lowgun- not sure where your getting the 11hr day figure from. Most flights start @ 9am and are done by 6, which would give you a 9hr day if you were pulling all day (or 8.5 hrs with a mandatory half hr unpaid lunch), assuming you pull 4 flights, your down to a 6hr day pay/work wise (if you figure their "off flights" are unpaid breaks). You don't need everyone to remain there for shootoffs either, so the average paid day would be somewhere b/w 6-8hrs. Figure on 7 hrs average, paying $7.25/hr, your looking @ $50.75 per person per day, which cuts your referee cost virtually in half. Figure @ a 10 field shoot, you'd need 15 refs/pullers/day. That would mean you'd save $738.75 on refs PER DAY, or roughly 1846.87 over the course of a 3 day shoot.
As an aside, trap shoots already run with school kids and voice releases, why is is such a difficult issue for the skeet guys to wrap their heads around? At BIG shoots (the grand, ect) their targets are $35/100 before options, at big skeet shoots the targets are $50-60+ before options (and are $20/100 vs $35/100 for local shoots), there has to be some reason they can throw EXACTLY the same targets for ALOT less $, and I think not having to pay for referees has alot to do with it. $5-$6.25 per 100 targets may not seem like alot to some, but thats close to 15% of your entry fee for local shoots ($35/gun).
I'm still trying to get pricing on the CVR units for skeet, they just discontinued all the wired models and I don't think the skeet wireless are in the country yet. However, if you look at the trap version, the wireless setup is $2K per field, so i'd rough guess $3K for a skeet setup (assuming the setup has a horn @ every station, would be even less if it had movable horns). Bottom lining it, if you can save $1846.87 over 3 days (plus perks), you'd completely pay for voice releases for ALL the fields after 16 shoots (8 years or less for shoots that hold @ least 2 shoots a year which most of the 10 field+ clubs probably do).
All that being said, I have immense respect for the refs we have, given our present situation with no alternative, we would NOT be able to shoot without them. However, at least around here, the average age of a ref is probably over 60, with VERY few new people becoming refs, and that being the case, their may come a point in the future, because we have no alternative, that shoots may have to limit entries not based on the number of shooters their fields can hold, but on the number of refs that are available for that weekend. I'm sure most of those guys would like to shoot at some point as well, but most know if they shoot instead of ref, there may not even be enough refs to run the shoot. Also, as shoots become more and more expensive (shells, targets, travel, hotel, ect), we HAVE to find someway to cut the cost for the average shooter if we expect our numbers to even maintain where they are now. Offering less for more (or even the same $) is not the way to do it. Cutting payouts aren't an option as far as i'm concerned, skeet already has a bad rap for being the shotgun sport with the lowest payouts for wins. If I can save 15% of the cost of my shoot, or even 10% or 5%, by shooting over voice releases, i'm all for it.
I am, however, not in favor with self reffing. I barely have enough energy or attention span to shoot 200 targets a day, let alone have to ref an entire squad, not to mention the fact that the older shooters may not physically be able to endure the extra time out in the sun.
