Curt Kubis sat still in his wheelchair, holding his Browning 20-gauge shotgun with a firm grip.
“Pull!” the 58-year-old Saginaw resident commanded.
Brent St. Martin, sitting just a few feet away, quickly pushed a button on one of two small, gray boxes. A target - round and orange - sprang into the air over the pond Kubis was facing. He took a shot and missed.
Kubis, his eyes protected by dark sunglasses after recent cataract surgery, had only one shot left.
Quickly and calmly, he fired again. The target disintegrated in an instant.
Kubis was one of 400-plus participants and St. Martin one of 80 or more volunteers Saturday at the 16th annual “Shoot for Fun” event at the Old Vermilion Trail Hunting Preserve in wooded wetlands about 20 miles north of Duluth.
The event is a fundraiser for Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute-Northland, which before a merger was known as Courage Duluth. Its mission is to give people with disabilities a chance to take part in activities such as sea kayaking, hand-cycling and downhill and Nordic skiing.
Last year’s event brought in $104,000 after expenses, said Eric Larson, supervisor of sports and recreation for the agency.
With a slight increase in sponsorship dollars this year, “We’re hoping to at least be there, if not maybe a smidge higher,” he said.
The event benefited from spectacular weather for the second-straight year since it was moved to the first Saturday after Labor Day, said Mark Hanna, program coordinator in Duluth for the agency. The two previous years, when it took place on the last Saturday in April, it was hampered by miserable conditions.
Kubis, who has used a wheelchair since being injured in a motorcycle accident 40 years ago, was participating in sporting clays after an earlier round of trap shooting. In sporting clays, teams of five travel to eight stations, each providing a unique set of targets.
“Sometimes, they have them skipping on the water, or they’re like rabbits and they’re bouncing on the ground,” Kubis explained.
The game has been described as a shooters’ version of golf, and it carries its own sort of frustration.
After hitting four of his six targets at Station 4, Kubis muttered, “Could be better.”
But he couldn’t keep a grin from emerging out of his bearded face.
“I like anything that’s got to do with shooting,” he said earlier.
Kubis said it was his eighth year at the event. It was the first for Zach Knuckey, 25, who lives on Pike Lake.
Knuckey, who has been unable to walk since suffering a rare spinal cord stroke in December 2012, spends three days a week at the Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute in Golden Valley, Minn.
“They work with me four hours a day,” he said. “They really kick my butt down there and keep me stronger and on that pursuit of trying to walk again.”
Like Kubis, Knuckey was in his element at the 450-acre hunting preserve.
“I hate being inside,” Knuckey said.
Although this was his first experience with target shooting since his stroke, Knuckey has spent plenty of time outdoors. He went on a hunting trip with some buddies in North Dakota last year. “We shot a ton of birds and had a blast,” he said.
But fishing is his first love.
“Fishing is kind of my getaway,” Knuckey said. “I get to throw the wheelchair in the back of the truck and don’t have to look at it for as long as I’m out.”
During “Shoot for Fun,” Knuckey was provided with a motorized cart with which to get around the grounds. It doesn’t have brakes, Knuckey said, and he still was getting familiar with it when he took it on his round of sporting clays.
“Well, next thing I know I’m heading head-first down the hill and dodging trees and ended up stopping by running into a tree,” he said.
Recounting his misadventure only seemed to increase Knuckey’s enthusiasm.
“It was a blast shooting here and meeting other people and getting other ideas of what you can and cannot do,” he said. “Everyone is so upbeat and wanting to help. I think it’s helped me a lot.”
