Popcorn Kelly

If you're on the fence, we're working hard to encourage you to come down on our side of it. If you're travelling from afar, we're conveniently located on the Illinois/Iowa border along I-80. The Quad City area has plenty of hotels and restaurants so there's no worries about finding a place to stay near the range. Visit www.illowairregulars.com to learn more about our beautiful, cowboy friendly range. As I wrote in my original post above, we're planning another Saturday evening Riverboat dinner cruise on the Mississippi. While it's hard to capture the experience in four pictures, here is a four-picture collage from this year's cruise that tells part of the story. So, if you're looking for some a little different, something a little extraordinary, consider coming to the SASS 2023 Illinois State Championship. Oh, and the shooting will be first-rate. PK

Illowa Irregulars are pleased to announce that Registration for the SASS 2023 Illinois State Championship – Mayhem on the Mississippi scheduled from Aug 18-20, 2023 is officially open. We are excited to bring Illinois another State Championship match and hope you will make plans to come join us for what we believe will be one of the best State Championships in the Upper Midwest and beyond. We've the same 180-shooter limit. Planning has already begun: Warm-up and Side Matches on Friday, two days of exciting cowboy action shooting competition on Saturday and Sunday, an optional Saturday evening Riverboat dinner cruise about the Celebration Belle on the Mississippi, ending with a catered awards banquet at a nearby, air-conditioned community center. Speaking of the dinner cruise, the 2022 cruise was very well received with many requests to do it again. If you were on the cruise last year, here’s a chance to cruise the Mississippi again; if you missed it and wished you had gone, here’s your chance; or, if you are new to the match, here’s your chance to do something really unique – cruise the Mississippi River with your fellow cowboys and cowgirls dressed up in western attire, dining and enjoying the evening about the Celebration Belle. Check out our videos listed along the right margins of our website's home page (www.illowairregulars.com) . If you are unfamiliar with our club, the Illowa Irregulars Cowboy Action Shooting club is located in Milan, Illinois, part of the Quad Cities area along I-80 at the Illinois/Iowa border. The Quad Cities area has an abundance of nearby amenities, hotels, and restaurants very near the range making it a great place to host a match of this nature. We are centrally located in the upper Midwest, 3 hours West of Chicago, 5 hours north of St. Louis, 3 hours southwest of Madison, Wisconsin, and 3 hours east of Des Moines, Iowa. If you’re looking for a trip up to or through the Midwest, here’s your chance. It’s a beautiful part of the country and travel is easy. If you’re coming from afar, we’d make either a good destination or someplace to stop on your way. Either way, consider yourself invited! Registration: We are now offering two ways to register – our traditional printed/mailed paper form AND our new online form. The traditional PAPER-BASED REGISTRATION FORM can be downloaded clicking here; and, Our NEW ONLINE REGISTRATION FORM can be accessed by clicking here. You can find the links to both forms here. For more information visit our website at www.illowairregulars.com. If so inclined, feel free to sign up to receive our blog posts via email in the lower right corner of our home page. Popcorn Kelly

Bailey Creek, I agree with the sentiment you expressed, which is why many of my videos include average and sometimes newer shooters shooting portions of, if not complete, stages. In this case, I wanted to give viewers a different look at CAS and show the inherent friendly competition that exists within Cowboy Action Shooting, not just a limited view of a single stage. Other shooting disciplines have television shows that show shooters going head to head. I wanted to do the same in my own crude way. If I do one next year, I'd like to highlight three cowgirls in a similar competition. We'll see. This one took me about 30 hours to produce the video, not including the time filming the shooters.

Larry, thanks and glad you liked it. Just wanted to give a broader perspective of a match than just showing a single shooter shooting a single stage allows. As for the Illinois State Championship, we are already in the early planning stages. The riverboat is booked as is the awards ceremony venue (same place as this year). I hope to have the registration forms out in by October. Hope you're doing well. PK

Widder, Thanks. Just wanted to do something different, and with a little more back story to it. If I do one next year I'd like to try to do a ladies episode.

Glad you liked it. Yes, the instructions read: "extra round staged."

