Duke Center — The O-E BirdDawg Season is underway with six (6) returning seniors leading the squad. This year’s returning seniors are Trey Lee, Brandyn DeLong, Scott Miller, Steven White, Jake Bell and Corre Smith, all ready to start off the sixth year of the sport of Trap Shooting and represent the Otto-Eldred Junior Senior High School.
The Eldred Conservation Club has seen many changes to the grounds over this period, including a new second trap field and new parking lots to accommodate guests and family members. Overhead floodlights now tower over both fields to provide night time practice, as the winter solstice and season require Otto and Port Allegany students to practice later in the day before the winter/spring sport begins.
This sport, considered by many in today’s society to be not politically correct, has proven to help bring the families closer, providing occasions to bond as fathers, mothers and siblings come up to the club during open trap shooting to obtain additional practice time busting the clay targets before they fall to the ground. They even travel to neighboring trap fields in Portville, N.Y., Olean, N.Y., Millport, N.Y., Richburg, N.Y. and Bradford to get extra practice time in before, during and even after the season to hone their skills or to continue the sport. A few of these athletes join summer and winter leagues, competing not only against their peers but men and women 30 even 50 plus years their senior.
This year’s squad recently sold and made 1,750 hoagies to help with the cost of supplies and will hold a Pancake Breakfast on March 30th at 8 a.m. at the Eldred Township Fire Hall, located on Windfall Road off of State Route 346. At this event, the athletes themselves would love to serve you. Due to the cost of the sport, the team provides one (1) box of shells and one round of 25 clay targets each week for the athletes to use for practice purposes.
The parents of the athletes have raffle tickets for a Beretta Over/Under 12 gauge shotgun and some of the coaches spend their time at different social events around the region, raffling off this year’s Beretta Silver Pigeon O/U Shotgun in another attempt to reach the necessary funds to keep the team supplied with clay targets, ammunition, cleaning supplies, training aids, uniforms and everyday supplies.
The team and coaches wish to thank people like Jim Carlson (Carlson’s General Store in Turtlepoint), members of the Eldred Conservation Club, the local fire department members, and both the Otto-Eldred and Port Allegany School Boards and Athletic Directors. The many volunteer and corporate donations that are received are also greatly appreciated. Without the public’s help, funding the sport in its entirety would not be possible.
Over the past few years, members of the BirdDawgs have gone forward with competing throughout the summer in the Amateur Trapshooting Association, traveling to places like Marengo, Ohio, Elysburg, Pa., Richburg, Olean, and locally at the Bradford Gun Club. They have won State Championships not once but twice and amazingly a National Championship for S.C.T.P. One of the athletes even went on to compete in the ATA’s 2018 National Championships held in Sparta, Illinois — winning three awards, including recognition as the Class A Doubles Champion of the World and securing a spot on the Junior All American Team.
It is amazing the potential we see as coaches from these young athletes when they put their phones down, step outside and compete in events such as these. Each week, there is another feel good story in regards to one or more of the athletes breaking their personal best and working their way to a clean round of trap, which takes a lot of concentration and dedication and is not as easy as it looks.
The season will kick off March 5 against last year’s league champions, Bolivar-Richburg, at the Richburg Rod and Gun Club.
The first home meet will be on March 12 against Cuba-Rushford.
The public is welcome to come watch a meet and enjoy seeing the kids taking on a sport considered a little off the regular grid. Those in attendance are required to have hearing protection while on the grounds and near the shooting.
