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NEWPORT – To Pam Deinhardt, shooting is a dying sport.
“It’s gotten so expensive to shoot,” says Deinhardt.
Which is why shooting facilities like the Newport Gun Club, of which Deinhardt has been a member since 1997, need to keep going, she says.
Deinhardt was one of dozens at the Newport Gun Club’s Sunday meeting, the second in the club’s annual Winter Trapshoot. The 10-week shoot sees five generations of members, ranging from as young as 12 to as old as their 80s. This year, it started on Jan. 5 and will end in March.
“We welcome anybody that wants to come up and find out what a shooting sport is like,” says gun club president Dan Willner, whose sons are fourth-generation members.
During the winter season, the Newport Gun Club and other gun clubs in the region compete within themselves to select champions. Those champions then compete against each other in the annual Spokesman-Review Inland Northwest Trapshoot in Spokane.
“We’ve had several state champion shooters out of our club,” Willner said.
Founded in 1924, the Newport Gun Club celebrated its 100th year of operation last year. After moving between locations in the Newport area, the club settled in its current location at 271 Gun Club Road in 1968.
Today, the club has a core membership of about 30 who get others involved in it “like gravity,” Willner said. These include friends, family and close to 40 high school students participating in the club’s high school league. Deinhardt joined because of her husband, a Priest River local whose father is also a member.
“It’s very family-friendly,” Willner said. “It’s a sport you can do when you’re a kid and when you’re 80.”
A nonprofit organization, the Newport Gun Club is open to the public. Trapshoots are at 9 a.m. on Sundays, and the club also offers skeetshoots at 9 a.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The Newport Gun Club is located at 271 Gun Club Road, off Deer Valley Road. Their website is www.newportgunclub. org.
Participants do not need to buy a membership to shoot at the club’s gun range, though doing so supports the club. Annual memberships are $50 for adults and $35 for children. One round to shoot 25 “birds,” or targets, is $8 for members and $10 for non-members. Willner said all fees go toward club operations.
“That’s the only way we can survive,” Willner says, “just put the money that we make back into the club.”
The Newport Gun Club also hosts fundraisers such as raffles and other events. But Willner attributes much of the club’s support to the Kalispel Tribe of Indians, who contribute to the club annually, and Friends of NRA, who grant the club shells and birds.
“The only way we really stay running is because of the charitable contributions from the Tribe and the NRA,” Willner said.
Some members have been shooting their whole lives. Willner, a third-generation member who joined in 1973, is one of them. He has been shooting with Deinhardt’s father-in-law for about 50 years.
Another is Elizabeth Meyers, a fifth-generation member who joined four years ago. She is following in the footsteps of her older brother, who Meyers says joined before her. Their grandfather is also a member of the Newport Gun Club.
“The new generation doesn’t trap shoot as much as the older generation,” Meyers said. “So [the club] keeps it going, keeps the sport alive.”