I recently completed one of the most ambitious Cowboy Action Shooting videos I’ve ever put together. I titled it: Popcorn Kelly's Shoot-Out at Camden Mills 2022 - A Unique Perspective Click here to view the video. Unlike most cowboy action shooting videos, mine or others, which show single or partial stages of several match participants, this video chronicles three shooters through Illowa Irregular’s entire August, 2022 monthly match. The three shooters, JW James, Mountain Man Champ, and Foyster O’Rippy, agreed to participate in this cowboy competition – a sort of match within a match – with the winner being named Popcorn Kelly’s Shoot-Out At Camden Mills 2022 Champion. All shot on the same posse. My purpose in creating this video is to highlight the competitive nature of our sport, often seen other sports, but not often seen in Cowboy Action Shooting. You’ll get a sense of the ebb and flow of the match as the lead changes hands a few times. I’ll warn you, this is a long one, coming in at 39 mins. Think of this more as a television show than a short stage video – a sort of Wide World of Sports episode, crude as it may be. I also encourage you to watch it on a television if at all possible. While I have your attention, we have Fall Round-Up coming up September 23-25, 2022. Get your registrations in soon. Illowa Irregulars Cowboy Club submitted our application to host the SASS Illinois State Championship from August 18-20, 2023. The 2022 state championship was attended by 150 shooters from 16 states, and received rave reviews. We are planning to host another Saturday evening dinner cruise on the Mississippi River aboard the Celebration Belle, and are planning another unique event yet to be finalized. Look for our article in the next SASS Chronicle. Please consider putting the SASS Illinois State Championship on your shooting calendar. You’ll be glad you did. Stay tuned. With that, this is Popcorn Kelly signing off. Hopefully our paths will cross one day, wherever that may be. Sincerely, Popcorn Kelly

Regardless of what you enjoy most about FRU: The fun side matches, the free Friday night pizza party, free Saturday lunch, the Saturday night banquet, or the free awards lunch and ceremony, the miss and procedural tickets (a sort of get out of jail free cards), or if you just are looking for a late September 3-day match in the beautiful upper Midwest, come on out and help us celebrate FRU in style. To give you a sense of RT's approach this year, Illowa Irregulars is publishing his stages one at a time in a sort of FRU teaser series. To see the teaser posts go to www.illowairregulars.com and scroll down the page. All stage teaser posts begin with the words "FRU 2022 - An old-style, historical cowboy shoot" followed by the stage number being released. As of this post, we've posted 7 teaser posts w/ stages, with the 8th scheduled to be released tomorrow, the 9th on Monday, August 22nd, and the 10th and final on Friday, August 26th. We'll publish the entire match book a few days prior to the match. Come on out. You'll be glad you did.

Now that the 2022 state match is over, I'm starting to think a bit about 2023. We're probably going to have to shift gears on name badges next year and come up with something new. To that end, I would like to start by looking at badges' others felt were well designed yet had a characteristic that made them memorable. Please post or send me examples of your favorite name badge and why you liked it.

Illowa Irregulars is one of several shooting disciplines at the Milan Rifle Club. We are able to offer on-site camping only during our large 3-day events, which in 2023 will be the Illinois State Championship planned for August, 2023 However, there are several campgrounds very close to the range that could be used for any of our regular monthly matches (3rd Sunday's except in Sept). Here is some camping information from our website. Rock Island/Quad Cities KOA is located on the north side of Andalusia Road, between our club and Milan, approximately 3.5 miles from the club. Reservations are generally required. Be aware that in the past, anyone visiting registered campers has been charged a small admission fee. West Lake Park is located across the Mississippi River in Iowa, approximately 10 miles from the club. Access is via I-280, US 61 West, and County Road Y48 North. Sites are only available first come first served. Summit campground sites have electric and water hookups, while sites at Terrance Park campground also have sewer.

