It’s been a good match. The squads came and went smoothly, the weather was decent and the range food wasn’t terrible. Now it is Sunday afternoon and you just ran your last shooter on the last squad of the match. Now what? Why tear it down, pack it up and head home or to find a frosty beverage; that’s what! Whoa! Not so fast there!
The reality is that you have finished running your last scheduled shooter. You don’t know that there might be some reshoots headed your way. You don’t know that maybe someone on a shoot through pass hasn’t made it to you yet. And there is always general stage clean up to get handled.
Most RMs encourage the CRO of each stage to call in on the radio when they are done. This helps the RM work through that mental check list of which stages are still shooting. It also lets them know that there is available staff if they need to have some additional bodies to help speed-up a stage or two that are running behind. I’ve worked several matches where we grabbed every available RO and sent them to a stage to get it going as fast as possible. This is usually weather or daylight related. And Stats or Tech Support knows to come get your scoring tablet(s) from you. Never leave your scoring device unattended.
Never tear down the stage until told to do so. Large matches will handle this with a specific tear down crew. Many clubs will leave at least some of the stages up and tweak them a bit for their next club match or just use them for practice over the next week or two. But if you get carried away and tear it down and there is suddenly a reshoot that needs to happen and the stage isn’t available to shoot it is possible that all your hard work just went out the window with that stage getting tossed out of the match.
If you aren’t needed elsewhere, at least pick up all the trash, shot targets, etc. and generally clean things up. Any lost and found items need to get to the lost and found (often at Stats but not always).
And always, always, ask before you hit the road. If you have a long drive ahead of you, need to go catch a flight, let the RM know that and you will probably be released immediately.
There is usually lots of work that still needs to be done after the shooting is over. So stick around and lend a hand if you can. We will appreciate it!