Eureka chucks this year's hedge apple contest

Just when you thought the recession couldn't hit any harder, couldn't hurl any more awful news our way, there's this:

No hedgeball chuckin'.

Eureka's annual HedgeBall Chuckin' Contest — an event created to celebrate autumn, American ingenuity and that most abundant of Kansas fruits, the hedge apple — has been canceled "due to economic reasons," according to the event's Web site.

"It's kind of a money loser, so the camp where we hold it decided they couldn't do it this year," said Craig Olson, a self-described "good ol' boy from Eureka" who founded the event in 2005.

"It's disappointing. The guys who shoot and their families and friends just love this deal," he said. "Our plan is to be back bigger and better next year."

The contest usually is held the third Saturday of October in Eureka, about 60 miles east of Wichita. Teams compete with air cannons, catapults and medieval-style trebuchets to see how far they can launch a hedge apple — the bumpy green fruit of the Osage orange tree, also known as the hedge tree.

Olson and some of his co-workers at Invena Corp., a Eureka manufacturing company, started the hedge ball chucking contest — the world's first, as far as anyone can tell — after reading stories about pumpkin chucking contests in New England.

"Hedge apple trees grow like weeds in these parts — just everywhere," Olson said. "So we thought, why not do the same thing with them? You know, have some fun."

Max Entrikin, a retired engineer who once designed missiles for General Dynamics, holds the hedge ball chucking record in the "mechanical/professional" class — 1,113 feet. His goal, he says, is a quarter-mile — or another 207 feet.

Contestants in the air-powered cannon class have shot hedge apples over half a mile, Olson said. "Sometimes we can't even find them, they're so far out there."

Entrikin built his giant trebuchet a few years back, after seeing a story about them on the History Channel. Now the contraption, fashioned from junk lumber and named Mad Max, sits in a brome field on his farm near Eskridge.

Since the annual contest is "bring your own hedge balls," Entrikin has a freezer full of the brainy-looking fruits — including one the size of a cantaloupe — just waiting to be hurled. He freezes the good ones to keep them firm, which helps them sail farther.

"My wife is kind of on me because I'm taking up all the freezer space," said Entrikin, 76. "She'll get over it."

He said he's disappointed this year's contest was canceled — and not just because he's a likely shoo-in for the $500 prize.

"Winning's fun," he said. "But it's more fun to see all the machines and the different ways people put them together.... Sort of reinforces that I'm not the only crazy guy doing this."

Olson said the Eureka Chamber of Commerce is considering helping with the 2010 contest and "making it more like an Octoberfest kind of deal, with vendors and other activities."

In the meantime, hardcore hedge apple chuckers like Olson and Entrikin said they may gather unofficially sometime in November. They'll find an open field, assemble their machines and "just shoot a little," Olson said.

"We've got a lot of hedge balls."

This story was originally published October 15, 2009 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Eureka chucks this year's hedge apple contest."