Why buy a Christmas turkey or ham when you can win one?
The Lac la Hache Curling club hosted its annual turkey shoot on Dec. 10 at the 100 Mile Curling Club Arena.
“This is the wind-up for our first half of the season,” said Barb McInnes, vice-president of the club. “You get three rocks for $3 and your best shot is really the only one that counts.”
All players have to do is throw their three rocks and add-up the two closest to the button. The best you can get is 10 points.
The teams are divided so the skips play the thirds and the seconds play the leads, to ensure the shoots are fair and players are playing against people of the same calibre opposed to a rookie playing a 20-year veteran.
“A rookie doesn’t stand much of a chance,” said player Rick Jones, explaining what would happen if first-year players faced off against someone like Jones, who started curling as a “kneehigh grasshopper”, but there is a disadvantage for some of the experienced players as well. “There are no sweepers out there so they got to tune up their shooting up really good, so the guys who rely on sweepers don’t do so well.”
One of the players who participated in the turkey shoot was Robert Shearer, a ninety-year-old curler who started curling after the Second World War.
The $3 dollars go directly into helping fund the operating costs of the club, which struggled at the beginning of the season getting players out.
“We were short people, so we had to rely on our spare list a little more than we’d like to because those are people who like to curl once in a while but they don’t want to curl all the time,” said McInnes about the player shortage.”We’ve had some good spaces so they filled in. After Christmas, we should have a full sheet of paper.”
There are six teams in the Lac la Hache club’s league. The club made it’s home at the 100 Mile Curling Club after the chiller broke in their own arena roughly ten years ago and ended up staying despite the chiller being repaired the year after.
