President's Newsletter

June 2025

Summer is here – while the weather sometimes can’t decide what the heck it wants to do, us gun folk aren’t letting that stop us. Here is what has been happening and what we can be looking forward to.

The club and the Board of Directors have been busy here of late with both ranges operating at full swing. The Board is reviewing and updating our bylaws after 35 plus years. As this progresses, I will keep you updated of any changes.

Vale Range Rundown

The Vale range has been steady with activity. The Malhuer County Sheriffs department held a fundraising event in May. I was unable to attend due to a conflicting match at another location. I haven’t heard how this one went but in past years it has always drawn a great crowd as the community continues to help support our much appreciated first responders. If you have a chance, try to catch the next one – they are doing great work for us all.

Kerry held his short Range Benchrest match the first Saturday of the month and it was packed! We only had one open bench without having a second relay. One of the shooters threw in a second, fun, bonus match after the main event. It was both a challenge and a blast (pun intended).

Jim held his practical pistol match and it seems to be growing as the weather improves. I have heard nothing but good things about the match. If you are interested in participating, please contact Jim for all the details.

The 600-yard Benchrest match was canceled due to the conflict with the Sheriffs fundraiser. George should have that back up and running in June. He has all the bugs worked out of the electronic scoring system so this will help speeds things up and continue to be extremely helpful.

I held my .22 Rimfire Benchrest match the fourth Saturday of May. We had 5 shooters show up. It’s a fun relaxing match with lots of time to make those shots count. Hopefully participation will increase – bring a buddy!

Shotgun Side of Things

Josh has been busy at the Sporting Clays range, the new card system is running smoothly with all favorable comments from the users. He held his May NSCA match in which got rained on (literally) which dampened his participants, but a good match was still had by all.

We are very close to having the website updated with the new member registration forms for the shotgun disciplines. In the meantime, we have a couple asks:

Volunteers needed - we are looking for volunteers to help load machines weekly. At the present time we have 3 seasoned men to cover these duties. They are doing a bang up job but we’d love to spread the load. If you are willing to help out, let Josh know and we will get a schedule figured out.
UTV on life support – the donated UTV is on its last leg of life. If anyone has a good reliable machine they would be willing to sell or donate, let one of us know. This is an expense we are not able to afford currently but is greatly needed. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

John Dollar is running the Trap Range for the youth groups and adults. If I’m not mistaken, we have two high school trap teams and two 4H groups that use the trap fields. The club does our best to supply targets for all the youth groups, free of charge, to help promote the shooting sports.

As I mentioned last month, Pat Savage has stepped up to take over our Skeet program. Here is a quick intro from the man himself:

I would like to introduce myself. I am Pat Savage. I am a new member of the Snake River Sportsman’s club. I shoot Skeet mainly, but I do enjoy the other Shotgun disciplines. I shoot a lot of Registered Skeet throughout the year. I also teach basic skills of Shotgun. I have been doing this for more than 40 years. If you are interested in learning how to shoot Skeet let me know. I can help you learn.

I would like to interest you in having a Skeet league. How this would happen is a fee of $20.00 for the league and $8.00 a round. Two rounds a week for 8 to 10 weeks. The money taken in after paying for the targets would go into the league fund for prizes and a luncheon. These are lots of fun. Everyone gets prizes.

I also like to have fun shoots that is something fun to do with the Skeet field. I.E a quail walk where you don’t know which target is through.

I also would like to bring back Registered shooting to the club.

Please contact me if you want to learn how to shoot Skeet and if you are interested in any of these games.

Pat Savage, 208-989-8426 or

One Final Thing

Thanks again to all members. We couldn’t do this without you. Please remember to continue to clean up the ranges after you finish. We share this space and all own a share in it.

Safe Shooting,

Bob Smith

Snake River Sportsmen

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