On a recent Indian-summer Sunday afternoon in Naperville, an abundant number of people strolled along Naperville’s downtown Riverwalk. Yet the surroundings were remarkably tranquil. There was the amiable quacking of ducks bobbing on the DuPage River, a child’s shout, the dissonant honking of Canada geese overhead, the hum of a passing airplane.
But then, if you stopped, listened and really paid attention, you could hear them. Distant cracks, punctuating the stillness. Members of the Naperville Sportsman’s Club were practicing trapshooting less than a mile from downtown, in Sportsman’s Park, as they have been doing for the last 50 of their 60 years.
Within the past decade, however–about the time the once-private club came under the auspices of the Naperville Park District–complaints about the noise have become just one facet of a continuing controversy. This feud, which involves a group of concerned residents and the League of Women Voters of Naperville, periodically threatens to shut down the entire operation.
Tina and Mark Snider of Naperville, who were walking leisurely along the Riverwalk with their two young daughters, weren’t aware that the club existed, even though they live about a mile and a half from the park. They paused to cock an ear.
“Oh yeah, if I listen for it, I can hear it,” Tina said. “But I can’t say that I’ve ever noticed it before.”
“As long as they’re careful, and people are safe, (the existence of the club) doesn’t bother me,” Mark said.
But inside his house near downtown Naperville, Michael Linz was listening critically to a CD he recently purchased. What’s this? a skip in the CD, like a scratch in an old vinyl record? No, the sound persisted, even after the stereo was turned off.
“It wasn’t the disk,” he said. “It was those shotguns.”
Linz has appeared numerous times before the Naperville Park District board of commissioners to protest the existence of Sportsman’s Park, specifically objecting to the noise and “the peppering of the atmosphere all afternoon on a Sunday,” he said. “I like to go out there and read . . . and it disturbs me.”
But for Betty Hackney, who serves as chairwoman of the environmental committee of the League of Women Voters of Naperville, the noise from the trapshooting program at Sportsman’s is a small consideration compared with the financial and environmental issues.
She argues that only a small number of Naperville residents are using this large, beautifully wooded chunk of park-district-owned land and that it should be used for something with a wider appeal. She questions the amount of park district money being spent on the program. (A park district spokesman said direct expenses incurred by the club in 1996 were $18,879. The club generated about $25,500 in revenues, complying with the park district requirement that its programs bring in 35 percent over cost, to be used toward overhead.)
Hackney is also concerned about future funds that may be required to clear the area of lead and debris. A spokesman for the Chicago Park District says cleanup efforts involving the Lincoln Park Gun Club at Diversey, which closed in 1991, has already cost them about $700,000.
Above all, Hackney cites the presence of lead on the ground from spent shots that could potentially contaminate the soil and ground water.
“Land use should not insult the land in any way,” she insisted.
As a result of the complaints, environmental studies have been done, recommendations have been made and several changes–including higher fences, test wells and signs warning of the presence of lead–have been ordered and executed by the park district, costing thousands of dollars. Only one recommendation–for a culvert to be built over a creek on the grounds–has not been completed.
Ultimately, one of the tests, conducted by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency last spring, concluded that lead is not a threat to the region’s ground water.
“We vowed to stand by whatever the EPA said, and they said that we pose no health risk to the community,” said Sportsman’s Club president Tom Brooks of Woodridge. “But now the experts are being called into question.”
Hackney and other league members maintain that further, more rigorous tests are necessary. “The tests are not complete,” she said. “They have yet to give a firm statement that there is no threat to the environment.”
Although protests are still voiced frequently by Linz and other Sportsman’s Park opponents during Park District board meetings, Park District executive director Joseph Schultz says the Sportsman’s issue “is like no issue at all . . . we got the final all-clear from the IEPA, and since then we feel the environmental issue is over.”
As for the status of the proposed culvert, Schultz says that an initial estimate of $500,000 for the job has left them looking for alternatives. “We’re exploring our options,” he said.
