Any of you ever get together with your shooting/hunting buddies and have a fun shoot? I don't mean just sitting down at the bench and sighting in your guns, I mean a shoot where you actually compete with each other at different targets for squats and grins. I've been planning and organizing a shoot for those of us that hunt ML season together (along with a few friends and relatives) to be held later this year. I got the idea while re-reading an older issue of MUZZLELOADER magazine, and decided that this was something I wanted to do. I've narrowed it down to eight shooting events that everyone will participate in. Five are individual events (shoot by yourself) and three are two-man team events. Three of the five individual events are TIMED EVENTS and two of the two-man team events are timed. I have a list of rules that all shooters will abide by and I have it set up so that a panel of THREE judges will make a decision (by majority) concerning anything that may need a decision. I have novelty targets planned as well as regulation scoring targets. The distances will be from 20-50 yds. with all shooting being done OFFHAND but from different positions (standing, kneeling, sitting) and with OPEN-SIGHTED ML's using PATCHED ROUND BALL only.

Here's some examples:

Individual Timed Event @ 25 yds, standing and offhand, break three standard clay targets in three minutes, no minimum of shots. Shooter may not step to the line with a loaded firearm, all loading and shooting will commence (and stop) when a judge calls time. 5 points for each clay hit. Shooter with the lowest elapsed time to break all three will receive a bonus 2 points.

Two-Man Untimed Event @ 30 yds, Flintlock Only, standing and offhand, one shot only with your PARTNER'S GUN, at a standard paper target for highest total score. Closest to "X" recieves an additional 2 bonus points. Shooter that owns the gun may do the loading, but the man shooting may not prime or cap until on the line.

These are just examples of what I'm going to do so, what do you all think...does it sound like fun or no? I plan on collecting a buck from every shooter for each event they shoot in, but I'm gonna pay it back to the highest scorer(s) of each event at the end.

I'm hoping to have a Burger/hotdog cookout and a few beers for all after the shootin' is done and the black powder smoke clears out of the valley! ...BPS