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What are your favorite aspects of matches?

In your basic (club) weekly / monthly shoot, esp at an established club, It's always wise to remember demographics of participants... age, disabilities and even old bladders, etc... to some degree accommodating everyone and making things fairly accessible along a course is wise; esp if you want to grow membership and overall participation.

Then there is the flip side...

Transition away from your local shoot to participate in or "compete" and you suddenly encounter a diversity of course set ups AND more many advanced shooters who participate in a wide variety of events, locations, conditions.

Realistically, considering resources and land etc... it can be daunting to find a suitable location and then create the logistics to support it. I know this first hand as I'm a full 1 year into trying to create an FT location in an area where none exists... even beating the bushes to find new shooters is quite the challenge.

All said and done - for me - I enjoy the diversity of locations, terrain, targets, people, etc... I may suck overall as a shooter but always leave with a smile on my face when i was "challenged" or pushed to my limits. Too many gimmes and we're bored... too many tiny KZ's and we can be discouraged.

Bottom line: it is our expectations and thus our attitude(s) that makes or breaks the fun factor at any event. The people are always great and always helpful. But we have to keep our expectations inline with the resources available while, of course, working to improve everything associated with our hobby.

I drive 3 plus hours at least once a month to attend a formal/informal club shoot. Recently Baton Rouge has been doing some very interesting albeit challenging matches (hard as hell) at their club; not necessarily AAFTA style but VERY fun. Lots of variety and they let you try all different kinds of stuff. The course is in their flat area and moving from lane to lane is easy and the morning lighting makes ranging on most of the targets fairly easy. Of course, the 93 degree temp and 100 percent humidity at 8 a.m. will get your attention.

Hope you get to come shoot a match with us up here in New England sir!