Another hot topic or at least food for thought

[Les Fraser]

There is a core group of shooters now that front up pretty much every event, i think it is time to share the load. There are a number of jobs that need to be done at every shoot and it is pretty much left up to the organisers. I think that it may be time for natural progression of workers at these shoots. Pete VM often is helping out with scoring and other duties and there are many other people that seem to be working at every shoot and it is a difficult ask to shoot and also help out with the runing of the shoot.

There has been posts on this site and there was a statement about workers and shirkers i think that is how it went or something similar.

I will post some jobs that everyone could do.

Posting Targets
A list of range officers who could run the detail
Weighing the light guns
Protest committee

Now i am not pointing out that some of us are getting older but the fact remains we are and who will do these jobs when Dave Grooves, PVM, Chappo and a host of others decide that it is someone elses turn.

I have been around shooting sports all my life and the one factor is constant sucession is needed.

THE PROPOSAL

There are two major shoots for each state, when nominations are taken if the shooter nominates he/she does so knowing on the day of the match they may be given a job for the day to assist in running the shoot. If they are new to the fly or never shot before they are excluded but the rest of us may be called upon to assist in some way. And if you don't want to assist, then perhaps you shouldn't nominate in the first place.

There are concessions obvisously age, illness or handicap then of course that would be taken into consideration.

By doing this shooters learn the true value of the sport it isn't about just turning up and shooting and leaving with the trophies and not having to hold your hand up to help. It is about learning what goes on behind the scenes so that if a regular worker is not there the whole thing does not fall over. Also the sport may find another range to shoot the fly by keen shooters who know what it takes to run a shoot.

I suspect that there will be comments about shooters who organise other shooting disciplines events and so do i but this is about the longevity of the fly. If you come to the fly to just shoot so someone else does all the work then perhaps there needs some committment to this great sport.



 

[Stuart Elliott]

Les,
As you know I'm with you on this one. Thanks for having the guts to say it out aloud. Tippy toeing around the subject isn't fixing this HUGE problem within our sport. Most people who know me well also know that I have been saying all this same stuff for so many years it does not matter. If you disagree with me you are welcome to say so. But if so, please provide us with alternatives.


So what are the issues?
1) Problem 1, organisers and officials currently running matches get worn out, worn down, sick of the constant responsibility without much respect sometimes.
2) Problem2. Imagine what it is like for those shooters amongst us who just happen to live in the town where the big matches are held. Lets look at an example. Its repeated everywhere but let use Canberra as an example. Those Fly shooters who live in Canberra currently (Groves, Wild, Eastman) will always have to bear the responsibility of organising at least 2 matches a year regardless. So whilst the rest of us are thinking about tuning up at the match, getting our gear ready for the match, tuning up the loads, paying an entry fee we may think that because we paid a fee that ENTITLES all of us to a properly run show. Almost like going out to a Golf game or a concert. Its as if people think that once they pay a fee, the organisers HAVE to deliver a show and I aint doin no work to assist that....blah, blah

Yet they forget that these local people would also like to have  time to tune up their gear, practice some more and think about loads and simply .... just go to a match. Remember they pay the same fees as us too. But instead, for every match,  they have to think about what needs organising. Months before. What needs to be promoted, put together the advertisement. Arranging the schedule with the main club committee. Have a couple of working bees. Plan some trophies. Visit the trophy shop several times to effect that. Organise targets from the printer, get a welder and fix splash plates. locate and train a target crew and scorers  etc, etc. Then throw their shooting gear together for match day, PAY A FEE just like the rest of us and when the day comes..... Still keep working. They don't get paid. Sure the target crews and other non shooters might get paid but the volunteers don't. Sometimes local locals even forgo shooting to score or RO duties etc. Yet still cop shit !!!!!!

So there are in my view only three options left
Option 1). Do Les's suggestions
Option 2). Have commercially organised and run matches. Entry fees will be 4 times current fees at least
Option 3) Watch our sport deteriorate and fade away just like many others have.

Got another option? Lets hear it
Each and every one of us has an investment in the sport which we participate in. Moral and financial. To enjoy and benefit we all need to contribute in many ways. There is a difference between participation and involvement.

