Wrong marketing focus? Kids or yuppies?

There seems to be a consensus that the youth shooters are gone when they graduate from high school. The college kids are gone when they get their first job. Then why are we spending so much money on these two groups?

What percentage of our shooters wont be shooting in a few years when they graduate from a school?

I am not saying I have the answer. I don't see a lot of yuppy types with disposable income traveling to shoots.

Just wondering

 

Who's "we"?

 

That's because they shoot Sporting Clays.

 

Sporting clays is now feeling the pinch because of cost of shooting. They are finding out they can't compete with dad's old hunting gun any more.

 

Lehigh Valley Sporting Clays threw over 6,000,000 targets last year.

 

After the big sporting clays shoot in Tucson, I ask on of the board members how much it cost to shoot the whole shoot. The answer floored me. Cost was between $3000.00 & $4000.00 average per shooter.
It is not the money that is killing trap. It must be how the game has been dumbed down, along with the, lack of leadership.
I just returned from the Western Grand. I doubt if there was over 225 shooters in any one event. If the club is paying for the right to hold the shoot, it will not be long before there is none. I can remember when the Great Eastern club in Ohio would have much more than that on a Sunday handicap. And guess what they did not have AA points at Great Eastern. Roger C.

 

What's killing trap is the fact that it is boring. Compared to sporting clays where you walk or use a golf cart from station to station and shoot a variety of different types of targets in a variety of presentations.
It's also a more social sport compared to trap.
There's also a lack of people complaining about how the sport has deteriorated or been dumbed down or the targets are too easy or

This is what's killing trap shooting

 

Win 101,

How long have you been shooting ATA sponsored trap? You sound like a NUBEE. Apparently you do not know the game of the good old days of competition. Many of the people that complain about the present condition of the game, gave more to it than you ever will. Please do not try to belittle their efforts by snide remarks. They only make you sound like a jack a$$. This answer is directed to your last statement about the complaining. You will never know what has been lost because you never experienced it. Roger C.

 

Roger,
The game evolved to what it is today, for whatever reasons. Rule changes, Pat traps, voice callers, locations, etc. The good old days are gone. The money and cars and guns that used to be available are gone. Again for whatever reasons. The ATA changed along with or let the changes happen.
I am not belittling the old timers at all. I'm thankful for their efforts, otherwise we wouldn't have the 1000's of places to shoot that we do.
The game changed.
How many of the old timers sat back and let it happen?
The only thing I know "right now" is the game is now what it is.
The people that will replace the current delegates and EC of the ATA will probably only know the game as it is now. The cycle will continue as it has since trapshooting began.

 

Win101 Roger knows that I have been yelling about what he is talking about for at least 25 years. The ATA started down the tubes when they dumbed it down in the mid 90's. I firmly lay the blame at Neil Winston's feet. If you look at all most all the dumb ass rule changes that have happened you can trace them back to his time on the EC. In fairness I will say that the ground work for him to be able to screw up the sport as well as he did was started before him.

Sometime in the early 80's the grand put in the million dollar camping spots and the ATA started the long descent into what it is today, a camping group that shoots a little registered practice for ribbons. Any resemblance to what I started shooting in 1974 is dead.

I would like to know how many years you have been shooting, you can answer it if you like. It is hard for US old-timers to see what we had and what we got, so I suspect Roger who is older than me, feels worse than I do, which is awful. Brad

 

Brad, Do you remember when we were shooting at the club in Las Vagas and it rained very hard. You drug a skid over the the 27 yrd. line to stand on so your feet would stay dry. Those were the days of stiff competition, not this mambey pambey shit we have now. I also started shooting in 1974, but I was much older than you were at that time. It is a shame what our great sport has degenerated down to. We did live through the greatest part of it didn't we. Roger C.

 

Roger and Brad what are you whining about ? You should have seen how tough it was in the old days. LOL
I just couldn't resist throwing this in.
In my opinion our sport has surely changed since the 60's and 70's and not for the sports good. At the grand it was the million dollar campgrounds. Then the bank system so the campers could shoot right out in front of their camp spot instead of walking a few traps. Then the Ford purses disappeared. By the way what ever happened to all the repeat ford purse money that you were guaranteed if you repeated on a ford purse? Now they want everyone to win a ribbon.
Now they even guarantee a larger number of AA points at some of the shoots than are awarded at other shoots that have a larger attendance. Also why did they reduce the top number for AA points at PA and OH shoots a few years ago?

