Beech Tree News Network

Provo native, Boyd Truelove is the 2014 inductee into the Kentucky Trapshooting Hall of Fame. The ceremony will take place on July 4th as part of the annual Kentucky State Shoot at the Central Kentucky Gun Club near Berea. As part of the program, the Kentucky Hall of Fame Handicap will be named in honor of Truelove.

Shooting highlights and a biography of Truelove are as follows:
Boyd Truelove, a lifetime Amateur Trapshooting Member (ATA number 2109059), began to shoot trap seriously in 1979, shooting 1,900 targets that year. The following year he won the President Handicap Championship at the Grand American, marking the beginning of trapshooting career that has seen many years of sustained success and consistently high scores.

During the 1980s, Boyd had three years in which he carried a 99-plus singles average, including one year at 99.40, which was among the nation's top 10. During his seven or eight busiest years of shooting, Boyd's single average was 98.40. His lifetime singles average is 97.41. His longest run in singles was over 700 targets. He has broken thirteen 200 straights, twenty-two 199s and about ninety 100 straights (as best as his records reflect). His doubles average during the 1980s and early 1990s was 94.51 and the highest was 96.30. Because of that kind of shooting, Boyd was a member of the Kentucky State Team nine times during the 1980s and early 1990s.

On the following page are listed 93 major ATA competitions in which Boyd won or placed in an event (omitted here). Of those 93 competitions, Boyd won 53 championships that included 16 high overall or high all-around championships, 19 AA championships (there was no AAA class at the time) and 21 others. Of his wins and places, 41 were in singles, 27 were in doubles, 9 were in handicap and 16 were HOA/HAA.

Boyd returned to trapshooting in 2004 after several years' hiatus that began in the early 1990s due to assistance his elderly parents required. When his mother passed away in 1995, Boyd spent most weekends caring for his father until he passed away in 2009. He shot only 200 targets in 2004 but broke 100 straight to win the Class-A Preliminary Singles Championship at Tennessee on his very first return to competitive shooting in over a decade! He really began shooting quite a bit again in 2011 and that year won the 2011 Veterans Singles Championship at the Kentucky state shoot. He repeated the Veterans Singles Championship at Kentucky in 2012 and also won the Veterans Class Championship. He also was the 2012 Veterans runner-up in the Singles Championship at the Southern Zone.

Boyd was born June 15, 1946, in Provo, Kentucky. He is a graduate of Western Kentucky University, where he captained the WKU Rifle Team and was in the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps program. He is a Vietnam War veteran, recipient of the Bronze Star, and National Rifle Association member. As Business and Finance Director with Berry Plastics, a Fortune 500 company, Boyd oversees the finance, accounting, and cost control of several manufacturing facilities located in the Southeast. He spends a great deal of time with his three children and six grandchildren. As a lifelong outdoorsman and hunter, Boyd hunts all manner of game on his family farm in Butler County, Kentucky, and in recent years has hunted in Alaska, Canada, and completed four plains and big game safaris in Africa.
Visit http://www.kytrap.com/ky-state-shoot/ for more information.

Story by Roger Southerland, Beech Tree News