There are people already helping but the great majority are not. Sometimes it is actually a little more than just turn up and 5 minutes before kick off on Saturday morning you say to Dave "what do you want me to do?". Well that is nice but its a bit late and also a bit tough on Dave (or equivalent) to have to think about exactly what job and show you that or think about that with 5 minutes to go is obviously unreasonable.  Other things will be on the mind for him then. So it needs a PRIOR commitment and plan.

There is one other job that I believe needs doing. A job for someone with a flair for writing and for photographs. Every major shoot should have a write up and an article written. Really good articles will get published and it will benefit the sport and the shooters and the magazine. But the problem is it is a big job and I believe if the right person can be found or encouraged it should be a paying job. For example $10 on every entry fee going towards this and a consistent flow of well written articles, great photos including results sheets and equipment and this whole sport will turn around within 12 months. The SSAA magazine should be the first target. every second article could focus on equipment just to give variety.
I am not suggesting this job onto you Murray because you simply cannot make it to most shoots but an example of what I am saying is that well written article done by Murray  for 6mmBR.com recently

Mostly this sport is full of people enjoying rule 10.
But rule 10 doesn't happen without those first 9 and a lot of planning, organising and respect for the sport inbetween.
It is not a sport like many others which is promoted or organisered by some body, some media company (like football) or a golf tournament. It is organised voluntarily so each of us needs to be in it, not on it.


We need respect for rules and procedures and respect for officials and organisers.  If organisers are ever doing the wrong thing or not following rules etc they need to be replaced.
If we have no rules of engagement, we have no credibility of a sport. Therefore there is no use continuing.

Stuart Elliott

[Michael Bell]

Great idea to try & get some media coverage....at the last Wagga shoot the local media turned up to do a story on the event and we got some reasonable coverage.

I'll put my hand up for the photography work at Batemans Bay if Anthony wants it....not so sure about my journalistic skills though....could probably give it a go as long as it wasn't needed immediately. The SSAA magazine would indeed be a logical target for this.
Regards,
Belly

[Stuart Elliott]

Belly,
That is great. I still believe this should be a paid job.
Several reasons. The benefits are both  immediate and eventual  for everyone.
The amount of time and effort needed to go into producing this constantly needs reward otherwise you or someone else will just wear out or wear down.
Like I said $10 of every entry fee that goes to this effort is reasonable in my view. I vote for that. So 60 entries is $600 which should be reasonable incentive to put something together well.

Stuart

[Anthony Hall]

Hi,

That would be great Belly.... I would appreciate your help with photographic skills .... I have the gear and the desire, just not the time during the shoot as well as run it....  If you take the photos, I provide the results and we work together on some creative...... SSAA, the papers and accurate shooter web site would all run the story I am sure.

I hear what Stuart says anout it being a paid job, but until we are the size of say shotgun or some other larger sports where there are hundreds of competitors and many thousands of $$... we need volunteers.  If we start paying a media person, where does it stop.... do we pay the scorers, target crew match organisers etc.... It either would make it too expensive or leave no money for clubs to grow and replace equipment.

I know at our club we are lucky enough to get enough volunteers to run target crew, maintenance and the kitchen etc ... that way I can spend the revenue that would have gone out for these jobs to replace frames, buy new splash plates, buy decent trophies and in time improve the facilities we can offer fly shooters....  I certainly don't want to be paid form my time and even end up significantly out of pocket most shoots as I buy and donate stuff to make it all work well...  My motivation is the improvement of the local club facilities and the sport of fly shooting.

Some other clubs need to pay people as they don't have the volunteers.... fair enough and I would do the same if necessary.. but what is really needed is people to do what they can and use their skills to grow the sport.

We are lucky in that there are a lot of organised and professional people in fly shooting. It is not a boffin sport and it is growing very well, we just need to encourage those with skills to use them a little more.

Cheers

Anthony

[Michael Bell]

Consider it done!
I'll catch up with you over there.....as of early Thursday morn I'm off for a weeks break..
All the best,
Belly

[Dave Groves]

Hey All, this post is LOOOOONG and it might get a little off topic at times, apologies in advance….but the proposal to get people involved needs to be understood from the organisers perspective, I am all for it, but people need to UNDERSTAND!!!!! Yes, I will bitch a bit, but like I said, this is from an organisers perspective.

