SHOOTING: Bob Campbell was an inaugural member of the Warwick Pistol Club 44 years ago and has seen the club grow to five ranges.

"We now have Thursday night and Sunday morning shoots,” the current club captain said.

"The club started with one 25m range and 10 bays, now we have five ranges and 60 shooting positions.

"Membership was 60 up to the time of the gun buyback and since then we have maintained a membership of around 40.”

This weekend, the club has one of its two major shoots for the year, the 34th annual Warwick Rose and Rodeo City Open pistol shoot. The shoot will double as the South West Regional Championships.

There are 66 nominations from as far as Adelaide, Collarenebri, Lismore and Rockhampton.

"We are using four ranges this weekend and will have up to 45 shooters in action at the same time,” he said.

"A few of our members are officials for this weekend's shoot.

The first of the action will be today with standard match, air pistol, standard match, precision and rapid fire.

Campbell said the club only shot standard match in the 1970s.

"My father Mal Campbell and I went to two meetings at the QCWA which were called to gain interest in forming a club,” Bob said.

"We had to have a minimum of 30 members to form the club and each member paid $30 membership. The cost of a packet of bullets has gone up from $1 to a minimum of $5.

"The club progressively built four more ranges in the 1980s and 1990s.”

He said the biggest change over the years was the building of the indoor air pistol range and installation of the electronic target carriers.

"The carriers carry the target the 10m to the end of the range for each individual shooter and then electronically bring the targets back to the shooter for scoring.

"Everyone can shoot in their own time. They are allocated 90 minutes for 60 shots. Some shooters take under an hour while I take one hour, 20 minutes.

"Each shooter has two shots at each of 30 paper targets and the scoring is done electronically through a scoring machine.

"The electronics on the air pistol range cost $8000 last year and have made the sport safer.

"There are 12 shooting positions on the air pistol range. Air pistol this weekend will be shot Friday and Saturday.

The Warwick range is used each year by the Queensland Police Service for training purposes in the police district.

Warwick club member Ross Dossetto lives in Brisbane but heads to Warwick at least once a month to compete.

"I am always at the major shoots in February and October,” he said.

With 66 nominations from two states, there will be 220 matches over the three days.

Most shooters will be involved in between two and five matches.

Prospective new members are welcome to the range from 1pm today to speak to club members and have a look at the action.

Shooting from 8am tomorrow and Sunday.

Trophies this weekend will be presented on Sunday afternoon by Member for Southern Downs James Lister.

The range is on Rosehill Rd,, just past John Dee Warwick.