Sporting Clays at Scarborough Fish and Game July 26

[Dean Romig]

1 hour, 26 minutes from my house to Scarborough F&G Assoc.

[J.B. Books]

Well it turned out to be a different day than any of us expected. We met at Scarborough F&G around 10:15AM; Dean Romig, Erick Dorr, Allan Mclane, Bob Weeman, Frank Cronin, Bill Janelle, Scott Kittredge and myself, only to find the club closed due to..............cloudy weather. After hanging around for awhile somebody came up with the idea to call Brad Varney who owns Varney's Clay Sports in Richmond Maine, 50 miles further north. We made the trek and were greeted by Brad, his wife and their dog. We had the course to ourselves and Brad was trapper for the entire round. Brad had some interesting and at times challenging target presentations. When we finished shooting we headed back south stopping at Portland Pies for a very late lunch and then over to wander the aisles of Cabelas.

[Double Lab]

Glad to see Frank finally turned his hat around. Shows he was really working on those targets. Good to see you guys had a great day.

[J.B. Books]

Originally Posted by Daryl Corona

Glad to see Frank finally turned his hat around. Shows he was really working on those targets. Good to see you guys had a great day.

Ya but Frank was handicapped, if you look closely at the guns leaning on the wood pile there is Model 21 dressed up by having all the Parkers surround it.

[Double Lab]

Just goes to show what a great shot he is for handicapping himself with a M21.

[StubTwist]

Nice write up Pete.

Overall it was a great day considering the morning didn't work out like we planned. The weather did hold up for the rest of the day and we got to break some clays, have a few laughs, eat a great lunch, and visit Cabella's. Great to see Bob Weeman come down from Northern Maine and Erick Dorr, who we all met for the first time lives along the Maine coast also make the shoot.

On to the pictures....

This is Brad Varney. He's quite the character and has more stories than Dr. Seuss and can talk a dog off a meat truck.... Per liability insurance we all had to take part in a small "quick" session of gun safety before entering the course. As you can see there are ten list of items to go over and Brad went over each one very thouroughly and had story for each one! This safety brief lasted 21 minutes, 49 seconds......

[StubTwist]

Wet weather brought the Maine Deer flies in full force........

[Allan McLane]

L-R: Scott, Erick, Frank (hidden behind), Dean, Pete, Bob, Bill, and our intrepid host, Brad.

image.jpg

It should be noted that Mrs. Varney is a colorful personality in her own right and they were both very gracious to set aside their Sunday antiquing plans and receive eight slightly skeptical shooters instead. Who'd have thought that one man could throw 400+ targets from ten stations, including mostly report pairs, with manual traps, all in less than two hours. I swear his left arm was twice the size of his right!

http://www.varneysclaysports.com

I thought Frank's gun was one of those rare, long-action Trojans...

My total mileage traveled today was over 440 but Scott provided 220 of those, thanks!

[WilliamJanelle]

Great posts Pete and Frank! Glad we headed north, the Varneys were wonderful hosts. Glad to have Eric join us, for someone who had never shot sporting clays before he made it look easy. Time to plan another outing.

[Dean Romig]

Had a great day with a bunch of great friends. Lots of laughs and lots of fun.
This is the first time I, and probably the rest of the group had ever shot at Varneys and Brad and his darlin' wife were a real hoot... they really made it worth it.
Mrs. Varney just had eye surgery and as a result she is a self proclaimed "One-eyed XXX XXXXX".... but never mind that... she's very sweet!

Thanks for the recaps guys and thanks for the photos... (in the future maybe we can work on "photo shopping" pot-bellies out of the pics before posting).