jmarley, sorry you took my humor as an insult. this topic has been discussed very often on other forums, not onlyabout the ibo, but other organizations as well. my response was not an attempt to slight your idea in the least, and if you took it as an true slap in the face my apologies.

imho, the lewis class system, or handicap isnt what is wanted by the bulk of the shooters, in the class i shoot. flighting means what? with 400 shooters every 20th place gets a first place win? who really won?

having an a,b,c,d, would help for a while, but what happens when shooters start loosing in those classes? does the organization break it down further? i am all for making shooters happy, and retaining shooters as well as recruiting new ones.

my question is this. how much is our sport really like others? folks will spend 25000 dollars on a bass boat, to fish on saturday and sunday. i have no idea what a set of golf clubs cost, but know that shooting a bow is much cheaper to participate in on sunday. green fees can cost up to 75 dollars, and you are not competing for anything.

why can we not get folks to shoot a bow with that same mindset?shooters at the club level would be fine,but what happens when they decide to shoot a nationallevel shoot?just shoot for the fun of it. the ibo tried, and with huge success started the hunter class, and money hunter class. in the hunter class, it has become more competitive than the open classes. i know i couldnt drop down to that class and shoot the scores being posted there....for a new shooter, seeing the shirts with every kind of sponsor in the world on them could be intimidating. very few shooters who participate in the national level shoots do so without some kind of sponsors, even if it is a local shop or club.

where does the ibo draw the line between a national shooting organization, and taking care of shooters who only want to shoot for fun? maybe the ibo could take away all the money, everyone shoot for fun in the amature classes, and give away door prizes at the end of the weekend? go back to trophies for all amatures? amature trophy and amature money class?

breaking classes down will draw shooters from other classes, but at what cost to the classes they draw from? i know the open class used to be larger, as was the mbr.

i am all for making things better, but coming up with a viable solution would be tough at this point. how would the ibo keep up with shooters scores shot locally to enable them to accurately place people into a class equal to the ability of that shooter and others? how do you stop sandbagging? a person wishing to shoot a national event would have to start in a more competitive class until data in collected, then moved to the appropriate class. if that shooter feels they are in over thier head, will they come back? what if the new shooter was put into an open d class, and beat by 60 points as we see happening in other classes designed for new shooters? will they come back?

least of all i am closed minded. i think of ways to improve our sport daily. there is no magic solution, no easy answer, no cure all....when you have as many folks participating as does in the ibo, you cannot make them all happy. possibly a poll of all shooters, with a comments section for recomendations would help identify a trend as to the direction the participants would like, as the ibo did a few years ago with the additional 10 dollars added to the shoot fee to assist in paybacks at the shoots....