WAKE FOREST, NC (AP) — With the blast of a shotgun, the Raleigh Family Center Moose Turkey Shoot is underway. But fear not: No gobblers were harmed in the making of this holiday fun.
“The main misconception is, they think we shoot live turkeys outside,” says Glen Coplen, past governor and current shell dispenser at the Loyal Order of Moose Raleigh Lodge 1318. “We don’t.”
Three nights a week, from late October through Christmas, muzzle flashes and fire pits illuminate the darkness as shooters compete for cash, baby backs, ham and, yes, turkeys.
“This is a fun turkey shoot,” Coplen says. “There are very competitive turkey shoots out there, but this is charity.”
While there is no official nationwide count, events like this have been a holiday staple of sportsmen’s clubs, and veterans’ posts across the country for generations.
“Turkey shoots are as American as baked beans and Boston brown bread, or corn and pork belly,” read an article in the November 1953 edition of American Rifleman magazine. “The very name ‘turkey shoot’ conjures up a picture of a forest glade on the edge of a frontier settlement where men in forest skins competed with those in settlement homepuns.”
These events once DID involve live turkeys. In his 1823 book, “The Pioneers,” James Fenimore Cooper describes a shoot in which the bird “was attached by a string of tow, to the base of a large pine trunk,” the shooters blasting away from a distance of 100 yards (91.44 meters).
Today’s contestants aim at clay pigeons or, more often, paper targets. At Lodge 1318, they use No. 8 shots, fired from 63 yards (58 meters).
“It doesn’t matter how many pellets you have or anything,” says Coplen. “The pellet closest to the center will win.”
On this bone-chilling December night, he needs a caliber to determine the champion in several rounds.
“This is going to be a tough one,” he says, maneuvering a target under an illuminated lens.
The price of admission if $5 round. Proceeds go to various charities, including a large Thanksgiving dinner for area seniors and an “angel tree” surrounded by Christmas gifts for children in need.
But even the shooters do not go empty-handed.
Tammie Smith, whose boyfriend introduced her to the sport a few years ago, took home two prizes: a pot roast pack complete with vegetables, and a “breakfast pack” with sausage, a dozen eggs, biscuits and jelly.
“Sometimes I give my winnings, and sometimes we share it with the family,” she says, a young woman made of shell caps from her first winning shotguns hanging from her left ear. “So, it’s a good time.”
Roger Jones drove 45 minutes to take part in the shoot and won a Butterball for his efforts.
“It’s fun,” he says, holding the bird by its plastic net. “It’s something I’ve done with my father and my brothers, since, you know, we were all little.”
Mick Wysocky, 12, won some money two days earlier but came up empty this night.
“I tasted a little recently,” he says, wearing his Moose sweatshirt. “I really wasn’t shooting that much, and it was a pretty good experience.”
It was a bit of a struggle to keep the Lodge 1318 turkey shoot going.
Once firmly entrenched in farm country, urban sprawl swept in on all sides. A wood pellet-skinned wall and a dirt berm are all that separates the shooting range from a large subdivision.
The members of the lodge give a brochure to the local at the beginning of each season. The county’s noise ordinance allows them to shoot until 11 pm, but they stop at 10 out of courtesy to their neighbors.
“They are so used to it now,” says Coplen. “All year we haven’t had a call for someone to complain, or last year either.”
So far, they have managed to keep their property from being annexed by a city that prohibits the discharge of firearms. But with the pace of development, Coplen wonders how long they can keep this cherished rural tradition going.
“You know, we might lose it one day,” he says as cars zoom by on busy U.S. Route 401. “We hate it, but it’s just a fact of life.”