The Skyline Skeet and Trap Club in Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania hosted its 11th annual Skyline Open on July 12-14. Skyline is a privately owned, two-field skeet club. For the second consecutive year, the Mankanzana Challenge was held in conjunction with this shoot. The weather was nice for the entire weekend.
The Skyline Open is a typical five-gun shoot that began with doubles on Friday and ended with the .410 on Sunday. Hunter Dickerman’s HOA score of 384 and HAA score of 480 were high for the weekend.
Six shooters shot doubles. William Kalwas, from New York, ran them and was AA1. Other class winners were Hunter Dickerman (A), Ed Call (B) and John Quealy Jr. (C). The 12-gauge (21 entries) was also shot on Friday. Hunter Dickerman and Kalwas shot 100 straights, and Dickerman took A1. Debra Meade was AA1 with her 99. David Cook, Robert Nichols, Scott Cooper and Robert Saam, respectively, took B, C, D and E class first places.
Seventeen shooters participated in the 20-gauge event on Saturday morning. Tim Holtz was high gun and took A1 with his 99. Other class first places included Cook (AA), Meade (B), Cooper (C) and John Hoffner (D). The 28 was shot on Saturday afternoon, and 16 shooters participated. Hunter Dickerman’s 97 was good for AA1 (after he bested Ed Call in a shoot-off); Tim Holtz took A1, Ethan Call B1 (after winning a shoot-off with Joe Dickerman), Stephen Lucas C1 and Anthony Johnson D1.
The .410 bore was shot on Sunday with 14 entries. Hunter Dickerman was AA1 with his 92. Ethan Call, Dancho, Nichols and Quealy Jr., respectively, took A, B, C and D first places.
The Mankanzana Challenge is a four-gun handicap event with the grand prize being a seven-day hunt in South Africa or $1,000 cash. The hunt includes four trophy animals (impala, blesbuck, springbuck and warthog). Fran Bussiahn, professional hunter and owner of Mankanzana Safaris, and Kevin Kayn, booking agent out of NY, put this grand prize together for Skyline’s shoot. Last year, Hunter Dickerman won the prize. Hunter went to Africa with Ed and Ethan Call and Kevin Kayn in this April and had a great time. This year there were 13 entrants in this event. Final scores were based on their four-gun (HOA) totals, plus a class-based handicap in each gun. The results were very close, with Tim Holtz winning with his total HOA, including handicap, of 393; right behind were Joe Dancho (392) and Bob Nichols and Hunter Dickerman (390). Tim chose the $1,000 option for his prize.
Theresa Call, with help from Hunter Dickerman and Debra Meade, handled office duties (registration, score posting, etc.). Ed and Ethan Call helped keep things humming outside (filling houses, mechanic’s duties, etc). Special thanks to Kalan Knickerbocker, Trever Lupp and Dominic Picarazzi for pulling and scoring.
As usual, the food at Skyline was abundant and delicious and included steaks and lasagna on Saturday night and Theresa’s famous pies all weekend.
– Contributed by George Gleich