My number one gripe with running a shoot is that many people don’t appear to recognise that the people running events are making a sacrifice, to their own performance, time, money (nobody reimburses my fuel bill for all the trips I do to the range before a shoot) etc but it is something that I do because I want to, and in the end, who else is going to do it??? Anybody who thinks “Geez, Grovesy is a grumpy bastard” is welcome to have a crack at herding the cats down here! When the shoot is over I am one relieved person, and usually knackered.

I had a good chat with Stuart Elliott regarding the performance issue at Batemans Bay earlier this year over a Bundy (OK, ½ a bottle) as I struggle to perform well at Canberra because I am so distracted with running the event, although some advice that Stuart gave me did serve quite well recently (Thanks Stuart, the Hat works, 3rd this time)

Fundamentally I like the idea of competitors assisting with running a shoot, but I also think that a club has to be able to run the event by itself, with minimal support from visitors on the day, once weigh in and the other preparations are finished. When PVM, Anthony and Chappo etc turn up on the morning of a Fly in Canberra it is my opinion that they should have the opportunity to perform as well as they can, it isn’t their event to run, so they should be able to concentrate on enjoying the shoot and having a crack at it, I have been RO’ing at Canberra Fly events for about 8 or so years, so I know (as I said above) that you’re not 100% focused when you need to be double checking that you’re not “needed elsewhere”.

A little history:

I had been assisting Jim McKinley in running the Fly in Canberra for quite a while before I "accepted the mantle" of running it myself, I had picked up the responsibility of organising the 1000yds at Canberra Rifle Club a few years before when Annie and Stuart left Canberra for warmer climes, and over the years it has been a learning process with both shoots, as with any learning process, you learn from your mistakes, unfortunately if you make mistakes running events like these where people are paying money for the shoot, it opens the organisers and staff up to criticism.

Currently:

Here in Canberra we continue to attempt to innovate in the way things are done, one of my favourite sayings is "work smarter not harder" and I will usually attempt to do this, although inevitably you will get the scenario where working smarter just won't get the job done and you have to pitch in and do the hard work!

The way we run 1000yds now with the nomination form being utilised to do the bench draw, score sheet, and shooters record of their performance is an example of something that has gone right and I know has been adopted by the Brisbane 1000yds club.

Other not so successful innovations have happened in the past, for example the Excel scoring system that caused us problems not that long ago, not a problem with the system per-se, more the way in which it was used which had to be straightened out, that one instance of a problem, and the delay in being able to post the scores still has people talking about it, and the people involved. Regardless of the cause, people are still only too happy to be critical of what happened, and this can be quite disheartening for those that work so hard on these events and who are “marked” by association with any problem, it seems that mark is also indelible.

Thankfully the excellent scoring system which Anthony Hall came up with is now the “benchmark” for scoring the Fly, frankly if you are running a Fly event and not using it, you are making the job hard for yourself.

Organising an event: The challenges –-- This is the crux of the issue -----

When I am organising an event, I need to be able to rely upon any job that has been allocated to a person on being done, the result of that job not being done will most likely end up in me bearing that responsibility as well, that just makes my job harder. As a result, Canberra does pay for its target crew and scorer, more on this later though.

So there are jobs that are less critical on the day, like weighing guns and stuff that I don’t need to stress about in the big picture, these “will get taken care of” in the style that Les is suggesting, people pitch in and get it done, as long as the tools (scales etc) are available to complete the task by somebody so inclined to do so.

I truly appreciate the help we receive before each shoot, we used to get the target crew to mark up targets in between running them up, but the last couple of events there have been willing workers around to help mark the targets, which makes things easier for our target crew.

Fundamentally, the organiser needs to be confident that whatever allocated jobs they have organised will hold together, until you see the number of cancellations that are received for each event (I now only open noms about 6 weeks beforehand because I was getting RSI from adjusting things adding and subtracting people) you probably can’t appreciate the limitations of proposing visitors doing anything critical to the running of the event.

Workload prior to the event:

As mentioned by Stuart (He would know, he used to run the Fly in Canberra) there are a lot of tasks which need to be done beforehand, sometimes I get requests for information beforehand, like “Who is coming” etc, I’m sorry, but I already have enough on my plate in preparing to run the event, not to mention non-Fly stuff (Work, House, Wife, Kids, loading my ammo and prepping my rifle for the shoot, going out shooting foxes for recreation) so I really don’t take on answering such questions unless I have the time on my hands to do it, which isn’t often.
This stuff isn’t something you can “delegate” easily, you just have to get on and do it, so no suggestion that this is stuff that could be “farmed out” to willing assistants.

