My club is now anti-competition

D

doghunter

New member
My Club is now Anti-Competition

I am a member of a club in Australia. We have about 1,400 registered members of which we are lucky to see less than half attend the range in a given year.

Many are what are fondly known as 'Magazine Members', they registered as members (and paid the fee) to justify their firearms licence conditions. As many of them are hunters I respect their choice. So they receive the SSAA magazine as part of their membership (hence the nickname).

Last December (2018) a member was elected to the club committee by utilising multiple proxy votes from 'magazine members' most of whom we have not seen before or since, but apparently quite legitimate as all names were checked.

One immediate consequence was that our monthly competitions were cancelled.

Excuses given ranged from 'Not enough participants to warrant the prizes' to 'The same people win all the time'

The prize money was not an issue, entry fees covered that. As for winning, the people who practised often seemed to do better than the casual shooters, although much time was expended to assist new competitors with practical hands on assistance and advice.

Now a new regime of 'A few big competitions a year with big prizes' has been promised after protests from the regular monthly competitors. Of course, the prizes are redeemable only only at the business of our new committee member, who just happens to own a gun-shop.

Any ideas how to stop this rot my fellow competitors?

(I don't want to join another club)

* doggie *
 
Run for office next election on the "give everyone a ribbon theory." Seriously I would gather like minded folks and go to the board or whoever. Politics is a worldwide problem. Good luck.

Later
Dave
 
doghunter said:
My Club is now Anti-Competition

I am a member of a club in Australia. We have about 1,400 registered members of which we are lucky to see less than half attend the range in a given year.

Many are what are fondly known as 'Magazine Members', they registered as members (and paid the fee) to justify their firearms licence conditions. As many of them are hunters I respect their choice. So they receive the SSAA magazine as part of their membership (hence the nickname).

Last December (2018) a member was elected to the club committee by utilising multiple proxy votes from 'magazine members' most of whom we have not seen before or since, but apparently quite legitimate as all names were checked.

One immediate consequence was that our monthly competitions were cancelled.

Excuses given ranged from 'Not enough participants to warrant the prizes' to 'The same people win all the time'

The prize money was not an issue, entry fees covered that. As for winning, the people who practised often seemed to do better than the casual shooters, although much time was expended to assist new competitors with practical hands on assistance and advice.

Now a new regime of 'A few big competitions a year with big prizes' has been promised after protests from the regular monthly competitors. Of course, the prizes are redeemable only only at the business of our new committee member, who just happens to own a gun-shop.

Any ideas how to stop this rot my fellow competitors?

(I don't want to join another club)

* doggie *
Click to expand...

This really sucks.

Many clubs are just like yours, the vast majority of members have no interest in shooting in a competitive match.

At my home club, we have Matches for Pistol, Rimfire, Military, and Benchrest score. The Matches don't cost the club anything, as entry fees pay for the targets for the various Matches.In the Benchrest Club Matches,the targets the ribbons we give for 1st, 2d, and 3d in three classes are donated by me each year. They are nice enough and it avoids having to worry about spending the clubs resources, since we are a small club limited to 300 members. In fact, the club actually makes about $1500 a year as the $15 entry fees are turned in to the club.

Heck, I won't even get to participate in the April 7 Club Match because we have the NBRSA Gulf Coast Region VFS Championship at Lake Charles that same day.

But that's ok. Supporting my Club as best I can is important. As they say, having a membership in The Tomball Gun Club is worth it's weight in great bullets.
 
The same thing has happened in Sydney. A range that was built by benchrest shooters has not held a benchrest competition in 4 or 5 years. The range has been overtaken by for the most part hunters. And thats fine, we all pay to use the range and keep it open. I still go there for BR practice and load development. Everyone is friendly enough, most of the people who go there have never seen a full on BR rifle and stare at it when its racked for a target change. I dont know whats going on but it seems most of the BR comps are held in 2-3 ranges along the 3500km east coast.
 
