Nearly fifty years of stewardship

It began with five members and a shared concern

In the late 1970s, a group of local sportsmen grew concerned at a decline in game and wildfowl in the countryside around Athenry. Rather than watch it continue, they decided to do something about it. By the start of the shooting season in 1978, Derrydonnell-Athenry Gun Club was formed.

The founding members were Tommy Madden, Willie Higgins, Dominic Mannion, Tommy Ryan and Michael Mahon. With the permission and goodwill of local farmers, whose cooperation has underpinned the club's work ever since, they set out with three clear aims: to restock game and wildfowl, to improve the habitat those species depend on, and to manage predators so that wild birds had a better chance to survive. It was an ambitious undertaking for five people, but the enthusiasm was there from the start.

Early work: rearing, releasing and restoring

In the club's early years, members hand-reared pheasants from a release pen built with the help of the Connolly family, buying in day-old poults and nursing them through to release. Over time, as the work grew, the club moved to releasing birds directly, and hundreds were returned to the countryside over the decades that followed.

Alongside the birds came the quieter, longer work of looking after the land itself: planting trees, establishing wildlife sanctuaries, and building the kind of steady relationships with landowners that let a rural club operate year after year. Predator control was part of that picture from the beginning, carried out to give both released and wild ground-nesting birds a better chance to thrive.

Club members, winners of the 1989 St Patrick's Day parade. Courtesy of the Athenry Journal.

A club built by many hands

What has kept the club going for nearly half a century is not any single person, but a steady succession of members willing to give their time. That continuity is real and it is visible: people who helped shape the club in its earlier years remain part of it today, including our President, Seamus Collins, whose involvement stretches back across the decades.

Every year the club also renews its commitment to safe, responsible practice, with firearms safety a standing part of club life. And every year it depends, as it always has, on the farmers and landowners whose support makes the work possible. Members are covered through the club's affiliation to the National Association of Regional Game Councils, which indemnifies landowners against any loss or damage arising from the club's activities.

The lake, and the next chapter

To mark the club's 40th anniversary in 2018, members took on their most ambitious project yet: the restoration of Cahertubber Lake, a wetland that had gradually closed over the years, brought back to open water for wildfowl and for the community. In 2026, working with Galway County Council, the club delivered a new carpark at the site, the first step in a wider project to make the lake more accessible and better cared for.

The club's 50th anniversary falls in 2028. Completing the Cahertubber project brings the site to its full potential in time for that milestone, and continues, in the most visible way yet, the work five people started in 1978.