Using the Range

It is easy to forget today, but the shotgun range wasn’t always located in Camp Light. For much of its existence, Camp Light was in fact as well as a name, a wilderness camp; there was nothing there. Shotgun was thus a bit more mobile. Often taught in the field between Stahlman and Parnell, pidgeon bits would often rain down on Parnell staff teaching Cooking merit badge below Showerhouse 1.

Around 1990, the shotgun range moved to its current location, but it looked nothing like it does today. Consistently of a small launcher, a picnic table, and a tarp, the site disappeared at the end of the summer. It was only with the 1994 Capital Development Campaign that the Shotgun Range began to take on the look we know today with a traphouse and concrete pads.

It isn’t a glorious location, but is now part of a larger program in the High Adventure Area. And, while it seems out of place in some ways, when one considers the history of the field trials at Boxwell, one wonders if the range shouldn’t have been closer to Akers’ Cabin (Fehrmann Training Center)!

The shotgun range in use in Camp Light