Halter Shooting Sports Education Center: World Class Facility and Home of USA Shooting’s National Team
Like every other facility and person I’d encountered on the Hillsdale College campus, the Halter Shooting Sports Education Center (named for John A. Halter, who bequeathed money for the construction and operation of the original facility) was top-of-the-line. This isn’t hyperbole. Hopefully, I’ll prove that repeatedly as I go along, but the choice of Halter as the home of USA Shooting’s National Team speaks volumes. This team includes a person my wife and I knew as a 12-year-old working for us in 2001-2002 as a Sporting Clays ‘trapper’ at a shooting facility we co-owned near Eatonton, GA. Already an amazingly accomplished shotgun shooter, we watched Vinnie go round after round on our International Skeet Fields with no missed targets. Known now as Vincent Hancock, he is a three-time Olympic Gold Medalist in Men’s Skeet.
Vincent is just one of many shooting sports champions who are part of the team that calls Halter home; included in this list are many top-flight para shooters as well. Among the latter is Hillsdale student and current world record holder in Para-Bunker Trap, Sophia Bultema. I’ve written elsewhere about this remarkable young woman’s development into one of the premier Olympic-grade shooters. Suffice it to say, she is a perfect reflection of why Halter is USA Shooting’s choice as the home for their team and why Halter hosted the Para Trap Grand Prix from June 23-29, 2024.
Led by Sporting Clays, champion-level shooter, and President of the Michigan Sporting Clays Association, Matt Little, Halter is not only the home field for USA Shooting but, unsurprisingly, also provides a spectacular venue for the Hillsdale College Shotgun Team. Tellingly, the students from this small College make up ~25% of the USA Shooting’s Junior World Team. The current Head coach of the Hillsdale shotgun team, Jordan Hintz, filled me in on the student members and their accomplishments. Jordan himself graduated from Hillsdale in 2018, and based on his own top-flight shooting achievements, became Assistant Coach in 2018-2019, progressing to Head Coach in 2019. Ironically, Jordan revealed that his biggest challenge in recruiting new team members is not Hillsdale’s location in rural Michigan but rather the incredibly high academic standards required for acceptance to the College.
Despite this, or maybe because of it, the team won the 2024 ACUI/SCTP Division II Team High Overall national championship, consisting of scores in American Trap, Trap Doubles, American Skeet, Skeet Doubles, Sporting Clays, and Super Sporting. All of the team members have full support provided through private donations. I asked Jordan if he would prefer to compete in Division I rather than II. He smiled and answered, “Division II is more competitive (with 20 Teams) than Division I (made up of only seven teams).”
Jordan is not the only highly accomplished Halter Shooting Sports Education Center staff member. I had the opportunity to interview three of his colleagues while visiting the Center. Husband and wife Dale, Caitlin Royer, and coworker Aeriel Skinner took some of their limited time to further educate me about their paths and Halter’s standing. These three staff members have countless Junior Olympic, National, and International titles and now help train the next generation of Olympic-class student-athletes at Hillsdale. Included in their outreach and development of younger shooters is their hosting of Junior Olympic Development Camps in skeet and trap and the Junior Olympic Championships in both sports. Dale, Caitlin, and Aeriel also organized and executed the previously mentioned Para Trap Grand Prix.
When asked about the Center itself, Caitlin immediately responded that Hillsdale’s Halter facility, with its five bunker trap fields and four international skeet fields, was the top shotgun shooting facility in the country and ranked within the top five worldwide. The fact that Olympic qualifying shoots occur at Halter supported Caitlin’s observation. However, international shotgun facilities are not the only ones available at the Halter Center. Included in the array of facilities are the AcuSport Lodge for meetings, events, and classes; eight American trap fields; Indoor/Outdoor pistol and rifle range; Action Shooting rifle and pistol range; International Archery range; 23-station sporting clays course; and four (plans for eight) cottages for competitors, each with eight occupant capacity.
Needless to say, the Halter facility has a lot of laurels on which they could rest. That isn’t the way of Hillsdale College in general, or the shooting sports’ supporters, students or staff, in particular. At the present, new additions are already underway. Supported by longtime benefactor, Alan Taylor, the next generation of facilities include: the David N. Taylor Nimrod Education Center Rifle and Pistol Range, and the H.W. ‘Bing’ Carlson Nimrod Education Center Archery Range. This new facility raises the level of the Hillsdale shooting sports even further into the stratosphere, with the former including 24, 10-meter, Olympic air gun lanes, and 24, 50-meter, Olympic rifle and pistol lanes, and the latter consisting of 24, 25-meter Olympic archery lanes. This new addition also contains a mezzanine for spectators, locker rooms, lounges, classrooms, reception area, business office and storage areas for equipment. These new features expand the capacity for training Hillsdale students as well as hosting national and international shooting sports competitions.
Though Hillsdale, through the Halter facility, hosts premier national and international shooting competitions, the vision of Hillsdale and Halter staff does not end there. Summer 2024 marks the 14th anniversary of the so-called Liberty Shooting Camps. The brainchild of Morgan Morrison, an associate business director at Hillsdale College, the offerings include two camps described on the website as follows: “Learn to effectively shoot pistols and revolvers in various calibers at Hillsdale’s new Ailes Action Shooting Range; test your skills in various steel target and practical shooting games; master the basics of clay target shotgun shooting, including trap, five-stand, and sporting clays; learn the fundamentals of archery at the Halter Center’s 90-yard Olympic Archery Range; try out various rifles and historic firearms on the final day, including AR-15, M1 Garand, .50 Caliber Desert Eagle, and others.” In other words, these camps educate and inspire others in the thrill of shooting sports, at the same time inspiring an appreciation of some of the benefits of the 2nd Amendment.
Fortunately for me, Morgan Morrison, Matt Little and Alan Stewart (Head of the Nimrod Education Center) invited me to try my [limited] shotgun skills from Halter’s 5-stand pavilion. Given that the 5-stand consists of an enclosed and heated, well-appointed building, with five large windows looking out onto the field, ‘pavilion’ is no exaggeration. Al and Morgan both showed their adeptness, Al with his Beretta 471, 20-gauge side-by-side and Morgan with his 12-gauge semi-auto. It was then my turn. I also began with a wonderful, loaner, 12-gauge O/U, and then accepted the offer from Morgan to try shooting clays using his beautiful little Henry Lever Action .410. It was hilarious as Morgan’s laughter and shout of “work the lever” rang out in the pavilion when I tried a double! And, I’ve never had a more enjoyable time of shooting clays than with these two wonderful representatives of Hillsdale College and its Halter Shooting Sports Education Center.
