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First It’s that time of the year to relieve all that cabin fever. It’s a great
time to get outside and enjoy the warmer weather. This includes a time to shoot
without freezing your hands or shivering plus not having to wear all that bulky
clothing that screwed up your scores all winter long.
At the range I go to I run two Claybuster shoots a year. I started it last year
and it really grew in popularity. It’s a fun shoot for the whole family and you
don’t have to be a great shooter to come out ahead! I have noticed when you run
events that are competitive as far as scores, it tends to make the not so good
shooters shy away from participating. By leveling out the playing field everyone
has fun and an equal chance to be on top. Ok, your saying so what’s a
Claybusters shoot?
Well first of all you can name it anything you want, I just picked Claybusters.
It’s a shotgun shooting event first of all, but really easy to organize. You
order “x” amount of cases of white birds. I also spend the time hand painting
two cases of sky blue birds. You place these colored birds in between the
regular orange birds.
I charge $20.00 per person to enter the event. Out of that money $15.00 is used
to purchase prizes. The other $5.00 I use for food. The shooters pay the normal
fee to the counter to shoot trap or skeet. They may shoot as many rounds as they
like between 9 AM and 1 PM Every time they break a white bird they get a chance
from a roll of tickets towards the prizes. If they break a blue bird they get a
chance from a different roll of tickets toward a money prize. Their score
doesn’t mean zip and I don’t even look at it. This makes novice and less
accurate shooters very happy. If they break all the white and blue birds and
miss every one of the orange ones they are way ahead and no one knows when they
will come out! The expert shooter could end up with a lot of orange and the
novice could end up with a lot of colored ones.
Now I never buy real expensive prizes. I usually try to stay in the 5-30 dollar
range so I can buy more prizes and give people more chances to win something.
Last year I pulled $50.00 out for the money prize. If you get more shooters make
the money prize bigger or create two of them. Prizes vary from free rounds of
trap—shot—shells—wads--$ in envelopes---Hoppe’s fluid---powder--turkey
decoy—just a bunch of various things so there are many prizes.
As far as the food I get Italian beef, green peppers, and potato chips, bread
and pop. I tell them anytime between ten and noon they can stop back and present
their meal ticket for a sandwich. This is not a hard lunch to make and if you
get good beef everyone loves it. The first time I ran it I got twenty people.
The second time I got 36 people. Word of mouth about how much fun and laughs it
was word spread, making the second event even greater. You need a deadline of
two weeks before for the money to be in. Also plan a rain date for the following
weekend just in case.
I let people sign up the day of the event, but told them I couldn’t promise them
lunch, as that was bought ahead of time. I used their money to buy more shells
or converted it into cash envelopes. Don’t mark on the outside of the envelope
the amount of money in it. Let it all be a surprise. You can vary the amounts
from $5 to $20.
The two at Bristol Ranges (Bristol WI.) that I am running are May 13th and Aug.
19th. Money is due two weeks before. The phone # is (262) 857-7200 or check out
the website: www.bristolranges.com
Games like this can be done at the rifle and pistol ranges also with colored
balloons or colored paper behind targets. You just have to suit down and think
it out. It’s really not that hard and you will enjoy seeing the people laugh and
have fun. Never make scores count!!!
I hope I have given you an idea you can run with. This is a great way to gain
new shooters also and plus make it a family event.
They can say what they want, but I still believe the smell of gunpowder in the
morning beats the smell of bacon and eggs!
Enjoy—it’s a great time of the year.
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