Junior Canadian Ranger (JCR) members from Gillam, Lac Brochet and Lynn Lake recently competed at the JCR National Marksmanship Championship in St. Catharine’s, Ont., with one of the Lynn Lake participants finishing one spot shy of an individual medal among 63 shooters from across the country.
“There was a total of eight JCRs from Manitoba,” said Major Scott Macdonald, the commanding officer of the JCR company in the 4th Canadian Ranger Patrol Group (4CPRG), which covers Western Canada.
JCR Hayley Cook of Lynn Lake finished fourth overall, and the other competitors included Joshua Daniels of Lynn Lake, along with Samantha Antsanen, Shawn Tssessaze and Taylor Veuillot of Lac Brochet, and Jacob Giles and Angelina Van Dorp of Gillam. Connie Cockerill of Lynn Lake and Pierre Bernier of Lac Brochet were the coaches.
“In 4CPRG in Western Canada, which is my responsibility, we run what we call a postal shoot where patrols shoot in their home locations and they send us their best three targets and then we gather those and we score them,” said Macdonald. “We select the top 15 JCRs based on their target results and those people are then invited to form our team that goes to the national marksmanship championship.”
The competition included firing from prone, kneeling and standing positions, and this event also featured a team shoot in which JCRs shot at bear-shaped targets.
“There was a whistle blast at the start and a whistle blast at the end,” Macdonald explains. “The JCRs were lying on their backs and they had to roll over, pick up their Daisy air rifle and fire at one of three different-sized apertures. If they hit the smallest hole it was worth the most amount of points and the middle hole was worth the middle amount of points and the larger hole was worth the least amount of points so they had to essentially strategize before and figure out which size of aperture opening that they wanted to shoot at. If they felt they had a good chance at hitting the small one, that’s worth the most points.”
Like all Canadian Forces cadets, JCRs practise marksmanship with Daisy 870C air rifles.
“You have to look through the sight, you have to have a proper hold on the gun, you have to do proper breathing, trigger finger control,” Macdonald says. “Obviously a normal rifle will be heavier and they won’t have to open the pump and close the pump to get the air pressure up so they can actually fire a round but what we are teaching in the JCR program is safe firearms handling and proper marksmanship techniques.”
Those skills, he says, are especially applicable in remote Northern Manitoba communities.
“One of the aims of the JCR program is to provide life skills and in a lot of northern and remote communities the skill of safe firearms handling is essential to harvesting food so that’s one skill that we really try to espouse in those communities that need it,” said Macdonald.