As for members of the Sportsman’s Club, they respond with resigned weariness when the controversy is discussed. From their point of view, they are a Naperville tradition, with a flawless safety record. They provide trapshooting opportunities for their 200 registered members and welcome visitors. They offer introductory and safety programs that are well attended and include special programs for groups such as the Boy Scouts and YMCA Indian Princesses. Although they concede that some people may be bothered by the noise, they counter that the hours for trapshooting are limited to Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. and Thursday from 6 to 10 p.m.
Basically, they say, they just want to be left alone to enjoy their sport and pursue a mission statement that includes “the preservation of our outdoor heritage through the promotion of the shooting sports, with emphasis on education, training and recreation.”
“(The club) is a great opportunity to network and meet some really nice people with similar interests, like fishing, hunting and the outdoors,” said club president Brooks, who grew up hunting in rural Michigan and found limited opportunities for shooting in Illinois. “This is a year-round club that really fills that gap.”
Set back from West Street between Naperville’s community garden plots and a scout camp, and across the street from Naperville Central High School, all of which sprouted up around Sportsman’s Park after its creation, the Naperville Sportsman’s Club comprises a clubhouse and a fenced-in trapshooting area with three stations. Trapshooters line up with their shotguns in groups of five, take turns shouting “pull!” and fire at the bright orange clay pigeons that are sent into the sky by automated trap machines. (The limited range of shotguns that are 12 gauge or smaller as well as the small, light ammunition assure that there is no threat of shots leaving the park and endangering the public, says club member Rick Smeaton of Naperville.)
Inside the clubhouse, director Jay Spitz collects payment (ranging from $2.50 for the day for members to $4.50 for non-resident non-members, which includes 25 clay targets) and dispenses the required safety ear plugs. On one wall of the clubhouse, a deer head hangs. Above the fireplace is a colorful wreath made of empty shell casings.
Member Arthur Dwight of Bolingbrook has been on the club’s board of directors for the last 10 years and has passed on his knowledge of guns to his two daughters, Jean, 17, and Diana, 15. Although the girls come out to the park nearly every Sunday with their father and have been enjoying recreational shooting for as long as they can remember, they say they frequently find their chosen sport under attack.
“I get into arguments a lot,” Jean said. “The thing is, people who are completely for gun control have never seen guns before and never used them.”
“People are fearful of what they don’t know,” her father added.
Although some club members suspect that the current “political incorrectness” associated with gun use has fueled the controversy against the club, Betty Hackney insists that shooting, in and of itself, has nothing to do with it.
“I have nothing against guns. I had a great-grandmother in Oklahoma who had a gun, and she used it, because she had to,” Hackney said. “I just think guns belong in certain places. This is not the appropriate place. We’ve seen other trapshooting programs that are not in areas with trees and water, located away from homes.”
In the eyes of Sportsman’s Club members, their opponents are a minority of Naperville residents. To test the waters of public opinion, organizers called for a rally before the park district offices last May, when the club was closed pending the results of the EPA test. Approximately 200 people–some club members, some residents wishing to show support–gathered for the rally.
“I was shocked when I saw that many people there,” Brooks said. “We were really questioning if the community was against us and thought we’d just see what would happen.”
There was another show of support in August, when the club held its 60th anniversary celebration. An estimated 300 people attended the festivities, brooks said, enjoying hot dogs, hamburgers and the opportunity for newcomers to sample the sport of trapshooting. As a result, Brooks and other club members are convinced that the club has community support.
“We have a right to be here,” he concluded.
But for Hackney and those who share her views, the issue is far from resolved. “In an ideal situation, I would close it tomorrow and apply for a (federal Environmental Protection Agency) Superfund cleanup,” she said. “Then we could redesign and relandscape the property. . . . The clubhouse could be made into a nature center.”
Presumably, that would be without the shell-casing wreath and deer head.
