A European Tower Shoot is not a hunt - it is a shoot. Don’t get me wrong, this does not mean that it puts the shooters at an advantage. To the contrary, it gives the birds the advantage. Europeans think that to shoot a pheasant over a dog when it is just getting up, while moving at a fairly slow speed is too easy. They say that to shoot a high flying bird after it has reached full speed is much more of a challenge. The object of our shoot is to give shooters the opportunity to shoot at a lot of birds in a short period of time. The tower is 30 foot tall and is hidden in a patch of timber with 10 shooting stations positioned around it. Each station is approximately 60 yards from the tower and stations are about 60 yards apart. Some of the stations are in the timber, and some are along the edge where the timber and grass fields meet. 10 times during the shoot, shooters rotate to the next station so that everyone gets the same opportunity in the event that some stations are hotter than others. The operator in the tower will release one bird at a time. The pheasants start their flight 30 feet above the ground and accelerate up and over the shooting stations. usually two or more of the stations will have a shot at each bird as it soars out.
The idea of this event as an outreach was the product of John Kamberger, one of the men of our church, after attending an event last year. During the summer we had the opportunity to hear the ministry heartbeat of Pastor Jon Jenks from Calvary Baptist Church in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. He challenged us with the idea that whatever we do for leisure or for a hobby MUST be done in view of telling others about Jesus.
We had a total of 20 shooters with at least 14 men who may not have known Jesus in a personal way. Pastor Jon brought a short but very appropriate devotional that the men seemed to really to connect. The consensus after the event was that it was a great success; in fact when asked all of the guys said if we did this again they would like to return!
Praise The Lord!
No comments:
Post a Comment