RE: Score Keeping?
Fastfletch,
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts in this forum/thread. With contributions such as yours it benefits all by bringing to light new ideas or compels the readers to rethink old ones.
In your post you shared your following opinions;
“If it is unclear which party made the mistake then the score of the person in question should be the higher score.” “A rule that penalizes a shooter for a mistake over which they have no control is not a fair rule.”
My knee jerk reaction after reading your above opinion is to agree. Withthe benefit of hindsight, I have to stop andconsider that the shooter who may be penalized may not even be in the group in which the mistake was made.
For example;
Since groups are not always made up of competing peers then it stands to reason that if score card conflicts are not handled in a uniform manner between all groups then a similar situation or conflict may be handled in a less beneficial manner for a competitive peer who is in a different group.
(This is what I understood you to mean when you later wrote “A rule should be made to guide all contestants when there is a question of being fair to all”.)
If someone who makes a point of always having one set of score cards in his hands and is less than a straight shooter, (not referring to how he shoots a bow and arrow), can take advantage of the fact that he knows he will be awarded a higher score. If such a person, which is described above, was to always shoot with their competitive peers or even the same group then such behavior would quickly be made obvious to everyone. The deviant behavior is less obvious when such an individual shoots in a different group of people in different shoots or even different sections of targets at the same shoot.
As you expressed, I too think that a rule change or addition should take place or at least be give strong consideration when current practices can be demonstrated as being unfair to all. Regardless to whether agreement of disagreement is shared I feel that the discusion is most important. Steel sharpens steel