Will your club be around in 10 years?

I've been a member of a half dozen clubs over the years. A couple of em have closed down. I'm down to being a member of only 2 clubs now. The larger one has more members now than we ever had in our history, but we shoot less targets than when we had 1/3 the members. I'm convinced it will be around in 10 years.

The other club - we got maybe 90 members. We had a meeting the other night. 41 members showed up to drink beer, eat. We stopped shooting on meeting nights - 25 years ago. No interest. I should say it is a 2 trap club, but in name we are a Conservation Club. All our money comes from the shoots we hold. We are doing quite well financially, but member wise?

I asked for a show of hands the other night - of how many members were under the age of 60. I counted 5 hands. Asked how many under age 65 - I counted 7. Now I know only half our members were there but the half who didn't show are too old to drive at night anymore and only come to events we have during day.

So LESS than 25% of our members are under age 65. How the heck are we going to survive in 10 years? We've (the club) purchased flowers for 7 funerals this year for members who have died this year.

Anytime there is any discussion about attracting new members, we just table the discussion. I guess we are just too old to give a shut to do anything about it? Me included.

I would say - the last person to leave the club be sure to turn out the lights, but why? What do we care, nobody going to be around to have to pay the light bill anyway.LOL

 

Sounds familiar.

 

I'd recommend that you look into getting a SCTP youth team set up for your club. A good dose of the kids and their parents around the club may energize some of you old coots into action plus make you feel a little more optimistic about trap shooting when you view it through the eyes of those newcomers, I know it does me.

I haven't shot any ATA for a long time but I go down to the Cardinal Center at least one day that the SCTP nationals are going on to remind me what I enjoyed about a big shoot back when I was shooting. The atmosphere of that shoot is a close to what Vandalia used to be. If you are close to the CC I'd recommend a field trip for anyone. Get a couple club members to go with you.

 

I sure the 250+ people on our 10 year waiting list hope so.

 

No, many have already closed and most are hanging on my their finger nails. The ones still open in the next 10 years will not be throwing many ATA targets is any, unless ATA management makes a major course correction very soon which is highly unlikely.

 

Great, and how many are trapshooters?

 

Probably around 10%

My club was established in 1946. I joined in 1978 and got involved with helping management around 1989. Free membership the last few years due to my "elder" age and length of service. I was elected to the board at least 3 different times with either a 1 or 2 year term.We installed our 5 stand in 1995 and I helped run it with one other member from 4:00 PM to 11:00PM EVERY FRIDAY NIGHT for 5 years. Didn't take my wife out to dinner once because I was one of the people that instigated the purchase and installation of it and was going to make sure it didn't fail. You should have heard the Trap shooters bitch that it would never work and we were going to lose our shirts. Payed off the 15K + cost in a little over 2 years and it is still open, to the public, every Tuesday evening. I quit doing it after the 5 year hitch.

Along with the 30+ free hours on the 5 stand I cut the grass and plowed snow for 2 years at $250.00 a month . That worked out to be a hair over a whopping $1.25 an hour for the time I spent "at the club".

We held ata shoots 4 or 5 times a year along with a 500 bird marathon in April and always had great turnouts. People looked forward to coming and shooting our big 3 day event in May. Our members only club shoots had some of the best prizes around. A 12 LB. keg of 700X for the winner of the 50 singles event.

The dues when I started were $40 per year. Now it costs $200 to join and $100 per year. There are OVER 1700 members now and the waiting list has been closed for the last couple of years. They will be signing papers later this month on an adjoining 4 acres with an older farm house we purchased for 220 THOUSAND dollars.

I wrote all of the above to show I have been involved up to my eyeballs since around 1990 and have helped run a lot of the events. We were always busy planning and getting ready for the next registered shoot.

Now with over 1700 members we haven't held a marathon in years, stopped the 4 or 5 ata shoots, the club winter league has gone from 150 to less than half and the Thursday night practice, which used to go until 10:00-11:00PM is over at 8:00, last week it was closer to 7:00. Traps closed, lights off. Only the annie shooters on one field are there. But, this place will definitely be around in 10 years. Just goes to show ya, Trap shooting isn't the backbone of the club any longer but the place keeps growing.

Maybe that 10% estimate on the number of Trap shooters on that 250 list was a little high.

 

Our club has 850 members. Five hundred of them are paying members. The rest are life, honorary or non resident.

I would say we have 100 trap shooters and 50 of them are ATA shooters. Skeet is about the same and SC and hunting make up the rest of the club.

Getting people to shoot registered targets is hard. I run the skeet program. We have two big four gun shoots a year.

 

Our old club in NY was 50-50 for Trap and Skeet since 1938.

Before that it was strictly a trap club, situated on the shore of Canandaigua Lake in the Finger Lakes.

In the '90's we were loosing shooters every week to the local Sporting Clays clubs, and had to do something different to survive.



We cleared out a path on our 42 acres and installed a makeshift Sporting Clays course for the members.

Today there are no skeet field, and only one trap field left there that is "rarely" used if at all.

The club has grown beyond anyone's imagination with a waiting list for membership, and it is said they have one of he best Sporting and 5 Stand facilities around.

Sad but true, smaller clubs are being forced to do things other than trap and skeet if they want to survive in the coming years.

A flyer from 1989, the club's 75th anniversary.

Those were the days ~~~~~

 

I'm from the great gun friendly state of Kalifornia(sarcasm) A couple of years ago, my son joined his school's unofficial trap club. The club has over 50 shooters and has grown each year. For the last two years we've been traveling around CA for various tournaments and there are hundreds of kids at these events. All nice kids from rural and urban areas. No one is fighting, arguing, just a bunch of kids all having a good time competing. We went to the CYSSA Nationals last year in Las Vegas, and there were thousands of kids competing from many different clubs trap. A fraction did sporting clays. I think the sport of trap is growing in CA. There seems to be more kids coming out to the range. This is of course contrary to what the politicians here want everyone to believe.