Roger - There is a 9 o'clock cannon every night - as you saw in the video. This year it was Hatchet Jack's little 1 1/2" bored full size carriage cannon - also, his crew which included Taylor and I, won first prize in the large bore carriage cannon. I suspect next year, the targets will be at longer range. We made a very nice group once we got her dialed in. 3 tens, 2 nines, an 8, 7 and 6. Our 2 misses just outsdie the scoring rings were attributed to patches cut at the muzzle upon loading. It pays to pick up spent patches!
Prizes are varied depending on who held the event. The primitive archery hosted by Taylor had all the prizes of marked custom made primitive arrows. He gives out a first, second, third in juniors, women's mens, middle score and lowest score winning a prize. This system of his has become normal for that event. This year, the hand-stripped and sinue-tied on turkey feathered shafts all had 'trade' points where-as in previous years, they held flint or obsidian points that Taylor napped himself. Other events had plaques, hand made primitive boxes, handmade primitive chairs, lanterns, shooting supplies - clothing, rendezvous stuff, that sort of thing - no cash prizes.
Lots of winners, lots of places and lots of people who didn't win or place - but all seemed to have a wonderful time. You pick who you want to shoot with and we mostly all shoot in groups. At times, we picked up shooters into our group who had no 'group'.
Weather was a bit odd this year. We had some heat the first couple days - man, those breech clouts are a lot cooler than trousers! We had some cool, cloudy weather and some almost cool sunny weather and some wind - make that lots of wind on a few days. It was fun to hear and sometimes see the odd big Ponderosa Pinescome crashing down on the hill side.
Good turnout - some lines of fire saw a total of 140 shooters participating in a day long event. Sometimes it took a couple hours to shoot a course of fire - 21 shots the norm. Very casual indeed.
From what I saw, a good time was had by all.
