Interesting left turn this thread took based on an unrelated thread at another forum.
Frankly, it’s kinda funny to see that topic crossing that forum, because it was all the rage about 3 years ago in the PRS, and we’ve largely all gotten over it and moved on to more competition relevant topics for our internal drama (this year it was muzzle cover safety and mulligans).
As folks in that thread pointed out, it’s largely a PRS issue (and especially formerly NRL, because they arranged absolutely massive prize tables for every national event), as we tend to have more prize tables throughout the season than most shooting sports. There’s generally a complete rifle (sans optic), a bare action or two, a couple suppressors, handful of barrels, empty stock, half off all of the above, several pounds of powder, a reloading press, etc… often tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff.
When the Austins, Clay, or Morgun pick up a rifle every other weekend at 20 some events each year, it might be clear they don’t have use for all of them. It’s also pretty natural for a mid-pack guy to come away with something worth around $500-1000, then resell it for near retail price because they don’t need THAT thing, but need something else.
Personally, I’ve picked up a complete rifle except a rings and muzzle brake for my son in the last year and a half, either in donated product or certs for half off. I’m not a top level guy by any stretch, but I’ve picked up $7,000 in optics from PRS prize tables in the last 3 seasons, and picked up half off two Vortex optics in the two seasons prior - I’m always scope poor, so I made use of all of them, at least for a while. I have also given away a couple of certs, gave away a muzzle brake, gave away an RCBS single stage I picked up. I also sold a few certs for ~1/4 of their value, helping pay for the $1000 I have into most 2 day matches, and because I didn’t need the item bad enough (one was 40% off a Swaro spotting scope which was still something like $3000 after the discount, so selling $2000 worth of cert for $100 didn’t feel too bad, another was 25% off any 1 item with Seekins, right after they launched their Havak rifles, again, selling a $900 cert for $100). I also picked up a “fastest stage” prize once, a $2000 NF, and then could have picked up another $1000+ item on the prize table for my placing walk too, but let my buddy’s 10yr old son walk in my spot - he picked up a box of bullets for his dad to load in his plinking rifle. I’ve been to matches where the podium guys get to walk first, then random draw of everyone else. I’ve been to matches without tables (which aren’t well attended the next year, in general). At most matches, some high ranking guy with an early walk will give his walk to an RO or junior shooter, or new shooter to let them walk early enough to pick up more than a hat or stickers which would have been the only thing left by the time they walked. I’ve also been to a match where a top shooter picked up a scope, walked it across the room to some other shooter’s kid who they knew needed it and handed a $2500 optic to a 14yr old kid who had just been spectating that weekend… There’s a ridiculous amount of generosity in the PRS.
I’ve also seen the ugly side when generosity is truly taken for granted - for several years, pro series shooters in our state club would pool prize table parts and swap gear they won (even sell prize table items to BUY the parts required) to produce a complete, competition ready open class rifle - which was then given to a new shooter at our state Finale which had shot that season (or two) with a factory rifle. The unwritten rule was that when that shooter did finally upgrade some part of it, they’d donate back to the pool, paying it forward, or if they built a new rifle, they’d donate it to some other new shooter. Which went fine for a few years. Then one year, a new shooter had the rifle in hand for about a month, never fired it, then reached out to our club for specs so he could know what to write when he listed it on sniper’s hide for sale… it’s his rifle, so he certainly could do with it what he wanted, but it didn’t really sit well with the group of guys who donated thousands of dollars of THEIR OWN GEAR to help welcome him to the sport. I have also seen a jersey’d shooter throw an absolute fit in public when a match director shuffled to draw an RO among every so many shooters as they went down the list, and the RO - who had donated their time and travel expenses to sit a stage and facilitate the match all weekend - picked up the prize they wanted one place before the shooter (wanna say it was just an 8lber of H4895 too…).
There’s no perfect system which pleases everyone. I’m working still on filling our prize table for our state club finale in 2 months, and I can say, firsthand, vendors don’t want drama, and they want their products to help the GROWTH of the sport. Not every prize on the table can be piped to some uber-grateful, needing, and deserving under-privileged Junior class shooter, but not every prize should get monetized by some mid-pack shooter like selling food stamps on a street corner either… But I do also believe the culture of the matches and clubs will generally set the tone for expected behavior. Bitching about how things are ran, rather than stepping up to help the mechanism run better will rarely produce positive change. Rather, I’ve seen it more frequently cause ranges to cease hosting matches, which isn’t good for anyone…
But personally, I’d much rather keep watching SPJ’s results and targets than see this thread diverge into discussion about another thread on another forum about an unrelated topic.