Rob Lamont has helped run the annual DUC sporting clays shoot in Brandon, Man., for more than three decades. He hasn’t made it to the windup banquet for about 15 years. He’s just too busy.
This year—even though he was told to be inside the Brandon Gun Club to receive a decoy from DUC to mark his 35 years of volunteering—he missed it again. He was outside picking up spent shotgun shells from the shooting range.
“I don’t really care if I get a lot of recognition,” says Lamont between the cracks of shotgun fire at the gun club in his hometown. “I’d rather be in the background than the foreground.”
Lamont is one of the founders of the sporting clays shoot fundraiser, which attracts about 150 participants from across the southern region of Manitoba.
Lamont’s the kind of dedicated volunteer that DUC is celebrating this year as part of its 80th anniversary. He’s part of an extended team of 761 volunteers at work in Manitoba, and more than 5,600 across Canada.
Lamont certainly won the respect of Mark Francis, DUC’s head of conservation programs in Manitoba and chairperson of the sporting clays committee. He says that, even after putting in more than 30 years of effort, Lamont is the hardest working member on the committee.
“He’s passionate and doing this not only because he loves the sport, but he truly believes in DUC’s mission in protecting and restoring wetlands and other habitat,” says Francis.
Ask Lamont why he supports the event and the trapshooter provides answers in rapid fire—wetlands purify water and provide habitat for a variety of wildlife including, of course, ducks.
“I really, really, really like ducks,” says Lamont, who has hunted them since his mid-teens. “I hate seeing their habitat disappearing as time goes along.”
Lamont turned to trapshooting to become a better bird hunter, but over the years he came to spend more time aiming at clays than ducks. He won a trio of titles at the Canadian Trapshooting Championships in 2001.
Sharing the passion for trapshooting and volunteering
His dedication both on and off the range has hit the mark within his own family, too. Lamont’s son, Pat—renowned Canadian champion trapshooter, and a multiple title winner of the Grand American World Trapshooting Championships—volunteers for the Brandon clays shoot as well, running its team events for about 10 years.
Most recently, Pat swept all five AAA men’s titles at the Canadian Trap Shooting Championships held in Brandon this summer. He says the event supports the shooting community by giving local shooters a chance to take part the sport.
“If we didn’t do a Ducks Unlimited shoot, there would be a bunch of guys that don’t get to go shoot that year,” says Pat.
His father introduced him to trapshooting at 11 years old, and it was his dad’s example that inspired Pat to volunteer.
“He puts in a lot of time.”
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