One of the big problems is getting the range staff, even when paying them.

Generally the scorer is the biggest problem, because to do the job well, you can’t shoot, equally, to shoot well, you can’t score…it just takes too much concentration.

So yet another sacrifice is being made by another shooter, this time it was either Max Coady scores, and can’t shoot and spot with his mate Dave Waters, or Richard Wild does it and foregoes shooting himself, what really adds insult to injury is when the scorer is criticised or challenged. If it is wrong, no problem, if it is a judgement call, we have selected the judge, and given him the job of scorer....This is another issue that Canberra is looking to improve on, we are looking into the scoring process because the procedure of plugging bullet holes is quite technical, and once done once, shouldn’t be repeated as it deforms the hole....more on that another time.

Time for a little Math relating to scoring: We had 30 Light Guns and 22 Heavy in the Pro-Cal in September 2012, a relatively small shoot for us. So we will disregard the Warmer, it wasn’t scored, so that’s 5 targets x 52 guns which is 260 targets for the scorer to score, ok, now there are (or should be) 5 shots per target, so there are 1300 bullet holes that have to be inspected, scored, tallied, measured etc. The scorer, if they are doing it for money or as a volunteer, is worth every cent that they earn for themselves or the club that is getting paid for their efforts…….how many people considered this before griping?

OK, There was a bit of griping in there, but hey, I just MIGHT have a little grumpy in me all the time….

Cheers.

Dave Groves.

[Pete van Meurs]

Again no ugly photo - bet you think I do it on purpose!
Dave Groves has said most of it but maybe I can add a little.  Our shoots in Victoria are entirely funded by the Melbourne Benchrest Club with no fall-back on the State  branch (there is no such thing as a Melbourne or Geelong branch) and that constrains us considerbly. In order to enhance interstate participation we raised the standard of the trophies on offer some years ago but this seems to have little effect and most of our matches are little above the break-even point so we will almost certainly be looking to reduce that cost next year.
 Oops, getting a bit off-topic here.
Target crew is the big problem on occasion - finding the people is one thing, seeing to it that they know their job is another. Then they have to be paid from a fairly meagre kitty.  Some years ago we were short-staffed at a major match and rostered all able-bodied competitors onto the target crew - this went down suprisingly well and will be used in future if the need arsises.
I think a 'Competitor Agreement' as a part of the entry process is important. This will, if correctly worded, place an obligation on every entrant to assist as and when requested by the organisers (subject to the entrants ability to carry out the task). Refusal without just cause would result in disqualification. I have seen this work in other sports so why not in this one. Let's face it 'Competitor Marking' is still common practice in NRAA matches and in 1000yd B/R comps without any real gripes.
On the subject of 'Scorers' we have a real problem. Most skilled scorers are also keen competitors and would probably prefer to concentrate on their shooting so we may, on occasion, have to pay for their expertise, further diminishing the returns to the organisers to fund the next round of repairs and improvements (anyone that thinks scoring is simple should hold off until they have read the piece that I propose to put on this site in the near future).
Yep, organising and running these matches is no easy task and we often use up personal favours for the benefit of our club  or our sport (with no monetary or other return to us individually). We don't mind too much so long as we get some appreciation and help when asked.
As Dave said - anyone attending a match who was him/her self involved in organising and running a match at their own range should be treated like Royalty  when visiting other ranges but often as not end up contributing beyond what they may have volunteered to do.
That's my 2 Guilders worth,  Pete

[Stuart Elliott]

Good points made by Dave and Peter. The competitor agreement thing is worthy of discussion. Maybe  the details could become part of "standard entry conditions"

Many shoots breaking even or close to that is not good. Cannot be sustained. It's OK for newer clubs to drag in lots of  general member volunteers in order to bolster the club coffers where they might be trying to build more facilities etc. Like Wagga or BB  But they will have trouble continually dragging along club members to help over time.  Good target crew and scorers often "make a shoot".
it might be good to hear from other shooters about what things make them decide or not to travel to a match at say BB, Little River, Wagga.  is it timing? is it just whether or not its a nice easy range or not. is it because the range is a big challenge? Is it because the event is well organised and always large entries?  if they were asked to help how would they like to?

There is obviously no easy answer but just having a discussion and hearing directly from main organisers is good

Stuart