Sausage shoot celebrates 65 years

For 65 years, hundreds of people have not only enjoyed shooting, rolling dice and playing cards at the Dusty Gun Club, they come for the real prize.

Since 1948 the smell of sausage has permeated the air around the Dusty Gun Club once a year. And judging by the number of people there on Feb. 10, some estimating more than 200, the sausage is what draws them.

According to gun club member Mark Vogler, the annual sausage shoot attracts people from not only the local area, but all across the state along with Oregon and Idaho.

“They must like our sausage,” he said.

Gun club members start out with more than a ton of raw meat. They smoke the sausage themselves using mostly willow wood along with other woods and a blend of spices which Vogler would not reveal.

“We have to have some secrets,” he said.

Members start to smoke the sausage the Thursday before the shoot, smoking 10 to 12 hours each day through Saturday.

Dick Appel remembers when his father, the late Don Appel who was a charter member, helped other members butcher the hogs at Fritz Steiger’s place near Dusty.

The club house originally was across the road from its present location until 1974 when the state rerouted the highway.

“There’s bigger crowds now,” Appel said on Sunday morning. “A lot of the same people come back, so evidently, our sausage is good.”

Appel said the club has few members with perhaps 15 attending their occasional meetings, but between 30 to 35 members making sausage and getting the clubhouse ready for the annual event.

Appel also said he believes the future holds more sausage shoots for the club.

“It seems like we have more ladies and kids,” he said. “It won’t die as long as we can keep the young kids coming and we’ll keep on making sausage.”