Hello to all.

I am back from the Vintage Gunners Cup. I took my camper and setup with a wonderful view of the Flurry Event for 5 days. I came early and left late.

It was great fun. George Hopkins set wonderful targets on all 4 of the different courses I shot; small bore, large bore, main event and flurry. I entered 6 events and came away with a Parker vs Fox hat, high 16, high 32, and high loader in flurry.

At this year's Vintage Gunners Cup, the Flurry was sold in several flavors. 2 shooters with paired guns with loaders, single shooter with a pair and a loader, free style pairs or single guns with stuffers to load and my favorite practice. Practice was 50 targets for $25. Anybody could walk up, pay and shoot what ever gun (guns) they had. I think they had 25 shooters try the flurry. I saw young guys shooting with their ladies loading. I had never seen that before. I'll bet they tell all there friends about that event. The trappers had never seen flurry shooting or paired loading, they loved it.

The head count was double last year at over 200. There were 4 active courses on Friday and Saturday. Small Bore, Large Bore, Flurry and Rifle.

It might have appeared that there weren't many folks in attendance. The shooters where there, just were spread out on all the courses and in the vendor tents.

I sold 2 guns, then bought a Thomas Turner LW hammer gun from Heritage Guns. I ordered a custom fitted case slip from Best and bought 2 flats of ammo from RST. I was very active in supporting the vendors. I know of plenty of SxS guns that exchanged hands.

The Vintage Gunners Cup cannot recreate the Vintage Cup of old. 20 years have past. We have lost nearly a generation of friends. There are many fine regional events that draw from the same group of shooters. Not many folks I know can attend them all. Lastly, we haven't made a great success finding new shooters. Watching the younger shooters try the Flurry gave me a great deal of hope that the next generation is getting a taste of what we do.

When I registered on Thursday, my shooter number was 46. At the end there were more than 200.

We cannot schedule a banquet when 75% of the folks don't even pre-register (Count me as guilty). Hosting a private banquet within an hour of Hopkins is hard. There are so many great places for us enjoy nearby. There are places in Chesterton, St Michaels, the Kent Narrows and Easton.

Joe in Charlotte