[Barry C. Roach]

For most of you that love the sport of competitive trapshooting or are considering a membership in the near future please join or renew.

The Amateur Trapshooting Association, primarily, derives its income on your membership.

Go to the ATA web site at www.shootata.com.

Many Thanks
Barry Roach
ATA# 17 50780

 

[George MT.]

Barry iam a life member already as quite a few that post here. Those of us who are club operators always encourage shooters to shoot club tournaments and register targets. As always the task on front of us is to get those league and casual shooter to try registering targets.

 

[OldGoat]

I tried to renew my ATA membership and get subscription to Trap & Field online a day or two ago. No luck doing so. After a couple of tries, just gave up. Admittedly, I'm not the most computer savvy senior citizen, but noted that the ATA offices are c!osed until May 31. Perhaps some helpful info will result from this thread. Be safe!

Just noticed Barry's generous offer to help. The ATA link is the one I was trying to use.

 

[9point3]

For most of you that love the sport of competitive trapshooting or are considering a membership in the near future please join or renew.

The Amateur Trapshooting Association, primarily, derives its income on your membership.

Go to the ATA web site at www.shootata.com.

Many Thanks
Barry Roach
ATA# 17 50780

I.would have thought that Target Fees was the big driver

 

[Gussers]

I tried to renew my ATA membership and get subscription to Trap & Field online a day or two ago. No luck doing so. After a couple of tries, just gave up. Admittedly, I'm not the most computer savvy senior citizen, but noted that the ATA offices are c!osed until May 31. Perhaps some helpful info will result from this thread. Be safe!

Just noticed Barry's generous offer to help. The ATA link is the one I was trying to use.

Send them an e mail. I did a few weeks ago about something and received a response with in a couple hours. They are still monitoring e mails apparently. I bet they can walk you through it, or do it over the phone.

 

[George MT.]

I feel that when working with shooters to get them to try registered shooting the club needs to promote thier tournament...thier club first and foremost and put out a quality product. The registered part needs to be seamless. The state association and ATA paperwork just part of the basic process. When you call your club tournament a ATA shoot that loyal club member almost always takes a step back and goes....what am I getting into here?? We need to make the registering part easy.

 

[OldGoat]

Send them an e mail. I did a few weeks ago about something and received a response with in a couple hours. They are still monitoring e mails apparently. I bet they can walk you through it, or do it over the phone.

Thanks! I shoulda thought about that. Will do. Best Regards.

 

[Barry C. Roach]

I.would have thought that Target Fees was the big driver

Nope. Much of the target fees are rebated back to your state, provincial and country organizations.

 

[Release Trigger]

Paid my annual membership and subscription to Trap & Field through the ATA Website on the 8th May.
All the way from Sydney Australia, not a problem.

Gary Kennerson.
96 05145.

 

[Trapshooter]

I am a lifer

 

[thisjed]

Life member here, one of the best gifts my dad ever got me!

 

[Joe Trapalino]

Just renewed for 2 years. I'm afraid of a life membership. It would really chat my backside if I croaked after just buying a lifetime membership.

 

[CharlieAMA]

Life Member here.

 

[Turbine]

It’s worth noting that clubs that hold ATA shoots have some free memberships to hand out for new members. The ATA paperwork takes about four minutes to fill out and when coupled with a free membership good for the target year, it’s a pretty easy “sell”. It’s curious that most of these freebies go unused year after year.
JB

 

[George MT.]

It’s worth noting that clubs that hold ATA shoots have some free memberships to hand out for new members. The ATA paperwork takes about four minutes to fill out and when coupled with a free membership good for the target year, it’s a pretty easy “sell”. It’s curious that most of these freebies go unused year after year.
JB

Good point on the free memberships, bottom line is that if clubs are recruiting their registered shooters from their leagues you can use those memberships up every time no problem. I usually as for more as your league are fertile ground to work with those shooters who want to shoot and compete more.

Im going to ask you a question because I see the term.. ATA Shoot. What is the level of involvement by the ATA with your local or semi local club putting on a tournament? The reason I ask this question is I want forum members/club operators to think about how they are promoting their trap shooting tournaments.

When promoting our registered tournaments to league shooters or new shooters wanting to get more involved keep in mind most of them strongly associate everything trapshooting with thier local club--the leagues they shoot and their practice shooting etc. SO when you tell them it is a ATA shoot they immediately ask ok what is the ATA and what am I getting into as opposed to keeping those first steps strongly associated with your local club only in a slightly expanded version.

So for me it works best to promote the club-our tournaments--our trophies--quality of the whole experience to these new shooters vs. just saying.......come to the ATA shoot. We make joining the state trapshooting assoc. and the ATA seamless and explain it for what the main functions of joining them is for records keeping-rules-and historical foundation of our sport. If you try to go thru a long winded presentation on explaining the ATA --you State organization etc. you will often lose their interest in taking that next step as opposed to the Hey Iam going to the local or semi local club to a tournament where I will get to shoot more and the competition is expanded

Keep in mind the ATA only puts on a couple of shoots a year, the US OPEN and The Grand American.

