Baseball teams conduct spring training, basketball players go to summer camps, and NFL franchises work out every month.
The Black Lake Fish & Game Association is bringing that level of sophisticated training to high school trap shooting this Saturday, Dec. 9, when it opens the Al and Illeane Ames Youth Outdoor Education Center at the club headquarters on Gilmour Road in Morristown.
Association officials intend to cut the ribbon on the new shooting range at 2 p.m. with guest speakers, door prizes and light refreshments. BLF&G will be selling decorative indoor Christmas trees, T-shirts and discounted memberships during its celebration from 1-4 p.m.
The big reveal will be the 50-by-120-foot indoor shooting range that club president Michael Warren said will serve as an archery range, air gun range, sportsmen education site, and a gathering spot for patrons on fishing derby days.
A centerpiece of the range will be a DryFire indoor trap simulator, which will allow club members and shooters from local high school teams – Hammond, Heuvelton, Morristown and OFA – to practice throughout the winter when local trap fields are closed. The simulator “hears’’ shooters call “pull,’’ projects targets, then records statistics for accuracy and shot patterns.
“There is really a lot to the system that Lawrence Kring knows more about; it’s his baby,’’ said Penny Young, club treasurer. “We are the first club in St. Lawrence County and surrounding areas to have this system and we are eager for all to enjoy it.’’
Funds for the building were provided by Black Lake native Al Ames and wife Linda, who established a charitable trust upon retiring from their family feed business. First, they donated several thousand dollars to build trap houses. Then Al heard about the shooting range idea while home to attend a friend’s funeral. The plan might have fallen apart after the club lost out on $100,000 in potential state grants during the pandemic, so the Ames trust agreed to fund the project, which is named for Ames’s late parents, lifelong Black Lake residents.
Ames, a 1969 Morristown graduate who resides in Vermont, said his parents would be honored by the building.
“They would not believe it,’’ he said. “They were both very humble and never drew attention to themselves. Dad would be speechless, and my mother would have tears of disbelief.’’
Jim Robinson, BLF&G lifetime member and past president, said “I can’t thank Junior enough – I have called him Junior all his life – for what he is doing and already has done.’’
“I knew Al and Illeane quite well. We partied together, hunted together, and had done a fair amount of business together. We spent many hours just talking. Good times.’’
Their friendship mirrors the sense of community along Black Lake. Robinson and Ames Sr. started a hunting camp in Cranberry Lake ages ago with fishing guide Ray Loucks and neighbor Bill Russell. They were all friends with Kring, a retired Department of Conservation supervisor for St. Lawrence County. Kring still lives on his family farm in Macomb that dates to the 1800s, runs hunter safety courses, directs trap teams, and supervises trap events.
“The opening means the club has many, many options for what we will be able to do in the future with the younger generation,’’ said Robinson, a former farm equipment dealer who works part-time for Wright’s Sporting Goods and Marine in Morristown.
Robinson, who also coaches shooters for the Morristown trap team, is a member of the grand opening committee with Ames, Kring, Warren, Young, Berny Rubadue, Bill Dashnaw and Liz Truskowski.
Morristown native Jim Holleran is a retired teacher and sports editor from Rochester. Reach him at jimholleran29@gmail.com or view past columns under “Reflections of River Rat’’ at https://hollerangetsitw rite.com/blog/
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