You really have to look at it from both sides, the guy that pays his dues and comes out for the work weekends does so for a place to shoot in his liesure time. On the other hand, the club needs to survive financially and needs more revenue than the dues bring in. Add to that the myriad of shooting disciplines that the members are involved in, whether Police combat shooting, pistol sillywets, long range slow fire, MOA benchers. Members who are active in these organizations want to have competitions that necessarily are held on weekends. Competition to book weekends for these gets stiff during prime seasons. The sillywet shooter, combat shooter and bencher end up divvying up the weekends and the little guy who just wants to shoot gets squeezed out. I once had the annual schdule for the Fairfax Rod and Gun club, which has several dedicated ranges, It seemed like the different pistol competitions were every three weekends a month all year. The Schuetzen Verein had the rifle range one Sunday every two months, The bench rest shooters had it one Saturday every month, the off hand shooters had the rifle range a weekend every month, add to that the public shooting days permitted in October and things got jammed bad. Gun shows and weekend competitions can be big revenue catches for little clubs. My local club dues are just $20.00 a year. I have no doubt that the dues are probably less than a third of the cost of running the club.
