doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Vintage Cup so far??

Hope the weather clears out for everyone attending the VC today.

Anyone spotted any sidelock Greeners?

Thanks!

Well the weather man got it right. On Friday it rained and rained and rained at Pintail Point. There was a little break in the rain at Pintail Point on Friday afternoon and a little shooting got done. On Saturday morning when we returned to Pintail Point to try to shoot Ray P. and Jack D. had the road blocked and required us to park over 1000 yards away from the tents. The 2 wheel drive cars had all, yes all, gotten stuck in the normal parking spots on the grass near the tents on Friday evening. The normal grass parking spots had been cut up by the 2 wheel drive cars and turned in to mud ruts. Now half of us attending Pintail Point have 4 wheel drive pickup trucks or 4 wheel drive SUVs and we could have parked near the tents with no problem but Ray wanted to treat us all equally so we were all punished equally and forced to park 1000 yards away on Saturday. This was not a good start to the day. It was still raining on Saturday morning but not as hard as it had on Friday. By 10:00 a.m. on Saturday the rain had stopped and no rain fell the rest of the day. The shooters had fairly good shooting conditions on Saturday afternoon. The number of vendors and dealers attending The Vintage Cup at Pintail Point was way way down this year. For the few of us there we did make the best of it. Just about everybody was wet on Friday and the rain was so heavy it was coming through the tent in places. The few gun dealers there were constantly wiping down there guns with oil cloths and paper towels trying their best to keep them dry. This years Vintage Cup will go down as the second worst for weather and rain. There was actually a worse one in New York one year. For those of you that cancelled and stayed home this year, you made a good decision. Jent

The mudder of all VCs at Sandanona is actually one of my best memories of the VC (twice there and twice at PP so I missed a few. I like Ray; I just can't stand the glorified cornfield at PP.

jack

Previous poster forgot to mention there's a storm ditch on both sides of road in the regular parking area, and 4 wheel drives were getting buried right to the frame trying to cross said ditch. In just a few minutes I saw three, including a land rover and two heavy duty 4wd pickups, being pulled out by a big farm tractor. There were ruts there from others. Say, would you let your front lawn get torn up by amateur baja jocks with their 4wd's, or make everyone park in a more stable area? I didn't have my laser range finder but I have doubts it was 1000 yds. Whatever, the distance was probably closer than where we had to park cars when the Vintagers were at Sandanona. I don't remember hearing complaints back then. CB

Thanks, Ben, I'll bust out the map (old school - paper) shortly. Franc, my friend I've never met, maybe there's a chance for us to meet at one of these things yet, eh?

Have to agree with Cherry Bomb.

Also, I didn't have to wait more than a couple of minutes for a shuttle at any point in the day. The normal parking area was a quagmire, so the organisers had to come up with a plan B. I thought they did an excellent job.

Even though Pintail Point is basically in my back yard, i'll welcome the return to Addieville in RI. Geoff has much better terrain to work with and sets up some super targets. Queenstown is flat as a pancake. The target setters have NO elevation changes to work with, so thay do the best they can.

While it's true I think, that the VC has lost some of it's "luster" over the past 15 years, it's still a fun time and I'd hate to see it disappear.

I have been attending for 14 years straight and agree the event has slipped in quality, probably for many reasons. I just don't think Pintail put on as nice an event as Sandanona. Parking was always a problem, food has been spotty in availability, five stand not always available and a host of other details. Stations on the course staffed by one person both trapping and scoring, leading to problems. I've even seen teenage trappers badgered to change a score. Nowhere on the grounds available just to sit and put your gear down, except the porch and that was being used by the food vendor the last two years.

I remember Addieville being very nice and look forward to perhaps TWO five stands being available all day, and close to the tents. Maybe a wobble or ZZ bird setup, plenty of porta-pots set in the shade, food available from start to finish and good parking. A renewal of the Friday evening cocktail party and Saturday evening banquet would be nice too.

How soon we forget. How far did participants and any non vendors or VIPs have to walk to the festivities at Millbrook. Quite a distance, is the answer. The "walk" or "shuttle ride" at Pintail Point was all weather related. Normally, parking was wherever you wanted to park except in vendor spaces. Barring emergencies, like ridiculous rain, both venues work just fine. The worst year at Millbrook was easily as bad as this year at Pintail Point. Worse than the weather was the separation of participation caused by the EPIC game fair. Hopefully, that will not happen again and also hopefully, it will not put the silver bullet in either event.

Results are now posted on the Pintail website. While weather Sunday was humid, it didn't rain. It looks like there were 58 Sunday main event shooters. Last year there were 103, so it was certainly down this year. With the competition from EPIC for vendors, wet weather, and no Parker gathering this year, it clearly got hit hard from a lot of sides.

While many in attendance were disappointed to see the sharp decline in shooters and vendors at this year's Vintage Cup, we should keep in mind the other sxs shoots have all grown in vendors and shooters this year, which is an encouraging sign that these types of events overall are actually growing.

By comparison, this year's Southern had about 90 main event shooters (not including the Parker/Smith main event shooters.) I recall the Great Northeast at Hausmans had over 80 shooters for the Sunday main event. Last year's Fall Southern SXS had about 50 main event shooters and I suspect it will it continue its upward growth next month.

You can see this year's Vintage Cup results here:

http://www.theriverplantation.com/activities_outdoor_sporting_recreation/results.asp?artid=276

Let's just hope for better weather than what they had at the VC last weekend. Cool crisp mornings,in the low 50's would be nice, with low humidity while I'm wishing.

SRH