At some clubs “over here” there are memberships for those who don’t participate as much as others and they are members without voting privileges. MGGOA at Dublin, Georgia and Webster City, Iowa are two such clubs where I may hit the once a year for a match. Isco County in Michigan is another in which I hold Platinum Membership without voting priveleges. I have a non-voting membership to support the club and not voting is a non-issue with me. With so many non-shooters at this juncture may be a tough sell in Australia but flood a meeting and push it through.
 
may i suggest you start by reading the club bylaws.
how does a single person make all these changes with no member input ?
if not legal, challenge
if legal work on a campaign to replace the offending person.
we had an issue with cowboy shooters trying to run our club and make money for them, not our club.
took a year but they are gone.
 
I guess this would be exactly why any organization like this should require a board to eliminate the possability of single man rule.
 
retired said:
may i suggest you start by reading the club bylaws.
how does a single person make all these changes with no member input ?
if not legal, challenge
if legal work on a campaign to replace the offending person.
we had an issue with cowboy shooters trying to run our club and make money for them, not our club.
took a year but they are gone.
Click to expand...

Thanks retired (and others who answered).

None of the regular competitors were consulted about this matter. It was presented to us as a 'fait accompli' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fait_Accompli

A member who was organising the monthly competitions (including collating scores and doing all the paperwork) was a member of the committee and at the meeting that made this sad decision he took along a pile of statistics that he printed out to demonstrate that the competitions were financially viable and actually returned a healthy profit to the club. When he attempted to pass these around he was told that it was not necessary.

It does appear that this new committee member is trying to promote his business, the range has suddenly sprouted signs advertising such and those signs for our long standing sponsors have 'mysteriously' vanished. The manner of his election was a well planned affair as it took time to contact a heap of members that do not normally attend our range (and have not been seen since) and get their signatures on proxy voting forms.

What is even more worrying when I encountered one of his friends in a local gunshop (he did not know me from Adam) he asked if I was a member of a club. When I told him he asked if I knew xxx, so I said yes,"He's our new Chief Range Officer" and the reply was "And he's going to be your new President next year".

Yep, a few people are looking into legal ways to get rid of this person as we just want to compete without politics or vested business interests dictating how and when we shoot.

Regards * doggie *
 
On the other side of the coin, I can't ever recall competitions being run midweek as a matter of course, so it's not difficult if you have more than a few of disciplines for competitions to take over the range every weekend leaving casual shooters out in the cold.
 
I am fortunate to belong to one club that has enough range space to run a large competition and still have enough room for casual shooters in several other disciplines. This club is a long drive for me, but I know that I can go there any time and find room to shoot. I also shoot in many of their competitions.

Clubs are strange animals and prone to factions. In a typical New England Fish and Game club you might have your archery faction, your rabbit faction, your cowboy faction, your trap and/or skeet faction and so on, all frequently competing for dominance, which ebbs and flows in fluid fashion. These factions typically don't understand each other or even intermingle much. It's hard to argue with the folks that are providing the energy to move the club along, but when they appropriate funds provided or raised by others for their own use, it can poison a club. I got awfully tired of selling raffle tickets just to watch some faction hog the funds.

Most people who belong to a club just want a place to shoot their guns. If the leadership forgets this, the club may not last long.
 
Politics and factions, call them what you will, have existed in every sport and every discipline everywhere. I saw it when playing hockey many years ago and at very level and that included during my time playing semi-pro. We competed with little kids for rink time early in the evening and we competed with figure skaters for ice time on the weekends. Even the altar society in church had rifts within their organization when I was a little kiddie in school. So, how do we deal with friction on the range?
You have to get involved with the political arms at the club level. For the travelers, join the clubs you shoot at so the old tune “They Aren’t Even Members” doesn’t ring. At your “home range”, get involved at the member and board meetings.
Or, just go to the matches when they have them and sit on your hands until the club decides to go non-competition.
 
I dont know about anti competition but around here at least 2 clubs are run by shotgunners for shotgunners.

The board decides most items and they are all or nearly all shotgunners.

Traps are maintained w/ spare parts on hand but to get any betterment of rifle range facilities is difficult/impossible.

Maybe the BenchResters in the clubs just need to show up at 'scheduled' times and use the ranges like youd like em to be.
 
