EASTHAM — The story among members of the Nauset Rod & Gun Club is that their first trap house — the shelter from which clay pigeons were thrown — was built from the wheelhouse of the Cape Ann, an 84-foot scallop dragger that wrecked off the coast of Eastham in 1948.

One year earlier, Ed Milliken had organized the club, inviting local sportsmen and World War II veterans to join. When the boat ran ashore, the story goes, members saw their opportunity. They spent a few months building and clearing trees for their range, siting the trap house on land they bought from the town.

In the 1960s, another group, the Manamoit Sportsmen’s Association, started using the range, organizing skeet shooting and “Crazy Quail” target events. According to the club’s website, the anti-gun movement of the 1960s caused the groups to organize into one larger club, adopting the Nauset group’s current name.

The “rod” in the name isn’t a fishing rod, by the way, says the club’s current executive officer, Craig Poosikian. It’s the tool used to clean a gun’s barrel.

Today’s Nauset Rod & Gun Club is in a spot farther north, on a town-owned lot surrounded by the National Seashore that it moved to in 1970. Two lines of maritime signal flags hang from a flagpole in the parking area next to the trap shooting range. One says “THINK2,” a double entendre that refers to a gun safety acronym used by the U.S. Army but is also a reference to the Constitution’s Second Amendment. The other says “Est. 1947.”

This year, the club got around to a dedication ceremony for itself. At a gathering on June 24, director Mike Hackworth unveiled a plaque that is mounted on a rock in front of the flagpole. It bears a dedication to two groups: Cape Cod’s first responders, many of whom use the range for training, and the veterans who founded the club in 1947.

Members of all four Outer Cape police departments and Eastham Fire Chief Lisa Albino were there to watch the ceremony, along with about 10 club members. When a miniature cannon about the size of a cat was fired to honor the moment, some in attendance jumped at the noise.

Hackworth says the club has about 450 members, but only a few of them shoot regularly. He says the people who like shooting guns are surprisingly diverse. “We have lawyers, doctors. I was a managing partner at a CPA firm,” he says. “When you talk about demographics, there’s no way to pigeonhole people who enjoy shooting firearms.”

Some of the club’s members are hunters, some are former military, he says. The groups who show up for trap shooting on Sunday mornings aren’t necessarily the same people who are interested in riflery or pistols.

Hackworth, a former Marine sergeant who served from 1972 to 1976 as a combat engineer and embassy security guard in Turkey, enjoys all of it. But, he adds, “I could never bring myself to shoot an animal, so I shoot paper targets instead.”

The clay pigeon shoot every Sunday morning is open to the public, but for the rest of the week the gate opens only for members. There isn’t always a range safety officer around — that’s an NRA certification that Hackworth says is widely accepted at shooting ranges nationwide. Instead, those shooting at any given time are asked to designate one person as a range officer to oversee safety.

Because the range is in the National Seashore, lead shot is not permitted. That can make trap shooting more of a challenge, says club member Jeff Norgeot of Orleans: “It gives you a better pattern, and it hits harder because it’s heavier.” But the lead shot is toxic, and wild birds that might ingest it would be poisoned by it.

That restriction doesn’t discourage the regulars here. Every year, the club holds a clay pigeon shooting championship in the fall. Last year the trophy went to Curt Montgomery, a retired building contractor from Vermont who now lives in Eastham. Hackworth came in second that year. He took first place in 2023.

Most of the regulars are experienced shooters, and they seemed to enjoy watching two amateurs — a reporter and a photographer — try to hit a target. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the photographer was much more accurate than the writer.