Archive: Sports

Archers from all over the state came to Lansing Sunday for the first of LBH Archery Club's three summer 3D Shoots.  By mid-morning shooters of all ages from Lansing, Binghamton, Bainbridge, Whitney Point, Lansing, Moravia, Pompeii, Auburn, and Weedsport had registered for the course.  "Each time we put a course up it's a different course," explains club President John Huether.  "We never put the targets in the same place.  It's always something different.  That's good practice for archers.  It provides a little competition."


The shoot consists of two courses, each with 15 targets.  Paths lead through the woods on the club grounds off of Salmon Creek Road, where three dimensional animal shaped targets have been placed along with stakes for the different classes of shooter.  Yellow stakes are set for cubs (12-15 yards), white stakes for women and youth (25 yards), blue stakes for bow hunter seniors (35 yards), and the orange stakes are for the open, which is about 250 yards.  Braves (8 and under) can shoot from any distance.


Adults register for $10, youth for $5, and kids can shoot free.  The club also offered burgers and spicy sausage, and a 50/50 raffle.  The money goes to help sustain the club and pay for future shoots.  Typically LBH holds three outdoor shoots in the summer and an indoor shoot at The FIELD.  Trophies are handed out to the winners, with participation trophies for each of the kids.


Some LBH members shoot for sport, and others to hunt.  Huether notes that sports equipment is bigger and flashier, with stabilizers, scopes, and other gear.  Hunters tend to have smaller stabilizers on their bows, with camouflage coloring.  While sports shooters are interested in the competition, bowhunters also use the shoot to hone their skills for hunting season in the Fall.


This is especially relevant this year, as the club is in negotiations with the Village of Lansing to help officials deal with an out of control deer population.  Trustee John O'Neill has been putting the pieces together for a special invitational hunt on Sundown Farm, the largest open space in the Village.  With an average of 30 car/deer collisions per year, and residents complaining that gardens and wooded areas in the Village are being decimated, the Trustees have been struggling with solutions, consulting the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), and studying effective solutions to the problem.

"We're going to help the village out," Huether says.  "We're also going to help the deer, because they're overpopulated.  They're getting hit by cars.  To me that's a worse way to die that a quick humane death.  It sounds mean, but it's a lot more humane that being hit by a car and laying there and suffering for hours.  And that happens."

Part of the plan involves donating deer from the hunt to the Venison Donation Coalition, to make sure that deer the hunters can't eat themselves will be donated to people in need.  "They feed a lot of people," Huether explains.  "Butcher shops are in the program with them.  If I shoot a deer I want to donate, you take it to a certain butcher, and he does the rest.  He butchers it and gives it to the coalition to distribute.  It's all inspected, just as if you bought a piece of beef from them."

O'Neill approached LBH because he wants a safe, controlled hunt within the Village.  In a past shoot out of state hunters crashed the event, creating unsafe conditions, and prompting the landowner to call off future hunts.  This time Village officials will patrol the hunt, turning away all but club members who have been invited to participate.  "That's going to be the biggest thing," Huether says, "to get accurate shooters who are responsible hunters.  The worst thing you can do is go in there with a bunch of people with a bad reputation and not care.  That would be bad for everybody."

The Village and the club are still in negotiations about the details as O'Neill works with DEC and arranges insurance and security.  If the hunt can be arranged in time, Trustees are optimistic that it will help control the deer in the Village, and open the door for annual hunts.  "This is going to be a good opportunity for everybody -- for the coalition, for the Village, LBH Archery Club," Huether says.


Huether says rising gas prices are hurting attendance at the shoot events.  But by midmorning about 40 shooters had registered and were walking the course, taking their shots and recording their scores.  Targets were individually sponsored, and the shoot itself was sponsored by Scoops.  At the end of the day trophies were handed out.  The next shoot is scheduled for September 23.

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