If it wasn't for memories I don't know just how I'd get through Feb ruary. It's a cold, dead month for me with the seasons gone and 30 to 45 days of waiting until you can get the van in on a local range without getting stuck. All guns have been cleaned, some of them twice, you've run the corn and feed out to three different snow-drifted, squirrel woods, and are happy with the snowshoes you got for Christmas.
Back Trail | Max Vickery, March 1986 | Muzzle Blasts Archives
This article was originally published in the February 1986 Issue of Muzzle Blasts Magazine. Max Vickery’s writing is some of our memberships’ all-time favorite, we thought it appropriate to share during the COVID-19 situation.
I sometimes wonder where the core, the nucleus of this Association lays. In 37 years of watching I know it hasn't been some of us. I also know that some, the living cement, that help make our common bond, go unnoticed. A president comes from the rank of board-member hopefully with credits of good ideas he has put forth before the body of fellow members. He is looked at, weighed, and 29 others, either for or against, say, "Yes, we"ll trust him with thechair."
This man is then honored and has to perform. He may answer the same question four times in an af ternoon, his shooting goes down hill, his time is not his own, for heis no longer himself, he is "ours." To the four of us who ask, our question is primary. The president may not consider our questions high in the order of priorities, but he leaves his hurried lunch to give us the answer. Yet, I don't think this man, who ever he may be, is the blood-core of this Association. The Board of Directors is certainly an honored position. And having watched it through nine administrations, I have seen it filled with the most worthy and a few, a very few, who just came aboard . If, first we shoot , then we camp, and then we Commercial Row, and by God, in that order. Then, a safety minded, attentive range officer must be considered as a "donor" to the efforts of this Association. Whoever thought up our "Range Officers School" so our overworked officers could be relieved by properly trained and competent people is certainly to becommended.Having always felt that there are but four basics to a rifle match; targets sold, targets scored, a range officer, and a restroom. Anything beyond this is a fringe benefit, be it dining hall, drinking water, or electric hook up. This then brings the target desk clerks, the scoring room personnel, and cap tains of the head to a more appre ciated postition. We have come a long, long way from those four basics in the years of our being. Look at your maga zine, the office, maternally watched over for years by our Dorm-Mother assisted by a nearly adopted daugh ter, now manager, surrounded by caring sisters. I don't think the you and I who hunt alone with the guns that need a ramrod are the blood-core until we help another whose interest is the same as ours. I think you haveto helpsome one before you can enter the flow that feeds the lifeline of this Association. It is not the champions who take the medals and not their turn at the duty. It was not the non-contributing critics that made this Association the greatest of its kind. It was the "givers" and God bless you all. Look if you will at a national spi der web of muzzleloading. Look at pages 61-62 of your January Blasts and see how far the baselines of the web now run. Know also, that these "little-shoots" are run by a handful of people who baked a ham at home and brought it for the kitchen, made two candle-lanterns and gave them as prizes, came out yesterday and mowed the grass, and after we shooters leave, will clean up the grounds and lock the farmer's gate so we can meet a month from now.
The quiet people, the blood-core, the giving members, from far out on the edge of the web, they who spill their pint that flows into the base line troughs going to the center of this Association, those who work so others can shoot - the "givers.''
You who give are truly wonderful - you have made us what we are today!
Max Vickery
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