Shoot out at the Saco range

A few weeks ago I received a letter from Steve Gouse informing me the Saco Shootist Society’s Cowboy Shootout was to be held at the Saco Range the morning of Saco School’s graduation. I figured I could knockdown two birds with one stone, er shot, so I headed out to the range bright and shiny two Saturday’s ago.

Since I wasn’t exactly sure where the Saco Range was, I headed to Pay N save to ask around. I lucked out and ran into Heidi Pippin as she shopped for groceries. I asked her where the range was and she pointed south, toward the town dump, and then let me know the heavy rains in the area had washed some of the road away, but thought I would be fine crossing it (and said I might run over a carp or two.)

It was about halfway through the pond/road that my car started to ‘cha-chug’, and the motor tried to die. I floored it, got the car up to two miles per hour, felt the backend fishtail (or maybe ran over a fish’s tail) and broke on through, to the other side (Jim Morrison would have been proud.)

I arrived at the range a cool 30-minutes before the event was to start and found Gouse and Howard Pippin had arrived before me. Gouse is the group’s secretary and treasurer and Howard – who had camped out at the site the night before – is the VP. They were both happy to see the newshound had arrived, but warned that turnout for the day’s shooting might be slight.

They were right.

Whether because of the road wash-out, the school graduation or who knows what, the only other person to show up during the first day of the event was H.D. Hendrickson. Everyone else’s loss was my gain.

I learned that the Saco Shootist Society was formed in 1995 and at the time, the shooting range was “pretty crude” with straw and adobe mud everywhere. At any given time there are 100 active members and have had 282 in their ranks in the last 21 years (member 283 through 285 would be added later in the day, but hold tight.) Steve had spent the morning setting up targets – from 500 yards to 1,000 yards away -- and making sure the range was tip-top…which it was.

A dozen different entities have donated materials and work over the year to make the range what it is today -- including the 20 acres the range sits on owned by Darrell Menge -- and the Shootists are a NRA sanctioned club.

The events scheduled for the day was the Cowboy Shoot in which participants place their pistols in their holster and are timed as to how fast they can draw from the hip and get a shot off (wax blanks are used in the weapons for this event.) Steve said depending on who is in attendance there are several that are pretty quick and really hsarp. A good timed draw is in the 28th hundredths of a second range.

“The older I get, the slower I draw,” Steve admitted.

With no others in attendance on Saturday morning, Steve insisted that I take “a few” shots at the quickdraw and then some targets. It was about 2-hours later and about 100 different shots fired that I holstered my pistol for good. It was somewhere near the middle of the Saco High School graduation, hours later, that the endorphins in my brain and body mellowed out and allowed to me (sort of) pay attention to my surroundings.

To put it bluntly, I am a ghastly gunslinger. My draws got a little faster as the day progressed, and I actually hit a few targets, but for the most part I couldn’t hit a cow’s rear-end with a banjo. One should never give themselves their own nickname, but I have broken form and rendered myself “Quickdraw McFlaw.” Regardless of how I shot, I had a lot of fun and encourage you to attend the next Shootist event (which will be the Muzzle Loading Turkey Shoot in Glasgow) or consider becoming a member – there is a small yearly fee that I quickly paid making my family and myself the newest members of the Club.

To cap off my adventure, we ate hotdogs and chips, drank a few pops and chomped on a Danish for dessert. My kind of day.

For more information, contact Steve at 658-5559 or checkout their (our) new Facebook page at facebook.com/sacoshootist.