Yuku free message boards

It is unfortunate that at this point pre registration has not reached a saturation point that will give the club owner a true picture of the turnout. Only about 50 to 60 % of the attendees are bothering to pre register, and many wait to the last couple of days. In this case this really backfired on the shooters by causing the cancelation of the shoot. If you think you are going to attend, pre registering at least a week in advance will really help the club owner to successfully plan the event.

Gretchen faced hiring and scheduling trappers, ordering trophies, planning food, labor to set the course, and all of the other fixed costs that go into holding an event. On monday with only 20 plus shooters signed up and by looking at the attendance of other shoots around the state in the last 30 days, pulling the plug was a wise business decision.

Pre registration really helps the day of the shoot by allowing the clubs to have the paperwork ready when the shooter arrives. This leads to quicker, shorter lines, and more smiles on everyones faces. We love I clays, but I have had shooters call me and ask about their class and lack of early sign up after looking at iclays. Davids addition of "how many looks" may help with this issue, but time will tell. He may need to rethink this.....It is only a good tool if it improves the final product.

In our case, we have to order food by tuesday moring the week of the shoot. Rock Creek tries to provide a first class meal, so this is one of our major fixed costs, that we have to pay whether shooters show up or not. Pre registration allows us to make an educated guess based on past experieince, but would be much more accurate if shooters would pre register early. At our last shoot our guestimate was off by almost 25%, and that comes right off of the bottom line.

Obviously we welcome shooters who were not able to pre register. Advertising a required number of pre registrations in order to hold the shoot of course will vary from club to club, but I will tell you this. It is pretty universal that for profit clubs (not volunteer labor) need 80 + shooters to break even. Anything less than that and I might as well be sitting on the sofa watching football with you.

.....and while I am on my soap box.....It is imperative to the future of registered shooting that we all act as ambassadors and recruit more shooters. Bring a buddy from the office, church, or a young person out to try it. People quit shooting for various reasons, and as a club owner you always wonder when a face disappears. New faces have to appear, and this happens at the grass roots level (the shooters bringing in new folks). There is little a club owner can do, but we do all we can. NSCA needs to go more mainstream in their marketing. Now there is a completely different subject.

Over saturation as an issue.....We do have a lot of shoots in Texas, and with Nationals almost two months later than it used to be people may be burning out. This will be a self correcting problem resulting in the loss of clubs, and or fewer shoots. I can guarantee that a lot of clubs will NOT have shoots next October as a result of this years October turnouts. A couple of club Owners have already told me that they are having fewer registered events next year.

I have rambled on.....

The bottom line is PREREGISTER early if you can, and recruit new folks. Think about how much it would help everyone if just 10% of the shooters brought one new person to each shoot.

Lonnie