looks that I got carrying a 125 year old Hammer Gun into the field to hunt, and the compliments afterwards for making some fairly difficult and far out shots with it.
It proved to be quite the conversation starter.
Overall this was a great event, and something I'll put on my calendar to volunteer for next year. There were around 40 veterans and some active duty military personnel there, fourteen of them from the Wounded Warriors. They came from Fort Bragg, seven from the 82nd Airborne, and 7 who were members of Special Forces units. It was the guys who were wounded, some of them not so long ago, who were still recovering from injuries that you could tell really enjoyed the day. A few of them I spoke to said they were limited in what they could do as part of their rehab programs, and it might take them a few days to recover from the event, but it was well worth it. All of them were extremely grateful for having the opportunity to be there, and if felt good to give a little back to those that sacrificed so much for our country.
Mike
Enduring Freedom Hunt
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