The Lincoln County Rifle Club, already at the highest membership of its 78-year history, continues to attract recruits at a rapid rate.
The club’s vice president, Gunnar Gunderson, says up to 35 of the club’s 300-plus members regularly attend meetings. He estimates the membership rolls increase by about six per month, every month “right steady for the last few years.”
Gunderson, a member since the mid-1970s, remembers times when only club officers attended – on a good night.
He doesn’t credit the increase in interest to any specific phenomena, although he notes a particular increase in female members.
“A lot of them are looking at home protection,” Gunderson, who teaches a popular National Rifle Association pistol course, said. Others are simply curious.
On Sept. 17, the club’s third annual Ladies Day attracted 17 eager pupils. After viewing a safety video, the participants split into groups, receiving additional, one-on-one assistance from a large staff of volunteer instructors before trying their hands on the indoor pistol range or the outdoor rifle and shotgun range.
The participants’ reasons for attending – and their prior experience with firearms – varied greatly.
From 1974-1977, Eileen Tucker, of Nobleboro, served in the U.S. Army as a military police officer.
“I haven’t fired a weapon for a long time,” Tucker said, moments after reluctantly handing over the shotgun. “I thought it would be fun to get out there and do some target shooting.”
Julie Erickson, of Old Orchard Beach and South Bristol, attended at the urging of a friend, Harriet Wall, who read about the event in The Lincoln County News.
“I’ve only shot one firearm before in my life,” Erickson said after squeezing off several rounds on the rifle range. “I am enjoying myself very much,” she said. “You learn a lot.”
Erickson’s mother, Donna Ritzo, and Evelyn Page, friends and part-time residents of South Bristol, attended together.
Donations collected at the event benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure, an organization dedicated to finding a cure for breast cancer.
“It’s a great cause,” Erickson said, and Page and Ritzo agreed, citing it as a major incentive to attend, although they, too, were enjoying brushing up on their firearms fundamentals.
Ladies Day is just one of many day programs the club offers. The list includes sight-in days, an opportunity for hunters to adjust their scopes before the season, and educational programs in collaboration with the Boy Scouts and the National Audubon Society.
The club members also enjoy friendly competitions, like trap shooting every Thursday evening and a three-day black powder shoot.
The popularity of today’s club is the latest chapter of a long and colorful history. David Steen, the club historian, has compiled a two-volume history consisting of handwritten meeting minutes, newsletters, photographs, press accounts of club happenings and other memorabilia.
The story began with the founding of the club by 10 men at a Jan. 8, 1933 meeting at the Fiske Hotel in Damariscotta.
Early indoor matches took place in the basement of a building identified only as Hall’s garage, which was eventually destroyed by a fire. The Jones and Russell farms, on Bristol Road, provided the locale for “exciting and profitable” outdoor competition.
In 1936, the members built a clubhouse and indoor range on Rocky Hill, near the modern-day location of Rising Tide Community Market. Maurice E. “Jake” Day, the famous artist, donated the land and designed the clubhouse, while Edwin S. Metcalf donated timber.
The members, working evenings and Sundays with negligible paid assistance, cut, peeled and hauled the spruce logs. They cleared the land and brought the logs by hand from the road to the building site, starting construction on Sept. 7, 1935.
The following year, barely into their new home, the club attracted media attention for participating in a radio rifle match, in which amateur radio operators in Damariscotta and Rockland broadcast scores to each other.
A press clipping theorized that the match was “the first… ever staged” and predicted that the technology might “revolutionize” the sport.
The radio match freed the clubs from the prevalent, albeit slower postal match, in which clubs mailed scores to each other, sometimes waiting up to a week to discover the winner.
The organization’s educational outreach started early. A Feb. 11, 1937 article (“Housewarming at Club House”) reported 75 couples enjoying a festive evening complete with cards, dancing and refreshments.
The article includes a brief history of the then four-year-old club. From the initial membership of 10, it had more than tripled in size to 35, “with a junior membership of a dozen boys of high school age who are being taught the value of marksmanship and the proper use of firearms.”
Later the same year, 23 girls, all students from Lincoln Academy, visited the range and received instruction in handling a rifle from “Mrs. Verne F. Batteese, wife of the president of the club.”
The club used a spring 1937 “Goofers Tournament” to spark interest in the community. The light-hearted tournaments, according to a press report, invited guests “with no experience” to compete for a trophy and a one-year membership.
Four years later and just eight years after its founding, the club, led by Batteese, won the Maine Small Bore Championship, earning a front-page, above-the-fold article in the July 3, 1941 edition of The Lincoln County News.
The club’s outreach evidently paid off, as, at the same event, members of the Twin Village Women’s Rifle Club cleaned up in individual competitions.
The club eventually acquired 34 acres of land, including a parcel from Metcalf, the donor of the timber, for an outdoor range. They moved the original log clubhouse to the property on present-day Bus. Rt. 1 in Damariscotta, where the structure stands to this day.
A Jan. 10, 1958 Portland Press Herald article reporting the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Club notes membership dues, at $0.50 per month, “remain the same today” as in 1933. (A membership in 2011 costs $65 for National Rifle Association members and $85 for others.)
The Club’s later history includes remarkable accomplishments by individual members. Former President Orland Bunker set two International Benchrest Shooters Association records at an Aug. 5-6, 2000 match.
The same year, David DeLong, of New Harbor, won the National Muzzle-Loading Rifle Association championship.
Later in the decade, the club faced a series of challenges. A three-year period from 2001-2004 saw the arrest of the club’s treasurer on charges of felony misappropriation of up to $15,000, a brief, voluntary closure to address safety concerns and a fire at the clubhouse.
The volume ends shortly thereafter.
Gunderson and Steen, the club historian, helped fill in the blanks.
The insurance settlement from the fire paid for repairs and renovations, Steen said.
The club resisted a recent attempt by a development group to purchase the property.
The members still handle the majority of maintenance and building projects. They erected a new flagpole this year and will commence repairs to the clubhouse soon.
“We hire a lead contractor to provide the brains and the direction,” Steen said.
The Twin Village Women’s Rifle Club is long extinct, as the modern club welcomes female members.
The club continues to host a variety of competitions. Local law enforcement agencies train there. Members can shoot anytime, except Sunday morning before 9 a.m. Gunderson, judging by club logs, estimates the membership fired over 1,000,000 rounds last year from the benchrest house alone.
The club leadership places great emphasis on safety. New members must complete a safety orientation with Gunderson or another instructor before firing a single round.
The club meets on the second Monday of every month at 7 p.m. at club headquarters on Bus. Rt. 1 in Damariscotta and welcomes prospective members.
“It’s a great club,” Gunderson said. “There’s a lot of camaraderie there.”
For more information about the Lincoln County Rifle Club, visit www.lincolncountyrifleclub.com.