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This year over 300 shooters attended the California Sporting Clays
Championship held at the Camanche Hills Hunting Preserve in Ione, CA.
The State Association tries to alternate the Championship between the northern
part of the state one year, and the southern part of the state the next year.
This format works out pretty well because it gives everybody a chance to
participate.
While Camanche Hills is certainly off the beaten path, it’s well worth the
drive. The road from Hwy. 88 to Camanche Hills is spectacular. You start in the
vineyards of Lodi, then go through the grass-covered foothills of the “gold
country”, finally ending up on the north shore of the Camanche Reservoir.
Camanche Hills is a huge facility and was able to do a GREAT job with
this year’s State Shoot. They made good use of the gently rolling terrain by
setting up two separate and challenging 12-station courses. In addition they had
five 5-stands, a Make-A-Break, a FITASC course and small gauge events. All the
machines worked and the wait times were minimal. There were workers constantly
making the rounds checking and loading machines. You could tell they put a lot
of planning and effort into this event.
Friday’s Prelim was held under bright sunny skies, with temps in the mid 70’s.
Whoever set the targets did a pretty good job. The targets were butt-kickers and
more than a few people walked off the course shaking their heads. There weren't
any short windows or eye tests, just good, clean, tough targets.
As nice a day as Friday was, Saturday wasn’t.
There was a light rain falling when I met my squad on the Blue course. Nobody
was happy about shooting in the rain, but luckily we all brought our rain gear.
Bruce Barsotti had set one of the courses and after shooting a few stations, I
figured these were his targets. Bruce’s targets are always doing something.
They’re either curling at the end, falling right when you want to shoot them,
turning on edge, something. Even with the rain I was able to shoot a 75 and I
felt good about it. About the time the 11:00 am squads were finishing up, so was
the rain.
Saturday evening was the BBQ and the money shoot-off. The organizers drew names
out of a hat and three groups of five shot a round of 5-stand for the prize
money. Some people watched the shoot offs while others were more interested in
the BBQ. No matter which one you chose, you weren’t disappointed.
Thankfully the skies were clearer on Sunday because today I was shooting the Red
course. Even though the Red course was the harder of the two, I didn’t find it
that bad. For some reason I was breaking targets and doing OK. I even managed to
break the 70-yard teal four times, unfortunately two of the times were when the
out-goer broke, so they didn’t count. Some of the targets were really
challenging but I still enjoyed shooting them. With the nicer weather and a
score of 71 I was having a much better time.
After stowing my gear and checking my scores against the scoreboard I figured
that the “High Over All” trophy probably wouldn’t fit in my car anyway. So I
packed up my stuff and headed for home.
All in all, the 2005 California Sporting Clays Championship was a GREAT
event and Camanche Hills did an OUTSTANDING job of hosting it. If
you ever get a chance to shoot with them, take it. You won’t be sorry.
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