Sunday, January 11, 2009

Turkey Shoot

Our little church is gun friendly. Very gun friendly. The vast majority of the men are hunters and shooters. Our pastor and her husband are both CCW permit holders. I and a couple of the other men who carry regularly have been told that while it's our choice, the pastor would appreciate it if we kept our firearms handy. It's our version of a Safe Sanctuary policy. I'd expect that anyone who came in to Sunday services intent on having a meek, compliant victim list would be considerably surprised. He'd probably take fire from two or three different angles.

At any rate, during the board meeting today, the church committee asked me to put together a turkey shoot. A fund-raiser, if you will, to bring a little money in to the church. I figure we'll use shotguns in three categories. Under 12, shooting .410 bore, middle shooters, using 20 gauge, and big bore, using 12 gauge.

We can shoot shotgun safely in the side yard of the church. Rifle shooting would be a little more problematic and might be something to work on for later. Shotguns can be fired safely in the church yard, so that's where we'll begin.

We'll let folks use their own shotguns, but the church will buy the shells so that the playing field is level. We'll use promotional loads, in 7 1/2 or 8 shot and measure the closest shot against a center dot. We'll charge a dollar per shell and a shooter can shoot as many times as he or she would like.

I don't have it all down in my head yet, but the concept is coming along. If anyone has any pointers about conducting a turkey shoot, let me hear from you in comments.

4 comments:

Rivrdog said...

If you want true random, no skill involved, put the dot into a circle, and turn the paper backwards so the shooter won't know where on the paper the circle and dot are.

Good idea about using church ammo, some folks would bring those ultra-heavy shot turkey loads other wise.

Pawpaw said...

Our church won't allow any games of chance (no pure random. There must be some skill involved) so we can't hide the target. It must be seen as a markmanship contest, although we all know that shot flies in a truly random manner.

Old NFO said...

I'd print up some of these targets

http://www.mytargets.com/

Bullseye with 1" line space. I've seen them used before. You can run a bunch off on a copier.

LOL WV- missess

be603 said...

Clays (either thrown or hung on a board/tgt stand) out of the question?

Some running rabbit clays on the ground thrown across the range would be fun and keep shot low if that's an advantage far as your backstop goes...