CHAPTER 5 NEWSTEAD

This is the way it was in the Maritime Provinces in the spring of 1909. Everything required for the game of trapshooting was in the market place; guns, traps, targets and ammunition. The enthusiasm to re-organize and compete had not yet reached the Island, although some clubs in Nova Scotia were competing with each other in the simple form of trapshooting that had been around for years. But there was evidence that some form of organization was not too far away.

You could purchase a 20 horse power Gray Marine engine, ready to install, for $60.00, while on the other end of the scale, a Reo roadster automobile would set you back $1230.00. The Ithaca Gun Company, of Ithaca, New York, had just introduced its new Model 1909 side-by-side double with a triple lock feature, and was offering it in eighteen different grades, ranging in cost from $17.00 for the basic model, to the gold inlay job that no one could afford at $300.00. Ithaca claimed it was a perfect shotgun for trapshooters and could increase one's score by 5%. G. G. Spence, a St. Louis, Missouri, trapshooter had just established a record average for 16 yard single trap targets with .9677. In Sydney, Nova Scotia, a young 23-year-old sportsman, who enjoyed clay taget shooting every Saturday afternoon, took February 23rd off and became the first person in the British Empire to fly when he took Alexander Graham Bell's Silver Dart off the ice at Baddeck. John A. D. McCurdy, apart from his place in history, went on to become Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia...and a noted early century Maritime trapshooter.

With so many dedicated and enthusiastic wingshooters living on Prince Edward Island, it was only a matter of time until organized trapshooting in one form or another, would come back to the capital city of Charlottetown--and 1909 would be the year.

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