And now for something a little different. A 5+ minute video with no introduction, no voiceovers, and no music. Enjoy the Zen and come see Camden Mills for yourself. We just concluded the 2022 Illinois State Championship and are making plans for 2023. PK

This is a quick post-match update of the SASS 2022 Illinois State Championship July 15-17. After a few late cancels due to various reasons, we ended up with 149 paid shooters, crowned two new Overall Winners, two new Mens and Ladies Champions, and 34 new Illinois Category Champions. If anyone would like an electronic version of the Event program, click here to download it. We enjoyed hosting the 2022 Championship and are already making plans for next year. In terms of next year, we will most likely hold the event from August 18-20, 2023. Please mark these dates on your calendar and make plans to attend and, if so inclined, please consider recommending us to others. The more the merrier! Match Videos I also want to let you know I created two videos of the 2022 Illinois Championship. Between the video footage and all the pictures, it was quite long (in the order of 40 minutes) so I broke it up into two parts. Heck, you may even want to pop some popcorn. ;-) Part 1 mostly contains an introduction, several videos of cowboys and cowgirls shooting stages, and scrolling lists of the Overall Winners, Category Champions, Side Match Winners and Clean Shooters at the end. This video is about 21 minutes long. Click here to view Part 1. Part 2 contains a shorter introduction and then photos of the match, the Celebration Belle Riverboat Dinner Cruise, and all Award Winners. There are a lot of pictures. Part 2 is about 20 minutes long. Click here to view Part 2. [My videos tend to be a bit longer than most cowboy shooting videos. Feel free to fast forward. I also encourage people to watch them on their television if possible. To me they are much more enjoyable when viewed on a larger screen with better sound.] Again, thanks for your support and we hope to see you next year. Happy Trails, Popcorn Kelly, Communications and Website Director Illowa Irregulars Cowboy Action Shooting Club Milan, Illinois

I see. The link is correct, I just typed in 14 names, not 16 in my original post. Corrected now. Thanks.

I just took a look and counted 16. https://illowairregularsdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2022/07/2022-illinois-state-championship-clean-match-results.pdf

Side Match Winners are posted. Click here to go to the Scores page. PK

The SASS 2022 Illinois State Championship Results are available on the Illowa Irregulars Scores page. We had 150 shooters start the match. While it was a little wet Friday morning for the first warm-up match, it cleared up in the afternoon for the second warm-up and remained dry the afternoon Side Matches and both days of the main match. Congratulations to: Matt Black and Turkey Legs for winning Overall Men’s and Ladies Shooters, Billie the Avenger and Turkey Legs for taking top Illinois State honors by winning the 2022 SASS Men’s and Women’s Championships, respectively; and Our 16 Clean Shooters: Matt Black, Billy the Avenger, Capt. Jim Midnight, Wicker Nash, City Slicker, Sgt Hampton, Dangerous Dan McGrew, Comstock Charlie, Bailey Creek, Fatboy Harley, Badlands Charlie, Rance, Sew Cantina, Kid Koo, Mar Sioux, and Lady Pearl. Also, if I say so myself, the Saturday evening Celebration Belle Riverboat Dinner cruise was spectacular. Great weather, great food, but most importantly, it was being with the 93 cowboys, cowgirls, and some family members, many of whom were dressed hilt in their cowboy/cowgirl finery. Even the non-cowboys on the cruise were entertained having our fun group on the boat with them. Thanks to everyone who attended, and hope you enjoyed the match. I know I speak for every Illowa Irregular when I say we truly appreciate your having attending the match, and hope you will consider returning for future matches. If you would like to see our event program, including our stages, click here. With that, I’ll call it a day. Popcorn Kelly

Ethan, thanks again for sharing your video and pics with me.

I just posted an updated Who's Coming List for the 2022 Illinois State Championship scheduled from July 15-17, 2022, this time with Alias, Category, AND State per request. Here's the link if you'd like to check it out. Oh, and we're up to mid-80's attending the Celebration Riverboat Dinner Cruise. I've been asked by several people if the boat actually leaves the dock. Absolutely, it leaves the dock and cruises up and down the Mississippi between lock and dams #14 and #15. For more information on the dinner cruise see our registration form at www.illowairregulars.com. Popcorn Kelly, Illowa Irregulars