doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Time to expand the Southern Challenge Shoot?

I read several threads on the Southern Side.by Challenge on differnet I.sites and it sounds like there was keen competition there on Saturday. Both teams were a credit to their brands. I am wondering if it's time to expand the field of competitors to include the Fox, Ithaca and leFever guys? Besides Parker and Smith, Fox and leFever have organized collector groups. maybe one or both would welcome an invitation. I don't know about Ithace because I don't know if they have a group on the internet. What do you thinK?

Being a Fox fan, I'm all for it. What does it take to get a team together?

Unfortunately, it isn't just about showing up with a branded shotgun and shooting a good score. Mark Conrad, Tom Archer, and Bill Kempfler spend hundreds of hours in planning, rule writing, trophy designing, mailing, calling, emailing, you name it, to prepare for the 500 bird final. Another roadblock is the fact that just the eliminations for two teams takes pretty near all of a four day weekend and uses about 115% of the capabilities of the Deep River 5 stand, to the dismay of hundreds of people who would like to use it to practice for the sporting clays events at the Southern. I don't know what the answer is. I would like to compete with a Fox or a Lindner or an Ithaca, but I don't know what venue could support the match. Brand competitions are part of many vintage gun events, but not in a match format. I must admit, the match format is a fantastic event, worlds above just checking a scoreboard at the Vintagers to see if your brand is ahead.

By the way, 139 shooters tried out for the 20 spots on the two teams. Next year, time will probably be cleared for even more to compete. It is truly a great event.

I too thought that it would be interesting for other groups (Fox) to be involved. Jake

A workable competition could be created with individual entries shooting 5-Stand rounds with identified brands of shotgun all weekend at a vintage gun event. At the end of the weekend, high scoring individuals would be recognized along with the brands of gun shot. It would be difficult to recognize team efforts without the "creating of teams" by qualification rounds which are very time consuming. Possibly "declared teams" could shoot during the weekend, not neccesarily shooting shoulder to shoulder, to establish team honors. Records of team scores could be kept by numbering the declared teams. They would not be teams made by qualification scores, but by a pre-shooting declaration as in an NSSA skeet shoot. Such team members could be as few as three in number rather than the ten of the Parker/L.C.Smith match. When signing up to shoot, such sub-categories as Hammer Gun or Damascus or Smallbore could be declared. As at professionally run vintager events, (please, no comments) a running scoreboard with all events and scores kept up to date, would add to the competitive interest. Could the Model 24 Winchester Team possibly win top team honors?? Of course, it would be neccesary to have a dedicated 5-Stand for the event. The crew that runs the Parker/L.C.Smith 5-Stand at the Southern Side by Side would be my choice. What a great bunch of guys. I think they are independent contractors and don't work for Bill Kempfler. Am I correct in this assumption? At the Southern, this crew started their operation at 8 AM, pulled and scored targets at least until 6 PM for three and a half days. A round is shot every 20 minutes with 5 man squads. At this rate, they can run 450 competitors through in a three day event. This could work.

I'm not opposed to adding other makes of gun to a competion. However, I know what a traffic jam it was shooting the course last year. I could see that happening at the 5 stand venues. The 5 stand for Smith x Parker is running at full capacity.