We are Crew 357, officially chartered by the Massachusetts Rifle Association (MRA)in Woburn and part of the Venturing program. We are newly formed and have just been officially charted in 2015. Venturing is a Scouting program oriented towards older teens. Similar to the Boy Scouts, the program is run by the BSA and thus has essentially the same objectives. A major difference between Boy Scouts and Venturing is that Venturing is organized into crews rather than troops. A crew tends to be much smaller than Boy Scout troops and usually each crew is based on an activity. This crew, crew 357, is centered around shooting sports. As a crew, our goals are to foster a healthy respect for firearms, develop our shooting skills, and promote Scouting values. We hold meetings every few weeks at the Mass Rifle Association range where we learn about gun safety, shoot guns, and plan outing trips. The shooting club we are hosted at has a variety of ranges and shooting activities available, including trap, sporting clays, long range rifle shooting, pistol shooting, and archery. We also plan on going on a few trips throughout the year. The benefit of being in Venturing is that we are much less restricted than in Boy Scouts. One of these benefits are that we are allowed to use a larger variety of firearms, including pistols. Due to having more freedom in Venturing, we possess many more opportunities in terms of possible trips and activities. Some trips we could potentially go on are trips to gun shows, camping trips to New Hampshire, and high adventure trips. Our small crew size allows us to do whatever the crew members want to do. We are open to all youth, male and female, ages 14 to 21. We require that all members are able to be mature enough to properly adhere to gun safety rules during all events. We try to have our Crew meetings every 2nd and 4th Friday of the month from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm at MRA. If you are interested in joining, please email us.
Yours in Scouting,
Jeffrey, Raymond, Brendan and Evan Founders of Crew 357