Dave Berlet

 

David,
Brad and I are the new kids on the block. We played the hand that was dealt to us, we did not opt to dumb the down the game we loved the stiff competition. I was wondering, did they have donuts way back when you started shooting? Roger C.

 

The "wrong marketing focus" has NOTHING to do with age .....

IF ..... "Trap" is "marketing"/offering NOTHING but an expensive "social sport", against "Sporting Clays" that is offering the same, "Trap" will lose, and is losing in a very bad way .....

IF ..... a "Casino" stopped offering a "fair" chance at big cash and valuable prizes, and gave useless "points" and plastic ducks, they would suffer the same fate .....

 

Roger, did they have donuts back then? Yes they did and boy you should have seen how they put the holes in them back in those days.

Dave Berlet

 

David, Is that how you worked your way through school? Roger C.

 

Roger it would have been great to have one of those jobs, but at that time I was a mere newbie and all those high profile jobs seemed to land right in the lap of folks who were privileged and in confidence with the inside crew. Now that this subject has come up I am just wondering who is in charge of the donut holes now. Maybe if you asked Brad, he could find out who is in charge of this department now? Maybe we need a chart or graph to figure out how this is all playing out? Any new information on this subject please keep me informed.

Dave Berlet

 

Dave, It must be one of the new girley boys that shoot now. I have noticed that the donut holes have been getting smaller year after year. I hope the sisters never heard of how to make the holes in their donuts. were safe, I hope. Roger C.

 

Roger if I got this figured out correctly wouldn't it a possibility that the smaller the hole in the donut the larger the donut would be? Also I don't know if larger donuts would necessarily be a good thing for our finely tuned bodies, but I believe we could find a way to tough through extra large donuts kinda like we used to handle those 3 hole targets. All this donut talk is making me hungry.

Dave Berlet

 

Why aren't donuts called what they really are 'FAT PILLS" Take 2 for a headache and you don't have to go to bed.

 

Now David, Control your self, save some for me. Roger C.

 

A few of the local kids (38 yo's) stopped in yesterday. It seems they needed to borrow a gun because he, his wife and cousin wanted to go out shooting. Guess what-off to the local Sporting Clays range at $38/100. He works construction, she's an engineer and he's one of my former trapboys from years ago. Not enough disposable income to shoot trap some say?-BS!

 

I forgot to mention. They called the local course first and was told to expect at least an hr. to get on. They declined and drove nearly 1 hr.to another course that wasn't as crowded. These kids make more money than I ever dreamed of making in the steel mill. I don't believe the course was filled with hamburger flippers or communications majors.

 

You Ohio and PA shooters can yap all you want. And you can be right. And you are. The dumbing down of the sport, easier targets, all for trinket and point chasers, ruined the handicapping system.

The successful trapshooting states get it. Tooo bad! Sucks to be right sometimes. Because you have a state like Mississippi that cant get enough shooters to earn an easy yard. Mississippi and their 15 shooters per event have as much voting power as PA despite the 20-1 difference in shooters.

Just ask the weirdo from Montana. He likes the easier yardage. Montana cancels Ohio's vote. PA and OH don't need the ATA management. The ATA needs OH and PA money.

 

Family Guy, Could you be a bit more descriptive about the Montana idiot? Is he short and ugly? I under stand that he is the shaker and mover behind the trap shooting mecca of Montana. We must be very nice to him other wise, I may have made some disparaging remarks about his mental capacity.
I went to the Montana state shoot a couple of years back. Met some very nice folks up there. It was a good very well run shoot. Nice trophies, well set targets, many nice competitors. I guess I never met the idiot. Roger C.

 

What money are you spending? The way I see it these youth shooters are keeping some of these clubs alive. Sure clubs may not be making full price money on the youth shooters but they are making some money...and some money is better than none.

 

At the club where I do my shooting sporting clays is flourishing. Skeet and trap not so much. In registered trap there are less than 15 shooters. Registered sporting clays usually garners 30 to 50 shooters.

 

JMG, what do you think has caused the demise of the allure of new people to the trap and skeet game? If things do not pick up, in the next 10 years the game will be gone. Many shooters are over the age of 65, many will not be shooting much longer. The leaders of the organization do not seem to have the foresight to replace the shooters that will be lost. Add that to the shooters that will move to other venues and we have a disaster in the making. Sad but all to true. Roger C.

