This is such an interesting question but for me difficult to answer, the obstacle being which year ? Like most I found the start up costs made the first year harder but then the gun I bought was cheap by even those years standards. Do you factor in fuel, what about depreciation ? That can cause some serious dent if you do distance shoots every week. Do you take brown envelopes into account ? What about income / expenditure ratio ? Back when I could only afford to shoot once a fortnight the costs were still substantial given my income, today most of us wouldn't have the time to spend more on our shooting even if we wanted to. I shot pigeon once or twice a week too at one time; that sure isn't free. Reminds me, must get farmers drinks next week.
I would spend as little as £10 on some 80's straw baler but recall going home feeling well off with £30 in my pocket :lol: , in the early 90's before I got married doing two or even three shoots on a Sunday was doable and fuel never even entered the equation since it cost £25 to fill up ! Today I'd be looking at £50 allowance just for fuel. Dread to even add up the costs for the guns.
I'd be surprised if the top guys don't comfortably break even, I certainly came close when I shot more, even if I could only enter one or two smaller shoots the idea was to enter the pool and/or the skeet pool/compak, kinda hedging your bets to try and re-coup something. Many a time I avoided empty pockets by one last hurrah re-entry.
In the past I've spent as much as £5-£6k in a year (double that in todays money), these days it's probably more like £2-£3k on shells including pigeon, and same again for entries, fuel I'd rather not think.
In all it maybe adds up to £150k+ if you take into account all the other guns and accessories, fantastic value for money to be honest because it took me into the countryside and without that I'd be the poorer man.
