Zach Love knew his way around a bow and arrow. He had shot one during his time in the Cub Scouts and learned to handle a gun with help from his family. Despite his experience, the wise 10-year-old said a refresher course on gun safety is essential.

The Webelo Scout was joined with a handful of fellow Pack 18 Cub Scouts who received necessary skills training and pointers on the disciplines of gun and archery safety as well as learning techniques on how to improve their shot.

“There is nothing like being outdoors and practicing safe gun handling,” said Brian Ferry, the youth director at the Redmond Rod and Gun Club, who has been associated with the rifle range since the mid-1990s. “When the scouts were looking for a safe place to do that, we said we would open our facility to that. The big emphasis for learning the safety of both these skills and that these are recreation tools — but they have to be handled safely.”

The Scouts were shooting arrows at targets from close range. Later in the afternoon, they would go on to shoot BB guns. But as the Cub Scouts rise up through the ranks and become Boy Scouts, they will be old enough to utilize the entire range.

The club — which moved from a small lot near the Redmond Airport to a much larger plot four miles south of Redmond — offers multiple shooting sports with NRA certified instructors to help lead the way.

It has trap shooting, 5-stand, sporting clays, rifle and pistol shooting, and cowboy action shooting along with an expansive archery range that opened up on Father’s Day of this year.

There have also been upgrades to Twisted Tree in 2020. The sporting clays course, which added 16 new stations (12 covered and four elevated), 40 throwing machines and more than 40 targets, offers more training and warm-up areas. An ATV path makes it easy to walk from station to station.

“There has been an evolution from when I first got to know the club back in the late 80s,” Ferry said. “I didn’t always like what I saw in terms of safety and behavior. I was teaching hunter education, and some of what I saw in practice in the club was not something I wanted the kids exposed to. But the club has come a long way.”

Part of what has made it the range safer is because it is on a larger plot of land. In 2016, the range upgraded from a 40 to 50 acre plot of land to a spacious 230 acres to create a safer, more expansive shooting range. There is now enough space between stations.

“The pride of the range is it is a safe place for families to come out to shoot and have a good time while doing it safely,” Ferry said.