CHAPTER 3 BATS

As the year turned, Ernest Blanchard was an almost daily visitor at Dodd & Rogers Hardware, looking for any news on targets. Thomas Dodd was more than helpful; but, despite letters and cablegrams, the supply of the Ligowski target was not equal to the demand .

In the first week of 1886 word arrived from Halifax that an alternative target was available. The replacement targets were called "bats," instead of clay pigeons, and were manufactured by the Acme Target Ball and Pigeon Company of Lockport, New York. They were, by description, small three-inch discs of bituminous slate and had been quickly developed to get in on the growing moving target market. Hand drawn ads of the era show they were almost identical to the small Duvrock targets that were manufactured in Los Angeles, California, and used in the United States a few years later. "Bats" could be thrown from the regular clay target trap but, with only a few indented circles to provide stability, were not nearly as well designed, aerodynamically, as the clay pigeon, and tended to be erratic and unpredictable in flight. Later Duvrock targets were composed of clay, and pitch, and had their own special trap, but never really developed any degree of popularity other than a borderline substitute for the clay pigeon. However, they were targets and an order was placed by the club with the attitude that, although a tough challenge, they were better than nothing.

On January 16th, 1886, ten enthusiastic gunners arrived at Falconwood for the first try at shooting bats. They unscreened the trap, set it ata 15-yard rise, and yelled "Pull"...and they shot surprisingly well. Bill Hobkirk and Rowan FitzGerald hit eight of the nine attempted. Davies, Blanchard, and Haszard hit six, Hyndman five, and the rest saw more than half

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