I saw on the RJ Stuart link on this site that the Karen Cup actually finished down significantly. At first glance it looks like it was up but a new event was held. The new handicap had 140 shooters. Without that they actually had 51 fewer entries.
That would not be a good sign, think of how many less will probably shoot the biggest little shoot in the world in Aug ... WPT ... (YAC) ...
shooting the same time as the greatlakes grand might be the reason its down, they might be up on entries up north.
Great Lakes Grand,Memorial weekend,dark and dreary Friday morning,heavy downpoors Friday night.A lot of shooters chose to shoot Saturday's added handicap and bypass Sunday's caps so they could hit the road early.Besides,the Buckeye Classic starts Wednesday.These things all add up attendance wise.
The Great Lakes Shoot was going on at the same time as Karens Cup, which was not good, I Suggest That Karens Cup be held on another Date GB...............................................DLS
Pretty full schedule there Doc, and just two days between Karen's Cup and the start of the Buckeye - Karen's Cup is just a warm-up for shooters and probably for the CC staff.
The Karen's Cup shoot is simply taking the place of the old Jaqua's Memorial weekend shoot. The Jaquas shoot and the Great Lakes Grand were traditionally held the same weekend.
Throw in the fact that the weather report for Sunday had a sever thunder storm with possible tornado in the middle of the day might also played a factor in the lower numbers. For that reason alone I almost did not go. Also, good shooting Rick Springer who broke a 99 in the pre-caps missing his 98th target from the 27.
Maybe shooters aren't shooting ATA as much. The great lakes shoot and Jaqua's shoots used to have over 1000 shooters between them on the weekend, also the Great Eastern had a shoot. So what I say is today you have fewer and fewer, older and older shooters shooting. Why do you think the ATA was so desperate to get the SCTP to register their singles events? According to some info I've seen the Jr and Sub Jr shooters make up over a third of the ATA membership. They don't travel to shoots they shoot SCTP. If anyone on here wants to see a big trap shoot go to the SCTP shoot in July at the Cardinal. I'll make a bet it's not DOWN from last year's. Brad