A problem that a lot of clubs have is that a large portion of their regular shooters are retired or nearing retirement. When you think about what happened to most of the retirement plans last year, in the market, it is easy to understand the drop in shooting. If you lost a third or more of your lifetime savings your shooting would be down also.
I am active in three clubs. One is down a lot in shooting but they have no real debts to worry about. The two others are trying to keep shooters active with fun, low cost shoots. They are worried that the membership may suffer a large decrease at renewal time. Shells are up, targets are up and jobs are not going that well for too many.
I am working on a fun shoot for Skeet where each station has a gun and shells on it and all shooters must use the same gun. Couple pump guns, a long barrel bolt action, lever action, side by side on a couple stations, bent barrel auto on a station, gun with no sights on a station, Wheel chair to shoot from at a station, a trap gun on seven or station eight. Lots of work rounding up all the guns and loading shells for the shoot. Every shooter needs what amounts to a box of shells. So we charge $4.00 for targets and I donate about 20-30 boxes of shells. Shooters can reenter but the second round cost $8.00, third round cost $12.00. One fellow shot four rounds and thought it was a blast.
Make a high score the last thing to worry about and have a shoot where people laugh at each other and not get mad. Gadget shoots are fun and stir up the interest the first time or two you do them. Give away a turkey to the top score and lowest score.
