Bringing in new shooters...

[RDC]

For those in clubs, can you please try to explain what your club does to encourage and bring in new shooters? Not just adults but also youths.

What sort of age are your new shooters?

The reason I ask this is that you only have to look down the firing point on a weekend and you'll see a majority of shooters nudging the anus of retirement or way past that point. More and more it seems we need to bring in more people who will be enthusiastic and will keep shooting going when the current crop are long dead.

What are clubs doing to support that?

The NRA bang on about youth shooting becoming more popular but I get the impression that is Bisley-centric with the majority being posh schools or local cadet outfits (from what I have seen, at least!). I know up round my way cadet forces struggle to get access to firearms to shoot.


I would appreciate your input!

[ArcofZen]

The club I use seems to have a good cross section of ages, although they are still mainly middle aged & older blokes. But we do often get youngsters including girls/teenagers but very few middle aged or younger women (that I've seen)
I think the Tunnel is good at this because it has carpeted floors, a (warm) cafe and a good atmosphere. It's also ranked highly on tripadvisor, which like it or not can be a great marketing tool.

It's also not full of 'tactical' morons running around in MTP!

[hitchphil]

We partner the club with a Uni shooting club (yes thats my old Uni so what, you may have one too, if not go find a school or local Scout troop?) we try to shoot alongside each other, they get coaching & training, we get good marking, that helps pay for their shoot costs too. (vs paying a sideways hat wearing marker who will spend the cash on fags & vodka)

We have no joining, membership or range fee charge for U18 or in full time Ed. £0. Under NRA costs - they cost a club £0 as a probationary member & £8 if issued a SSC, so why charge? ....... to subsidies your own shooting!?

We coach the Uni club in competitions & lend them good TRs to use vs the old Uni guns. We include some of their number in our B teams or main teams if good enough.

We invite them to some of our fun shoots & often at reduced cost.

We extend membership to them after graduation so they can continue in the sport.

Some of our club help coach at the Scout Nat champs or the British Young Shooters Assoc events. (BYSA a new organisation aka 'Club 18-35 shooters' helping reduce the 99.999% drop pout rate after school, cadets, uni etc).

Every club should adopt a junior club or organisation & let it piggy back / join in with their operation. In fact i think it should be a requirement of NGO affiliation!

I no longer send parents with kids interested in shooting to a range of clubs - its quite counter productive, puts them off for life- the response is always the same - loved shooting, really enjoyed the activity but a 16 year old doesn't want to hang out with a bunch of 50+ year olds, mostly blokes of a certain portly stature. Those clubs either need to shake up do something about themselves or die out & be replaced. Unfortunately i see more 'closed' dying out than resurrection & all too often the range & kit disappears with them!

So if you want to change that start a kids night at your range, advertise it to youth groups; Scouts, Guides, cadets etc. start with fun targets & air rifles & build it from there. Give up some of your own precious range time to coach & then let them have fun. Dont just teach them what you were taught in the 60's ;-) make some of it competitive vs just plinking so they can see change & improvement tap into that motivation to keep coming, find the local Uni club & make contact. Use your network to arrange things & get to know them. Offer your expertise & time & things will grow.

Oh & learn how to use social media like Facebook & twitter & others because that's where the kids are at & often how they communicate & network. If you cant or wont then your the dinosaur in their eyes & they wont engage.

[Plumose]

At the club I attend we seem to have a lot of people doing the Duke of Edinburgh award join for air pistol or air rifle shooting. I haven't really been attending long enough to see how that then translates in to long term membership.
A fair few also seem to get their parents to join so that equates to members in their 30s or 40s

[Kungfugerbil]

We struggle as our town is demographically...old.

Everyone faces the same battle as shooting has been vilified in public consciousness to the point it's seen as acceptable as wearing UKIP badges to a socialist worker meeting.

New shooters constantly say "I can't believe you're allowed to own and shoot XYZ" whereas of course the established shooters say "I can't believe we're no longer allowed to shoot XYZ"

Different disciplines helps, as doing embracing modern media. Removing the 'old man' club feeling is part of the battle.

[Triffid]

The club I shoot at has very much a 40+ demographic, although we are trying to get youngsters involved by offering LSR-type shooting for DoE.

However I think that the 40+ demographic is the reality . . . Yes it's relatively easy to get the 10-20 year olds involved and enthusiastic about shooting, but then there's a twenty-year gap while they go off to establish a career, find a partner, somewhere to live and raise a family. And drift away from shooting as a result.

But not all is lost. If the clubs do their job properly, then this gap is merely a 20-year incubation phase for the full-blown Shooting Pox that develops in later life. When they have more time (& money!) they will return to shooting, hopefully bringing their offspring with them to go full circle.

My club has a ulterior motive for doing the DoE training with youngsters. We accept that they will probably only stay with us for a few years and we hope to instill in them a love of the shooting sports for later life. But our real target is the parent who accompanies them!

Triffid

[Gazza]

At the beginning of the year I tried getting my two lads 7 and 11 into target shooting at the club. One did the full probation and became a full member then promptly threw the towel in and the other did half the probation and did the same.
The reason for jacking by the eldest was that it was boring after a while and he would prefer clay shooting which he is very good at to be fair and the yougest said he prefers Nerf guns.
So for the youger end I'd say lack of excitement is the killer as target shooting is not at all like Modern Warfare on the Xbox

[safetyfirst]

Mini rifle is brilliant fun and just like Xbox. Perhaps IPAS or airsoft practical pistol would be a good intro for the Xbox crowd.

[FredB]

We have a waiting list. When a new member joins, we have a mentoring system: he is given to an older , experienced member who looks after him, provides him with a club .22 rifle teaches him the basic safety rules and how to shoot. In my experience, many young shooters give up because they find it more difficult that they expected and they receive to competent instruction.
Fred

[RDC]

Interesting points raised by all, for that!

One of the biggest reasons I am seeing people stop attending is that it gets incredibly boring, or so they tell me. I can appreciate that so I've finally managed to introduce mini rifle to the club. It's only once a month but it more than doubles our normal attendance, people really are enjoying it!

I'm hoping to introduce more in the way of practical/dynamic shooting but I appreciate not everyone wants change and we are a small club that doesn't have our own range.