SPOTLIGHT : At Home on the Range : Trap and Skeet-Shooting Facility in Newhall Attracts Gun Enthusiasts in Family Atmosphere

John Warner cocks his Browning 12-gauge shotgun, aims skyward and fires at two fleeting clay skeets. The discs splinter across the canyon floor, a 15-acre beach of broken targets and discarded shotgun shells at the base of the Santa Susana Mountains in Newhall.

The pressure was on Warner. Missing a target at lowhouse No. 7, the easiest of the eight skeet-shooting stations means buying the drinks and facing the disjointed stare of skeet-puller Richard M. Perry. With two thirsty-looking friends and Perry standing on the sidelines, Warner didn’t want to miss.

For more than a year, Warner has frequented the Oak Tree Gun Club in the Santa Clarita Valley off Interstate 5. The area’s only trap and skeet-shooting range, it attracts hunters and target shooters from throughout the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys.

“We used to go out to the canyons to shoot but they closed them all down,” said Warner, 37, a Granada Hills insurance agent.

Shooting at a range offers Warner such additional amenities as an automated skeet dispenser, a comfortable clubhouse and Perry’s continual banter. Perry is a Camel-smoking, weathered-looking 37-year-old who dispenses advice and quips as rapidly as he springs skeet.

“Skeet’s more of a fun game than trap because you know where it’s coming from and where it’s going,” Perry said in a slow, deliberate drawl. “The only thing to figure out is how far to lead at each station.”

Perry has tripped skeet since the range opened and is as much a fixture at the club as its owner, Booge Mercer. Mercer built the 90-acre club, situated in a scenic valley in Newhall where deer roam the surrounding foothills, in 1973 after the shooting range she frequented in Pacoima closed down.

“I built the trap range and after that I didn’t have the time to shoot,” said Mercer, who operated the range out of a trailer for four years before building a clubhouse.

A former state shooting champion, Mercer is a 25-year veteran of skeet and trapshooting. She oversees all aspects of her club and if she sees a rule being broken, it’s unlikely it will be broken twice.

“Most everybody who comes out here knows the rules,” said Mercer, after lecturing a patron for loading his gun before he was ready to shoot.

Mercer is also president of Claybusters, Inc., a Newhall-based trapshooting club, one of 12 skeet and trap clubs that use the range. Club members compete monthly in a 50-target trapshoot and in a tournament against other clubs four times a year.

Members of clubs like the Claybusters, which, including Mercer has three women who have won state shooting titles, meet regularly to fine-tune their shooting and socialize with other “gun-oriented” members.

“This is like a bowling league,” Mercer said. “Every Thursday night, they come out and shoot 50 targets and pick up their trophies. This is a family-type club where wives and children participate. We have challenge shoots with other clubs and turkey shoots in the fall.”

Trapshooting is the most popular of the two sports featured at the club. Most clubs, however, have members who compete in both skeet and trapshooting.

“Skeet shooters will tell you that skeet shooting is harder and trapshooters will tell you that trap is,” Mercer said of the friendly rivalry between skeet shooters and trapshooters. “I personally think that trap is harder.”

In trapshooting, a shooter gets five targets at each of five shooting stations. Skeet shooters stop at eight stations and shoot at either one or two targets released simultaneously.

The range segregates trap and skeet shooters, with the majority of its shooting stations reserved for the longer-distance trapshooting. Skeet shooters have four, eight-station fields.

“Skeet shooting is basically a friendly game where you can talk and shoot the breeze,” Perry said.

The range has long been popular with celebrities, such as producer-director Steven Spielberg, who donated a color television to the clubhouse, and the late Hollywood stunt man Yakima Canutt who, at 82, scored a perfect 100 in trapshooting.

The majority of range “regulars” are men and women who either belong to clubs or are hunters tuning up for the next season.

“About this time of year, we get a lot of shooters who are getting ready for dove season,” Mercer said. “Women who take to trapshooting usually wind up good shooters because they like it.”

The range will play host to an Amateur Trapshooting Assn. event Aug. 8-9 and will hold an interclub competition in September. It’s open three nights a week and during the day on weekends. Rates are $4.50 for a round of 25 targets.

Information: 805-259-7441.