![\"\"](\"http:\/\/backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/WilsonHill_03.jpg\")
<\/a>Back in the \u201860s, I was nineteen years old when my friend Nolan Santy took me there to give traditional bulls-eye pistol shooting a try.\u00a0 My only suitable gun at the time was a pre-WWII Colt Match Target Woodsman .22, and on the first try I managed to score a 263 out of 300 possible points\u2026and was promptly hooked.\u00a0 Earlier in my teens I had shot informal competition at the \u201cturkey shoots\u201d held by local sportsmen\u2019s clubs around the Granite State where I grew up, but formal competition was a new high.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been doing it in one form or another ever since, though I had gotten into the more practical \u201ccombat shooting\u201d games by my mid-twenties.<\/p>\nThe club was much the same as I remembered it, which in turn is much the same as it was when Wilson Hill was founded in 1935 and has become something of an icon among traditional\u00a0 shooters. For many years, the club hosted the annual NH State Gallery Pistol (.22 caliber) Championship.<\/p>\n I learned more than I can say from some of the great shooters there: Al Payant, Fran SanSouci, Ken Howard, Stan Dzadura, and many more.\u00a0 Perhaps the one guy I learned the most from was a local hero, Don Mara, USMC.\u00a0 Don won many medals as a combat Marine in Vietnam during that period, and as a shooter, he was the guy to beat for the State Championship, which he held God knows how many years.\u00a0 While all the other heavy hitters were shooting expensive target pistols, Don used a $57 Ruger Mark I and kicked mucho boo-tay, proving it\u2019s about the shooter a lot more than about the gun, the Indian more than the arrow.<\/p>\n I got to meet Don again in June, after almost 40 years. He retired from the Corps as a Sergeant-Major, and is still globe and anchor through and through.\u00a0 And he still, at about 78, mentors new shooters.\u00a0 He\u2019s the kind of person who makes you proud to be part of the gun culture.<\/p>\n Under training director Al MacArthur, Wilson Hill has become a local hub of firearms safety and self-defense training. It was great to see this iconic gun club keeping up with the times without losing its sense of tradition.<\/p>\n Even if it did make me feel kinda old\u2026<\/p>\n<\/a>