Sometimes the best laid plans go awry and the resulting events turn out even better. I wanted to try out my new Beretta 28 gauge Legacy shotgun. After another club was unable to return our calls, we ended up at Back Woods Quail Club in Georgetown, SC. And are we glad we did!
Dave Lemon and his sidekick Lauren, a radiology technician working for Back Woods on weekends, showed us a very enjoyable day. Dave poked fun at us for being misplaced Yankees, himself a transplant of Green Bay, Wisconsin and amused us with Andy Duffy quotes: “There are no hard targets. There are just targets that are easy to miss.” Dave gave us the Grand Tour and made sure we had one of their ten golf carts for transportation around the range. With a good fifty percent of their clientele over age 50, golf carts are a necessity of the operation.
Despite the claim of business being slow, numerous groups were making their way through sporting clays or getting in some early deer hunts. We had a gorgeous bluebird day with temperatures cool enough to be invigorating, yet warm enough to be comfortable on this southern shooting range. The landscape was colored with big yellow butterflies and cultured decorative grasses. There was even a cormorant that Dave called Charlie. On our flight in, we could see the solid pine forests surrounding the club, intermixed with strips of cultivated deer cover.
Back Woods offers two sporting clays courses: Green is the softer course and Orange is more challenging. Each utilizes 28 machines on each of the 14-station courses. Dave’s Jack Daniels-inspired presentations included a battue bouncing off water and one utilizing a trampoline to deflect a target upwards. All the machines are on wheels for easy mobility, are charged by solar panels, and are activated with plug-in counter boxes. Dave prefers White Flyer clay targets. Several of the targets are elevated using one of the five 65 foot tall lifts, All stations are handicapped accessible.
Over the years, the club has tried all the major target-throwers on the market, including Lincoln Traps 18 years ago. They have since settled on Promatic machines and now their inventory includes 120 clay target throwers. Owner Rick Hemingway, absent the day of our visit, is reportedly the largest American dealer of Promatics. Hemingway regularly travels up and down the Eastcoast to set up courses for various shoots. Besides sporting clays, the club offers 5-stand, a flush/flurry, skeet and a Make-A-Break game.
Family Sporting clays memberships encourage women and children to get involved in the shooting sports. All memberships include a base sporting clays card. For each 1000 targets purchased, another 100 are included free.
The club shoots 1.5 million targets a year. It is host to the Georgia Youth State Shoot in May, which brings in nearly 300 people. They also host a Side-by-Side shoot in mid October, among others. Since the first in one they hosted in1994, Back Woods has hosted FITASC and ten state sporting clays shoots. This year 14 states will be represented. The club will host the US Open in May 2013, which already has 400 people enrolled. Five courses will be used for that event, with the club’s pistol and rifle ranges commandeered for it.
Back Woods’ pistol and rifle ranges are a free perk for members, with non-members charged a fee for use. Range officers trade time supervising those ranges for other club benefits like hunting or range time.
Back Woods uses some of their twenty dogs to pursue deer, citing gators and water moccasins as some of the hazards to humans in that realm. Smart dogs survive and continue the hunting lines.
The farm has been family owned since the early 1800s by ancestors of Rick Hemingway. The foundations of the slave houses still remain on this historic property. Guests at the club are housed in the three guest cabins on the property, one of which was an old general store which was moved onto the property 30 years ago. The second cabin is appropriately named the White House, but it never housed the President. The dining hall is in the third cabin. Visitors can gain weight just breathing in the good aroma of red forrest cake fresh out of the oven. The walls are graced by deer heads, which were displaced from the sport shop/main office facility the walls by subsequently larger ones.
An RV park with 32 hookups completes the housing facilities. Dave says the park already has a waiting list for the upcoming US Open shoot. 
Back Woods offers four summer camps for kids. Roughly twenty kids, with the help of three to four counselors per week, are treated to a curriculum of archery, shotgun, rifle and kayaking on the river that runs through the property. Additional specialists introduce the youth to fly fishing, duck and turkey calling and other outdoor activities.
Back Woods hunts 5000 acres and an additional 8000 leased acres. Quail find cover in the vast pine forests that cover the grounds. Most of the 40,000 quail are hunted in this habitat, while 2000 pheasants are used in European style shoots and 3000 chukar are included in other hunting packages. The club boasts twenty-five bird dogs, mainly German shorthaired pointers, English pointers, English setters and one Brittany. There are three dog trainers and five sporting clays instructors connected with the facility.
The facility opens September 1st for deer and dove, then October to mid-March for quail. Turkey hunting is offered in April, with two to four guides available. Turkey hunters see a 90% success rate– that’s 65 gobblers in 2012. No jakes or hens are harvested unless the hunters are youth. Deer season runs October 1st to January 1st, with the youth season opening the week prior.. Guides work a 4:30am to 9pm day during the youth season.
My new Beretta worked well and we made some great memories, new friends and had some wonderful tales to tell.
This article written by Peg Ballou and was originally printed in the March/April issue ofNAGANews. Peg Ballou, of Bucyrus, Ohio, is a pilot, flight instructor, graduated homeschool mom and partner in Elkhorn Farms & Hatchery with her husband Sam.
