Finally got ahold of Lee a few minutes ago and we've decided to hold our rain date for the State Championship match on our regularly scheduled July 12 match instead of on June 21, so you Missouri guys can calm down. You guys must not know me very well, because if you'd have made a quick phone call or e-mail to let me know you thought I'd messed up, I would have done whatever I could to correct it right away.
I do apologize to everyone since I really should have checked the schedule first, but with the week I've just had with being unexpectedly gone for most of the week, then coming back late and realizing our range was underwater, I just never thought about checking the schedule for possible conflicts until later. It looks like Varmint Hunter has a 600 yard match scheduled on June 21 too, so that is another reason to not put our rain date on June 21.
BTW, Mike, I think every State Championship match we've ever had has had 50 or more shooters, so that was not an inflated number. But you definitely do have a point with there not being enough shooters to go around. We've seen a decline in numbers each time a new 600 or 1000 yard range opens up in this part of the country. The shooters that are closer to that range go there instead of continuing to come to us, which is entirely normal. But it does take awhile and some concentrated marketing effort to build the numbers back up again. I know from listening to guys talking at one of the IBS meetings that this has happened elsewhere around the country in times past in disciplines other than long range, so this is nothing new. Now rumor has it there is another long range club maybe opening up somewhere in northern Missouri, so if this is true, it will probably have an affect on both our numbers.
But if everyone stays civil and respectful of each other (which historically has not always happened in the past with so many clubs and other disciplines around the country, much to the detriment of the sport), and we all continue to work on ways to better attract new shooters into the long range shooting sport, everyone will win. Maybe the ruling bodies will have to temporarily limit how many new clubs are allowed into a certain geographic area until that area has attracted enough new shooters at the existing clubs, that opening a new club will not have a negative impact.
Gordy