Peter Allen and Rodney Howe were awarded life memberships over the weekend for the Harden Hunting Club after the large amount of work they have put into the Club over the years.
Treasurer, Felicity Howe said both men were founding members in 1999.
“Rodney took over as President of the Gun Club in 2014 and Peter as secretary in 2016,” she said.
“Peter was awarded Life Membership because he spends hours and hours and hours behind the scenes with phone calls to firearms registries and making sure that we are compliant.
“Rodney is more a hands on the ground person. He is there two weekends a month for the nine months of the year that the Club is open. He’s the weeds man and if anything needs doing after hours out at the range he’s out there doing the work.
“Both men were quite shocked to be awarded Life Membership. Both were very humble about it, and stated they didn’t feel it was necessary but were quite honoured to receive the awards.
“I’m the Treasurer of the Club and Rodney is my husband, but if we didn’t have Peter doing the phone call work and the behind the scenes work we would be lost and vice versa.
“Rodney and Peter commented that yes they lead the club, but if it wasn’t for all of the club members they couldn’t do their jobs to the degree that they do it.
“It’s been a good year for the Harden Hunting Club. Member participation has been good. We’ve had an easy year this year as far as we’ve just been able to get in and shoot.
“We’ve had years in the past where Covid and all that sort of stuff had made life difficult, but this year has been a nice smooth running one.
“A number of years ago we had some issues with compliance for the range and there was a lot of communication that Peter completed.
“The Firearms Registry made us do improvements to the range and we had to build a lot of framework behind the range and Peter was dealing with that, which took a lot of time and Rodney was behind the building force there.”
“We are a small Club and words just don’t express what the both of them do.
-Jack Murray