 

Yep, Roger has it.
The youth are the future of the sport. The best we can do is support them.

Regards....Gerald

 

The SCTP had just shy of 2000 kids shoot trap singles at the CC. Why they shot them ATA is a wonder to me. According to the ATA themselves One Third of the ATA is Jr and Sub Jr shooters. What do they have to look foreword to after they get out of school, Jr Gold, what a joke. If you want them to WANT to shoot give something away worth winning, put the 3 hole back go to 55 yard targets, quit being pussies shooting for plastic pin AA points.

I just saw on TV the the sperm count of the Western male has went down 60% since 1973 and they don't know why. COULD IT BE that they don't have any balls. I can't understand how all the dumb asses running the ATA can continually ignore the FACTS. At least Trump pitched the he/she's out of the military yesterday. My kid really liked that. Brad

 

I actually created an account simply to post a reply to this thread. I guess I'd be one of the "yuppies" referred to in the thread. I'm in my rookie year of ATA trap, having started just before my 40th birthday. I grew up in South Louisiana shooting sporting clays and 5 stand in my teenage years and only started shooting trap because I'm about 30 minutes from Cardinal and my regular indoor range has a bunch of traps out back that were a lot less crowded than the sporting clay course. I hadn't picked up a shotgun since at least 2000 when I decided to start trapshooting, and even then, it was only a means to an end because I wanted to shoot International trap. I thought I'd start on ATA then work my way up, but I started having fun with ATA and decided to stick around a little longer.

To Win101's point, ATA trap is pretty boring, and that's because it's so incredibly easy. When someone that hasn't picked up a shotgun more than a couple times this millennium can walk out and break an 89 and a 180 in his first weekend (2016 Labor Day Invitational) having just bought the shotgun a couple weeks earlier (from Dawson's at the Cardinal Classic), and within his first year of shooting be breaking high 90's in both singles (99 in my second registered shoot) and handicap (96 in my 4th registered shoot), it says something about the sport as a whole.

I know I don't have to tell you guys, but trapshooting is an incredibly expensive past time. My actual expenses for the Ohio State shoot were $2,561.53, not including the cost of gas to get there and back home. Of that, $795 was for options, and I made back $510 in winnings. I also spent $5,000 on a new shotgun at the shoot. While a lot of folks in my peer group do have that kind of disposable income, they have that income because they work their asses off and usually can't take a whole lot of time off work to attend the bigger shoots. Hell, I don't even take off work; I bring my laptop and mobile hotspot with me to Cardinal and schedule events around my work calendar. If I didn't have that ability, I wouldn't be attending those shoots.

Then, there's the whole "what's in it for me?" aspect. I can go out to Cardinal, spend $600 on entry fees for a week of shooting, another $600 in ammo for the event, and if I win the championship, what do I go home with? A shitty trophy that will do nothing but collect dust. Hell, I got runner-up in the Handicap Championship at the last event I shot at Cardinal and it got me 4x4 inch jewelry box with the Cardinal Center logo on the top of it. I shouldn't have to "gamble" to get a payout for winning an event. Instead of charging $30 for the entry, charge $40 and put that extra $10 towards paying people some cash. The singles championship at the Ohio state shoot had 1,097 shooters. That's $10,970 in prize money that could have been raised and paid out.

Finally, look at what the sport is populated by. 10ga32, in the original post, wanted to know why would the ATA spend any money trying to bring in the youth shooters or the yuppies when they don't stick around. The reason they don't stick around is because it's a sport populated by senior citizens that have nothing in common with them. The average ATA member is a 55 year old white guy that lives in a rural area with his wife and drives a pick-up truck. I look a little out of place showing up at a shoot as someone that's 15 years younger than that and drives a BMW. But, while I don't let those differences between myself and my fellow shooters deter me, many Gen-X'ers and especially millennials aren't as open-minded. Also, it might help to take the overt racism down a notch... Just once I'd like to attend a shoot and not have to hear people bitching about the "n*ggers" and "Mexicans" ruining "their country".

 

So, how is it going in thou shall not blasphemy "Gipson Inc" land, AKA Kool Aid land ?????

If you do not like "to hear people bitching about the "n*ggers" and "Mexicans" ruining "their country", Kool Aid land should offend your sensibilities .....