Welcome to Laguna Woods Village Rod & Gun Club
Providing fellowship and instruction to environmentally focused Members who enjoy fishing and target shooting
Our Activities
Fresh Water Fishing & semi-monthly Ocean Charters
Our members actively pursue their passion for fishing in lakes, rivers and our ocean. Fresh water excursions are generally ad-hock in nature and organized on a small scale by individual members. Semi-monthly, limited-load ocean charters are scheduled on the 1st and 3rd Mondays of each month thru our nearly 50 year relationship with Dana Wharf Sportfishing in Dana Point Harbor.
Target Shooting
Whether an expert or a novice gun owner, come join us twice a month at OnTarget http://ontargetrange.com/ontargetrange/ Orange County's premier 25 yd indoor range.
- Firearm and range safety and etiquette
- NRA certified staff to fulfill your training needs in a safe and friendly atmosphere
- Intra-club shooting competition
Meetings, Fellowship Luncheons and Social Events
Member Testimonial
Member Deer Hunting Experience
Whitetail deer hunting in Virginia during muzzleloader rifle season.
By Fred Booth
I am a member of the Lively Hunt Club, Lancaster County, VA founded in 1959 I have been a member of the club for three years and have been successful in taking a whitetail buck each year. The club leases 3,000 acres of mixed hardwood and pine heavily forested land with adjoining farm lands where soy beans and corn are grown.
On 30 Oct 18 I flew from Los Angeles to Richmond VA where I rented a four wheel drive truck. Driving from Richmond to Lively took about two hours. I arrived two days before the start of Muzzleloader season for two reasons. Firstly to make sure my muzzleloader was still sighted in and secondly to spend a full day trying to take an eastern turkey. The turkey hunt was unsuccessful, but that is another story.
I hunted every day despite the fact that the weather in VA was unseasonably cold with several days of torrential rains and three mornings of below freezing temperatures. My weapon was a CVA Wolf 50 caliber inline muzzleloader with a 2x-7x Nikon Scope. My rifle was loaded with two pellets of pyrodex black powder and a 295 grain powerbelt bullet.
Hunting is done from stands 30 ft up in the trees in the woods. I hunted from several different stands and saw a total of 6 bucks. Two were 6 points, one a 4 point, and three were spike bucks. I couldn’t get good ethical shots at any of the bigger bucks.
I took a long shot through the trees and undergrowth at another spike buck and missed him cleanly. I searched for this buck for over an hour and never found a drop of blood. This deer also didnt react to the shot and just stood there for a few seconds, then ran a ways, stopped and walked up the hill in front of me. My bullet most likely got deflected by a branch. Using a muzzleloader the first shot has to be on target as it takes too long to load another round to get a second shot.
The final day of the season I went to a new tree stand at the edge of the woods overlooking hundreds of acres of unharvested soy beans. Walking through the soy beans I saw fresh deer tracks everywhere. I knew from experience that the deer were feeding on the soy beans and would most likely not enter the fields until dusk. I climbed up onto my stand at 2 pm. Nothing showed up until after 5 pm when the buck appeared from the woods to my left and began moving towards me.
I knew my muzzleloader was accurate out to about 100 yards so I waited for a few minutes until the buck moved within 80 yards of me. When he turned broadside to me I put my sights on his shoulder and pulled the trigger. After the smoke cleared I could see I had made a killing shot, as the buck stumbled, walked about 50 feet, and then dropped to the ground. I looked at my watch and the time was 5:20 pm, only 10 minutes until the end of the season. It was now dark and I could no longer see the buck but I knew where he had gone down. I got on my cell phone and texted my two hunting buddies, Willy and Jimmy, and told them I had killed a spike. About a half hour later Jimmy showed up with a wheeled cart and using our flashlights and the light from the half moon we carted the deer back to my truck. We had to take breaks to catch our breath since we were 700 yards from the road. During these breaks we looked up at the moon and the stars and saw two shooting stars. We both considered these to be good omens of a successful hunt.
Jimmy had taken two deer that morning, a buck and a doe, and I had helped him drag them from the woods. Now he had repaid me the favor with my buck.
Back at the hunt club I skinned and gutted my deer in our abattoir ( Slaughterhouse) keeping the backstraps and tenderloins and giving the remainder of the carcass to a fellow hunter who hadn’t taken a deer.
This was a great hunting experience and a chance to renew friendships in Lively. Plans are already in the works for next deer season in VA, God willing and the creek don't rise.
Member Testimonials
"Hooping" for lobsters in Southern CA .... by Member Fred Booth
On Thursday October 18, 2018, Laguna Woods Rod and Gun Club members Jim Williams (Club President), Chuck Bretz (Chairman Ocean Fishing) and Fred Booth, along with Fred's fishing buddy Justin Han, went lobster hooping off of Dana Point on Jim's 23 ft Grady White fishing boat. The boat was launched at 5:00 pm with Jim, Fred, and Justin aboard. With 4 lobster hoops on the boat and frozen whole bonito, from our clubs last fishing trip on the SumFun, for bait we cruised out to a spot off Salt Creek Beach where we dropped the hoops right at dark.
The floats on the lobster hoop's ropes had attached to them reflective tape and glo in the dark cyclalume sticks so they could be easily located in the dark. Jim also marked the spot where we dropped the hoops on his GPS and we motored back to the harbor to pick up Chuck who was running late due to prior commitments. While docked at the boat launch ramp Chuck joined the crew and we all enjoyed a dinner of Fred's homemade Venison Pie.
When finished with dinner we headed out, in the dark, to find and pull our hoops. Fred's fishing buddy Justin provided most of the muscle as he is a good 20+ years younger than the rest of the crew. Attempting to to pull the first hoop resulted in us losing the hoop as it had become stuck in the rocks and the rope subsequently broke. The next three hoops were empty so we made the decision to move to another location closer to Dana Point Harbor.
Soon after relocating from the Salt Creek area to a rocky spot nearer to the Dana Point breakwater, we began picking up a few lobsters in each hoop net. Fred would pick up the lobster buoy with the gaff, Justin would start pulling up the rope, with Chuck's aide and Jim would shine a hand-held spotlight into the water to spot the hoop as it came up hopefully full of lobsters.
As the night progressed we checked the 3 remaining hoops 5 or 6 times (30 minute intervals) and rebaited and reset them as we also relocated the hoops from deeper (47 ft.) to shallower water (35 ft.). The tally for the night was 21 lobsters successfully boated. However, as is common, the vast majority (16) of the lobsters were “shorts” and had to be safely returned to the water. Shorts being defined by the CA Dept of Fish & Game as small lobsters that do not meet the legal-size limit of 3 1/4" across the caracarapace/bodyshell length.
Shortly after midnight, with 5 legal lobsters in the livewell, we headed back to the harbor to put the boat on the trailer and to wash it down with fresh water before we all headed back home.
Night time lobster fishing in CA is hard, cold, wet and dirty work but when eating our steamed or barbecued lobsters, I know that Capt. Jim and his crew are ready to go and do it again.
Checking size of the lobsters
Club Photo Gallery (Click on Pix for Caption)
