More about the Talking Rock Black Powder Shooters
by John White
Many of you may have noticed in the May issue of Muzzle Blasts a new Charter Club in Georgia called Talking Rock Black Powder Shooters. We received our charter from the NMLRA on January 31st, 2020 but missed the cutoff for the March issue to announce our charter.
(Addendum: See Muzzle Blasts April 2022 Charter Club Spotlight article)
We would like to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves, give you some history of who we are and came about.
We are a sub club within Pickens County Sportsmens Club and our parent website is PCSC.US. we have 4 dedicated pistol bays, 2 three sided tactical bays, 2 mixed used 50 yard ranges, covered dedicated 100, 300 and 500 rifle ranges, trap, skeet, wobble trap ranges, archery, clubhouse, 2 complete restroom facilities with showers, camping abilities with electric hookups and land to expand upon. PCSC has been in existence since about 1969. We are located about 15 minutes outside of Jasper Ga in Talking Rock which is northwest of Atlanta about a highway drive hour and have complete title to our property. We are not yet set up for a dedicated BP range but that is a future goal for our club within the facilities.
Approximately 15 years ago, our charter club President, Mr. Joseph Collins, created a youth shooting program to compliment the boy scout shooting program and allow scouts to complete merit badges and experience the shooting sports beyond what they participate in at summer camp. This program has grown to serving an average of 1,200 youth a year from boy scouts, trail life, heritage girls, church groups and the list goes on and on. We believe we are the preiminent youth shooting program in the southeast. We provide all firearms and ammunition for the program through donations and PCSC sponsorship budget.
The youth and adult participants experience the normal bench 22 rifle target shooting and shotgun that most of us know, but we have taken the shooting program and put it on heavy steroids. 22 pistol, centerfire pistol, full auto, silencers, center fire carbines, cowboy action and BLACK POWDER are some of the other stations in the program that they rotate through.
Read our Independence Day message
At the same time the program was created 15 years ago, a group of dedicated black powder shooters provided the youth and adults an opportunity to shoot muzzleloaders. The BP shooters not only allow them to shoot flintlocks, percussion, bp trapdoors, a history of firearms lesson is provided at this station. Our BP shooters are dedicated to preserving the history of firearms and the inherent joy of shooting black powder as it was. Through discussions within this group of bp shooters the thought of becoming a charter club was hatched as our goals are the same as the NMLRA. Promote and preserve our heritage.
We are developing our monthly shooting program using many of the ideas you all have developed over the years and many of our members are very disappointed we are not further along. But probably our members are the same as yours and we all have been severely impacted these last months from this unnamed virus. Thus we are behind in that component of our club development. But trust in this, we all support the BP shooting sport and its history. We chose the 4th weekend to compliment all of your schedules so that if the opportunity arises we don’t have to make a choice of where to shoot.
We invite any of you and all of you to visit our facilities and we look forward to a mutual rebirth and growth of the sport we love. As our community is relatively small you will know several of our members and we hope to grow our membership being located in the northwest side of the state to promote our discipline. We will be coming to your shoots in the future to introduce ourselves and compare notes. Our club hopes we can reach out to you experienced clubs as we define and refine our club program.
Thank you for taking the time to read this introduction and if you see anyone that has been omitted from our introduction please forward it on. We don’t want to be a secret club or society. If you have any questions about us, please holler! The May issue of Muzzle Blasts was used to develop our email distribution.
Joe Collins, President
Mike Markey, VP
John White, Secretary