Punkin Chunkin: less competition, more splatter

Punkin Chunkin is coming back to Delaware with a dulled competitive edge, but boasting more creative ways for high-velocity pumpkins to make mayhem.

The fall pumpkin-splattering spectacular was on hiatus in 2014, without a venue to call home after its longtime Sussex landlord pulled the plug. But organizers have been preparing to relaunch the event Nov. 7-8 at Dover International Speedway, and on Friday, as tickets went on sale, they described how this year’s event will be different from recent Chunks – while staying true to its roots.

“We’re going to turn all the machines loose in a freestyle mode,” said Frank Shade, a longtime Punkin Chunkin organizer and competitor. “I like the terminology ‘old school.’ This is how we started 30 years ago. I guarantee it’s going to be a good show.”

The event is putting its well-known distance competitions on pause, Shade said. Across categories like air cannon, trebuchet and human-powered, teams and their gourd-tossing devices have usually competed with each other to see who can propel a pumpkin the farthest.

The World Championship Punkin Chunkin Association has kept meticulous records of those distances; the longest shot from the most powerful machine, an air cannon, came in 2013 when the American Chunker Inc. team sent one 4,694.68 feet downrange.

The Dover Speedway property, however, isn’t large enough to permit shots that far. Organizers, accepting the site would hamper distance competitors, decided to remove the farthest-throw aspect altogether this year. Spotters on ATVs, Shade said, will no longer chase down pumpkins in the field to measure throws.

It was an accident involving one such spotter that led to Punkin Chunkin leaving its former location, a Sussex County farm near Bridgeville. A volunteer spotter filed a lawsuit against the farm owner and Punkin Chunkin officials after his ATV overturned, leaving him with serious injuries. The lawsuit was dismissed earlier this year, but after it was filed in 2013, landlord Wheatley Farms declined to have the event back on the property.

Instead, Shade said, entrants can announce a target distance and then compete with each other to get closest to it, kind of like playing golf with 10-pound pumpkins and heavy machinery.

In other places, Shade said, competitors will try to obliterate large targets by firing pumpkins at them. “I envision a few campers, maybe a mobile home,” Shade said of possible targets. “When they shoot targets, they might use 50 psi instead of 300 psi” – meaning shorter launches than in the past – “but the devastation from a 10-pound pumpkin at 150 miles per hour is just huge. They fly right through trailers, right through cars.”

Tickets are $10, with an early bird special available for $16 per person for a two-day pass. Tent and RV camping options are also available at $200 and $300 for the two-day span, and organizers said there’s room for more than 1,200 campsites. For ticket, tent and RV camping information, call (800) 441-7223 or visit PunkinChunkin.com.

“While this year’s event won’t be one where we are throwing for overall distance, we are confident that it’s going to be the best show for the crowd that we’ve ever put on,” said Ricky Nietubicz, World Championship Punkin Chunkin Association president. “We are also confident that it will raise a lot of money for our scholarship program and for the charities that we support.”

Punkin Chunkin will take place on the same grounds as Firefly Music Festival and Big Barrel Country Music Festival. “They know how to put on a successful event; they’ve shown that,” said Mike Tatoian, president and CEO of Dover International Speedway. “This year, I don’t want to say more organized, but it’s going to be a more efficient operation. ... We feel this is a fifth major event for us. We’re excited to have it equal a music festival or a NASCAR race.”

Shade said the venue will allow spectators to walk up closer to the machines than before, and he said the site is better equipped to handle wet weather. At the old side, “we’ve had people sloshing around in mud up to their ankles and knees,” Shade said. “That’s not going to happen here.”

The missed year did cost Punkin Chunkin the attention of Discovery Channel, which had for years sent a camera team to record an hourlong special about the competition. Shade said as it stands now, Discovery is not planning to produce a show about the 2015 Chunk.

Nearly all the competitors, though, seem to have stuck with the event. Twenty-one air cannon teams took part in 2013’s event, and 20 have registered to come back this year. In all, 103 teams have registered for November, compared with 113 participating machines in 2013.

“They’ll grumble or complain,” Shade said, affably, of Punkin Chunkin participants. “But the next minute: ‘We can throw pumpkins? We’ll be there.’ ”