USI President’s update as of 4-27-2023
Club Members and Friends of USI:
I want to announce that USI management is reorganizing considering Leita Stevens imminent move back to North Carolina. I want to thank Leita for her years starting up, and serving as manager of, the public range. Gene Dodge is the new rifle/pistol supervisor responsible for operations of the public range. To provide more help to Gene with administrative, IT, and logistic items Blake Mahallati has been made Assistant Manager for USI. Finally, Steve McConnell is now in an expanded role at USI as General Manager, ultimately responsible for all ranges and facilities. Steve has extensive experience with all aspects of maintaining USI’s facilities and equipment, inventory and managing personnel at USI.
I am pleased to tell you that we showed a small profit in March and expect to do so again this month. It is in part due to the increased training that is occurring at USI now. We are pleased to host 19 different training organizations including the Navy, Customs and Border Protection, and probably Paragon Federal training Systems. This is in addition to the various private trainers teaching everything from basic pistol to CCW. If you have interest in training, please let me know and I will put you in touch with them. I want to thank Ron, Chris, Tomm and Mark for building this bay and to Stan Williams for coordinating the Navy visits.
USI hosted the northern California CRPA RangeCon 2023 on the 20th of this month. A great deal of information on range management, the range environment and programs for shooters were discussed.
One interesting facet was that CRPA sponsors a variety of programs for newer shooters and youth that allows them to win medals for specified pistol, rifle, and shotgun accomplishments. If anyone has any interest in sponsoring this activity for the musketeers etc., please let me know.
USI has had a booth at several of the recent gun shows in Vallejo and Antioch. Bruce Brandt has done a great job setting this all up and inducing many to help work the shows. Most recently, Theo, Vince, Trish Cate and so many others have helped immeasurably.
The recent St Patrick day shoot by Baypoint was well attended and the April Fools registered shoot had several new and familiar names at the top. Johnnie Bunch won the 12 Ga event with a 98. Rock Romo had a 99 in the 20 Ga, Jack Campbell had a 99 in the 28 ga shoot, and finally, Richard Fukatsu scored a 98
in the .410 shoot. Congrats to all and many, many thanks to Seamus, Nate, Ed W, Ed C, Tomm, Tom F, Rocky, Jack and others who stepped up to pull and score. Several of these great people did not even shoot the event just so they could help.
The Concord Classic, our first registered 5-stand/FITASC shoot drew 58 shooters who shot a total of 150 birds. We were fortunate to draw about a dozen master class shooters to a new event. Thanks to Steve Balma, Ed Mena, Tomm Heath, Tom Fester and so many others that gave so generously of their time and efforts to set this whole event.
Chris Lawrence is leading the MPR fence committee to replace the barriers at MPR. A few new alternatives have surfaced that are getting evaluated. Chris has ordered the initial HESCO-like product for the lower wall at MPR. This will allow us to get some experience with this product. At this point, it looks like a consensus is developing to build the upper walls in a manner similar to the public range.
The volunteer project list has been updated in the Clubhouse. If you can help with any of these it would be deeply appreciated! Things like taking some old paint to recycling or putting junk in the trash all helps.
Great thanks to Bruce Brandt for all his work on the Volunteer RSO program. We will continue to need new RSOs, particularly on the weekends. If you can help out with a couple of 4 hr shifts there are perqs attached. Want to help? Email: volunteer@unitedsportsmen.com.
As always, please contact me directly with any questions or offer to help keep our club alive and healthy.
Larry Hood
President
925–788–1142
president@unitedsportsmen.com