 

[Battle37]

Just renewed for 2 years. I'm afraid of a life membership. It would really chat my backside if I croaked after just buying a lifetime membership.

Think positive.

 

[Turbine]

George MT
You asked what the involvement of the ATA is with local clubs having a tournament. Here in Michigan, all the local clubs from around the State meet one night during our Fall Team Shoot at the State home grounds. Each zone (we have 6) sits together and decides shoot dates. After all, if two clubs are 40 or so miles apart and try to have a registered shoot on the same day, both will have poor attendance. When all zones are done, the master list of all ATA shoots (I used the term loosely, to me it means a shoot offering registered targets) is compiled by the State Secretary and a booklet is published and sent to all active shooters in the state every calendar year with all the shoots offering registered targets. The booklet also has address and contact information for all the
clubs.
The ATA and it’s State organization are involved to get the meeting running smoothly, approve the dates , and issue the booklet. If a club wants to have a meat shoot, a non-registered “games” shoot, or something similar, they will almost certainly check the booklet to see if a nearby club has a “registered shoot”. They will likely avoid that date to attempt to increase their attendance.
A long answer to a thoughtful question.
JB MTA President and ATA Delegate

 

[Phatmann]

Good point on the free memberships, bottom line is that if clubs are recruiting their registered shooters from their leagues you can use those memberships up every time no problem. I usually as for more as your league are fertile ground to work with those shooters who want to shoot and compete more.

Im going to ask you a question because I see the term.. ATA Shoot. What is the level of involvement by the ATA with your local or semi local club putting on a tournament? The reason I ask this question is I want forum members/club operators to think about how they are promoting their trap shooting tournaments.

When promoting our registered tournaments to league shooters or new shooters wanting to get more involved keep in mind most of them strongly associate everything trapshooting with thier local club--the leagues they shoot and their practice shooting etc. SO when you tell them it is a ATA shoot they immediately ask ok what is the ATA and what am I getting into as opposed to keeping those first steps strongly associated with your local club only in a slightly expanded version.

So for me it works best to promote the club-our tournaments--our trophies--quality of the whole experience to these new shooters vs. just saying.......come to the ATA shoot. We make joining the state trapshooting assoc. and the ATA seamless and explain it for what the main functions of joining them is for records keeping-rules-and historical foundation of our sport. If you try to go thru a long winded presentation on explaining the ATA --you State organization etc. you will often lose their interest in taking that next step as opposed to the Hey Iam going to the local or semi local club to a tournament where I will get to shoot more and the competition is expanded

Keep in mind the ATA only puts on a couple of shoots a year, the US OPEN and The Grand American.

We had club member who was just getting back to shooting and was carefully teaching/introducing his son to the game down to meticulous gun handling and cleaning instruction. This was a great opportunity to let him know about how much “we appreciate and welcome participants from our club”. We invited he and his son to join us at our Clubs Labor Day Registered competition shoot. The father was pleased to know we could easily handle registration and possibly a complimentary membership to the ATA.

I greatly Appreciate my ATA life membership. One truly gains respect for the ATA and State Trapshooting Association volunteers when you are involved in putting together your home clubs registered shoot!

 

[George MT.]

George MT
You asked what the involvement of the ATA is with local clubs having a tournament. Here in Michigan, all the local clubs from around the State meet one night during our Fall Team Shoot at the State home grounds. Each zone (we have 6) sits together and decides shoot dates. After all, if two clubs are 40 or so miles apart and try to have a registered shoot on the same day, both will have poor attendance. When all zones are done, the master list of all ATA shoots (I used the term loosely, to me it means a shoot offering registered targets) is compiled by the State Secretary and a booklet is published and sent to all active shooters in the state every calendar year with all the shoots offering registered targets. The booklet also has address and contact information for all the
clubs.
The ATA and it’s State organization are involved to get the meeting running smoothly, approve the dates , and issue the booklet. If a club wants to have a meat shoot, a non-registered “games” shoot, or something similar, they will almost certainly check the booklet to see if a nearby club has a “registered shoot”. They will likely avoid that date to attempt to increase their attendance.
A long answer to a thoughtful question.
JB MTA President and ATA Delegate

Thanks for the reply your answer is what I expected as we do very much the same as far as scheduling shoots although is it left to our zone delegates and each club submits their desired shoot dates.

So getting back to promoting what a lot of us call registered shooting or many call ATA tournaments I feel it is important to promote to new shooters as a club tournament first and foremost. That way the comfort level of the new shooter is not looking at a change of organization but a small expansion.

We had a poster here in the not too recent past who started a thread running down the ATA and how they had a really bad experience and were sour on the whole idea of ATA shooting...……..so after asking a few questions and clarifying what the issue was it had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the ATA. It was a club issue involved with the pace of the shoot(which in this case was too fast). That is why I always look at the club and if they produce a good well managed shoot it is a positive reflection on all involved but if there is a issue too many point a finger at the ATA when they have minimal involvement on the actual function of the vast majority of shoots.

 

[o-hale]

The ATA gets blamed for a whole lot of things that they really have little or no involvement in.
Sort of like Trump, damned if you do and damned if you don’t.