I drove for 3 hours to some corn field in the middle of Sussx County Delaware to meet some friends for the 20th Annual World Championship Punkin Chunkin. What is Punkin Chunkin?… it is like a county fair with a huge tailgate party where you throw pumpkins across a harvested corn field. That is Punkin Chunkin. Some of Trebuchet were impressive… the Yankee Siege Trebuchet is massive. This machine is the world record holder in its class for chunkin pumpkins 1394 feet. This machine weighs in at 35 to 40,000 lbs and can throw a 250-300 lb. load is about 300 yards with a 8000 lb counterweight load. The trebuchet can handle a maximum counterweight load of 20,000 lbs.
The other machines were equally impressive. There was everything from compressed air cannons to small trebuchets that were built by girl and boy scouts. The air cannons, can chunk the pumpkins 3-4 time the distance of the trebuchets. One chunk by the 2nd Admendment went 4300 feet on Saturday. It was interesting to see these things fling the 8-10 lb pumpkins hundreds and in the case of the air cannons thousands of feet.