very serious concern. A problem that, when solved, 
     
     would set the Club on the road to recovery and into an 
     
     era of activity that, in 1970, was beyond the current 
     
     members' wildest imagination. 
     
    
   
   
    
     Over the past couple of years the Maritime 
     
     ammunition market had experienced a major change. The 
     
     seemingly endless domination of C.I.L. was over. The 
     
     Winchester Corporation had taken over the bulk of not 
     
     only the ammunition business, but also the sale of 
     
     firearms, especially since the recent introduction of 
     
     their new over/under Model 101, which could now be 
     
     purchased on the market for $395. Winchester's 
     
     representative in the Maritimes was a young man named 
     
     Bill Hopps (no relative of the sweet smelling nitro- 
     
     solvent family), who visited both gun club and retail 
     
     outlet in an effort to further establish the name. 
     
     With Winchester came another major transition for clay 
     
     target enthusiasts--the mass availability of 
     
     components for reloading; and, with factory ammunition 
     
     costing upwards of $3.00 a box, it did not take anyone 
     
     interested in any volume of shotgunning long to pick 
     
     up a self-loading device, and get into the swing of 
     
     reloading shells. By 1971 the common technical talk 
     
     among target shooters and hunters alike changed from 
     
     barrel length and choking devices to hulls, primers, 
     
     wads, pressures and feet-per-second. 
     
    
   
   
    
     The major problem, expressed earlier, facing the 
     
     clay target shooters at Mount Herbert, came during the 
     
     summer of 1971 when a routine soil analysis revealed 
     
     to Harley Ings that the 'lead rain,' which ‘had been 
     
     falling for the past six years in the area of the trap 
     
     and skeet field, was posing a potential threat to his 
     
     annual corn crop, and indeed to future crops that 
     
     might be planted in the area. Shooting continued, but 
     
     almost immediately the members that were left in the 
     
     Club agreed to protect the land and once again 
     
     Seriously considered relocation, to the extent that by 
     
     mid-September some new areas were already being 
     
     considered. 
     
    
   
   
    
     Apart from the few locals only Jim Little, Harold 
     
    
   
   
    
     --219--