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Time for pumpkin chucking...

AJ Drew

AJ Drew

I don't have the time.  I don't have the money.  I probably don't have the smarts.  However, I do have a sincere love for the sport.  Sport?  Yes, maybe not an athletic sport but the competition is fierce.  If you have no clue what I am talking a then google or youtube it.  People build giant cannons, catapults, and other contraptions to chuck pumpkins as far as possible.  I think the first competitions of note were by an engineering school, maybe MIT, but I dont know the formal history of the sport for sure.
 
Is anyone else a fan? 
 
Some of the machines they use are pretty cool.
Very creative.
I used to also read about the thing about dropping pumpkins off a building and see what ones splattered the farthest.
 
Then there are similar things like potato guns etc.
 
Heckle, on deer hunting as a sport.  Where is the competition?  Biggest buck or most points is chance.  In an area depleted of deer, I guess I could see it as a sport.  However, the tag system kind of nullifies that thought. If there are two tags available to every hunter, that means DNR has said that there are two excess deer for every hunter.  If a drum contains 20 fish and I am allowed two, what sport is there in taking two?  Lets say you and I go deer hunting competitively, how do we decide who wins?

1 - First deer shot - OK, I guess that could competition to see which one of us is most impulsive, willing to shoot the first pathetic thing we see.
2 - Biggest / Most Points - OK, but that seems more like gambling.  Do I shoot that one or do I wait hoping I will be dealt something better?
3 - Most killed in a time period - Now I do think that would be sport, how fast a person can move n all, but it is illegal.  Only get so many tags.

I do think competitive shooting is a sport, but then you throw in the random factor of a deer showing up and we are right back to gambling.  My opinion is probably based on where i live.  All the property is owned by someone who lives in the immediate area.  Everyone knows who needs to fill a freezer and gives permission on season or off as long as you are from the area.  If you are not from the area, you might get yourself shot.  The result is lots of deer.  Not so many that the corn is bothered much, but more than in most places.
 
I built a modest trebuchet a long while back. It could toss baseball-sized rocks a good 150+ yards - far enough to bombard an obnoxious neighbor!  ;)
 
You could build a trebuchet, onager, or ballista with leftover lumber and some stretchy rope or garage door springs....
 
Go play with this, if you like. www.virtualtrebuchet.com/
 
Just don't kill yourself!
 
A SPORT?!?! I'm pretty sure its a drinking game.
 
I once funnelated a grapefruit 250 yards. Right into the open front door of the bar in my hometown when I was a grommet.
 
I used to go every year, big thing down here in lower slower DE. They used to hold it not far from where I live. Haven't been for a while now. Never thought it would have taken off the way it has. Was something fun to do/watch while drunk in the Fall but now they put it on tv and even had the Mythbusters air a special from there
 
What amazes me isn't just the distance they can get, its that the pumpkin stays in one piece out the barrel or off the launcher.  They gotta get the thing up to speed, but not too much sudden acceleration.  I can see why this is popular with engineering students.  I'd have pumpkin in my face.
 
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