Last Tuesday, a gala event was held at the Sullivan Center in celebration of the 28th anniversary of the founding of the Antelope Island Invitational Caged Hunting Championship. Cage shooters from all over the world converged on downtown Salt Lake City, dressed to the nines in their camouflage overalls, gun holsters slung across their shoulders and belly's full of Natty Lights, the official sponsors of the event since 1991.
The Antelope Island Invitational Cage Hunting Championship started as a local contest between residents of Sandy City, Draper, Riverton and West Jordan to see how many soon to be euthanized animals could be killed within a 12-minute period. "It's kind of like the World Championship of Eating," stated Mark Hebert, event co-founder, "except instead of eating hot dogs, we're shooting caged animals."
"It really is amazing to see the event grow like it has. What started off as a monthly hobby where me and a few of my buddies would get together with a flatbed full of abandoned dogs to cats and see who could shoot them the fastest for bragging rights has turned into an internationally recognized sport. We have fella's come up from Iceland and Kenya and New Zealand ... even Canada. This year, we're starting a women's and youth division for the .38 caliber and .22 caliber divisions."
The Championship's target zoo has grown just as much as the contestant pool. " Other than cats and dogs, I think the only other animals that we had to shoot at were some guinea pigs and an old iguana we named Clara Belle. Now we have dogs, cats, parakeets, hamsters, goat, sheep, horses, llamas, emu, turtles, alpaca. One year we even had a hammerhead shark that we kept in a 1,000 gallon tank. The man with the most kills in the .30-.06 division got to take that puppy out. A few years ago, we were contacted by a Chinese adoption agency to help relieve their burden of little girls. Now, these weren't little babies, but 7 years old and over. I had to tell them that we couldn't help them at the time, but hopefully in a few more years we can create a new division."
Attendance truly became international in 1991 when Natural Light Beer became the official sponsor of the event. "We wanted to make sure that when people thought of cheap thrills," stated Douglas Guillary, VP of Marketing, Natural Light Beverages, "they thought about drinking our beer while shooting trapped animals."
More Utah news at The Regal Seagull
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