Sad, Sad, Sad Deal Indeed. Our club hosts Monthly ASSRA Matches from Feb. to Oct. and have been doing so since the 70's. We had a board member and a few others who were looking for every excuse he could come up with to try to end them. He would show up at every Match not wanting to shoot the Match but just wanting to screw around with one of his Rifle's. Even went to the point of going to the Board claiming shoots were going over the backstop and a causing a sever safety issue of which they were not. I got the little Bastard cornered one day and we got the issue settled with no witnesses around and he never came back and stopped his Crap. We have a limited membership and what used to be very competitive club. All matches are on the yearly calendar and when the various matches are being held all ranges are closed and he new it. Bottom line he was trying to eliminate ours to replace them with his and his friends own agenda. Sometimes politics just don't get it and a little one on one personal time together when no else is around is the best approach to get it settled
 
I have "NEVER" understood the understanding that if they eliminate some of the local active's, they will be better. Unless it is something they never thought of. After all, we are gun clubs. I have seen it on countless of occasion's where jealosy has reared it's ugy head, and I wish I could spell.
 
Our local club is basically a shotgun club, formed out of the skeet shooting faction of an Izaak Walton club. They expanded to a little trap, then added sporting clays and eventually five stand. All the time they had a poor excuse for a 200 yard range - down a hill and up the other side! About 10-15 years ago during a building phase which also involved some extensive timber sales, it was decided to move the rifle range up to the far corner of the property, but it was expanded to to 300 yds with 10 covered firing points and concrete benches. We have 2-3 Schuetzen matches a year on the range to keep having an excuse to keep it up, but the interest in bench rest here is not sufficient for a regular match. The good news is that the shotgun folks keep expanding on their turf and are willing to leave us alone while we get to keep doing our thing unmolested. I make sure we turn a small profit for the club and served for several years as an officer and committee chairman, so I can influence things in our favor. I don't want to be a politician, but sometimes it's a necessity.

Froggie
 
Louis.J said:
Sad, Sad, Sad Deal Indeed. Our club hosts Monthly ASSRA Matches from Feb. to Oct. and have been doing so since the 70's. We had a board member and a few others who were looking for every excuse he could come up with to try to end them. He would show up at every Match not wanting to shoot the Match but just wanting to screw around with one of his Rifle's. Even went to the point of going to the Board claiming shoots were going over the backstop and a causing a sever safety issue of which they were not. I got the little Bastard cornered one day and we got the issue settled with no witnesses around and he never came back and stopped his Crap. We have a limited membership and what used to be very competitive club. All matches are on the yearly calendar and when the various matches are being held all ranges are closed and he new it. Bottom line he was trying to eliminate ours to replace them with his and his friends own agenda. Sometimes politics just don't get it and a little one on one personal time together when no else is around is the best approach to get it settled
Click to expand...

At Tomball, we also have a Calender made up at the first of the year, and it is carved in stone. Every member knows if there is a Match, you cannot use the range for something else. It is each members responsibility to know the calender.

The truth is, the Benchrest Shooters probably use the range more than anybody. Heck, it’s not uncommon for a few Benchrest Shooters to be the only ones at the range.

One thing we try to do is get there early to set flags so we do not use up valuable range time for other shooters.
 
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Our local club has 25 benches of which 10 are allocated on a competition day. Most of them are cleared by 1200 because the comps are time limited. More than 10 competitors require a second round but this does not add much time to the competitions.

A 'defector' from the new committee member's fan club has told a few people that the whole coup was engineered on a 'closed' facebook forum and by mobile phone that was initiated in private conversations by the wannabe president.

It appears that us 'Old Farts' are not into this technology - Well let's see!

We have a great facility with great members and noway is a commercial vested interest going to be allowed to screw this up without a fight!

As for taking somebody out the back for a private word, we used to have a nice phrase for that it in the Australian military - it was called ' Contact Counselling'

* doggie * (23 years service)
 
Guy Pike said:
My Aussie friends knew the value of a good old bash to the nose! What has changed that?
Click to expand...


LOL!

I lived in NH for a while..... in my experience folks from New Hamp Shire (Live Free Or Die!) and Ozzies have a lot in common :)

One of my favorite movies is 'Good Will Hunting' (OK, it's Mass..... Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem .... but old Massachusetts still lives on the streets in Wakefield) and there's a street scene in there where the guys jump out and start a rumble that so encapsulates the mindset that I think I'll share it.

Just for you Guy!

WARNING! Don't fire this clip up with the grandbabies in the room!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZIq4SfLNMk


Da'GUM! that's a great movie!
 
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