Some alumni will remember that, back in the day, it wasn’t uncommon to hear rifle shots ring out inside the Main Building.
During the 1980s and early 2000s, Drexel operated a rifle range in Curtis Hall for the now-defunct Drexel University Rifle Team — whose signature event was an annual turkey shoot.
In 1984, the rifle team needed to raise funds for equipment and maintenance of their rifle range, which was located between the third and fourth floors of Curtis Hall (now a research facility). So naturally, they decided to shoot turkeys.
Not real turkeys, of course. Paper turkeys.
The turkey shoot was open to all students, faculty and employees. For obvious reasons, the rifle team substituted real turkeys with cartoon turkey targets (sometimes depicted wearing the traditional black Pilgrim hat or even carrying their own rifles), with frozen Butterball turkeys as prizes.
“No animals were ever harmed in our turkey shoot,” jokes Perry McFarland, a Drexel alumnus, former rifle team member and now associate dean for finance and administration at the School of Public Health.
The Drexel event was based on the traditional turkey shoot, which was once a popular pastime on the 19th-century American frontier and the 20th-century countryside.
Turkey targets featured a bull’s-eye on the turkey’s breast measuring roughly 0.25 centimeters in diameter — 50 feet away from the shooter. The highest possible score was 50 points, or five bull’s-eyes; most winners had scores in the upper 40s.
Most high-ranking officials like vice presidents, provosts and even University presidents participated or sent representatives from their offices. William W. Hagerty and Harold M. Myers took part during their tenures as Drexel president; Myers’ score of 38 in the 1987 competition placed in the 95th percentile of shooters.
Drexel’s last turkey shoot was held in 2003, the final year of the rifle team and its rifle range. At the time, the organization was the nation’s second-oldest collegiate rifle team, having been established in 1919.