The club’s origins date back to 1924 but we can find no living person who can remember earlier than 1945. Maurice Gordon, also a prominent full-bore shooter, remembers the time when the club used a range underneath the race course grandstand. They also had a 50 and 100 yard outdoor range, a few kilometres south of Hastings. Cyril Barclay, a local businessman and club member, gave the club a truck that they used to take the gear to the outdoor range.
I also asked Lyndsay France, our club patron, for as much as he could remember. When he started shooting in 1952 the club was using an apple-packing shed owned by Edgar Milne at Mangateretere, mid way between Hastings and Napier. The shoots here couldn’t get underway until the end of May when the apple season had finished. This was not a very practical setup and some of the members decided to move back to town. The ones that remained adopted the name of The International Rifle Club and are still active today. An old stable was found at the back of the Albert Hotel in the centre of town. Members here had to be very keen, as it was quite open and very cold on cold, frosty winter nights. This site was also not considered very practical for the long-term development of the club. The efforts of George Gordon, Maurice and Sylvain Luxford resulted in the present site being found and purchased.
The building programme was carried out during the summer of 1955-56. Fund raising for the venture had been done mainly by running a shooting gallery. These were run on the main street on Friday nights, the traditional late shopping night, and Saturday nights where there were large crowds going to the pictures. To me, that was a really dedicated effort to do that week after week.
Shooting galleries were also set up at the annual Highland Games and Blossom Festival events. With the funds raised some old stables were bought, dismantled and re-erected on the town site. Shooting started in the first season of 1956 with the building usable but still incomplete.
The following of the club has been consistent throughout the years and recently the old building was demolished in 1994 as the original building was built of untreated timber and was full of borer. The new building was ready again at the beginning of the 1995 season.
It has been said many times in the past, but no one seems to have any answers as to how, with the present decline in shooters, we can boost membership. There have been many changes in interest in the sport due to, in my opinion, bad press against firearms users in general. Also, seven day a week trading with the loss of free time, the competition of television and probably unidentified reasons make it difficult to actually pinpoint the most effective means of gaining new members. This needs to be seriously considered if the New Zealand Association hopes to be still operating for its centenary.
Graham Chester
Hastings Smallbore Rifle Club
Last revised 1997