WEST POINT — The Prairie Wildlife staff hosted the third national championship in its history earlier this month, achieving an outstanding level of exceptionalism. Helice, a shotgun game invented in Europe more than a century ago, has firmly taken root in the United States. Its popularity has swept the shotgun-shooting culture nationwide and it has anchored itself in areas where the spirit of game bird hunting once held the outdoor culture’s primary sway.
Helice targets are launched randomly from a setup akin to trap but unique in that targets accelerate after launch and continue to flee rapidly and randomly until out of range – much in the mold of a flushed bobwhite quail. Helice is a synthetic target alternative to live game bird shooting — similar to trap and to sporting clays, the game simulates the erratic, unpredictable flight of live game birds in a way no other shotgun game ever has. In fact, it is hard to imagine how it might be surpassed.
The passion for helice is found nowhere stronger than at Black Prairie Helice and Prairie Wildlife in Mississippi. The combined operation’s six-ring course is currently the largest in the nation, though one of roughly the same size is now being constructed in Wichita Falls, Texas.
Prairie Wildlife hosted the United States Helice Association National Championship in 2020, in 2022 and, week before last, in 2025. Top instinctive shotgun competitors from all across the nation held court at the operation near West Point for the better part of a week.
“There’s a tremendous amount of work behind the scenes that goes into hosting an event such as this, and our team did a brilliant job of hosting the best shooters in the world here at our place,” said Jimmy Bryan, founder of Prairie Wildlife and co-founder of Black Prairie Helice. His co-founder in the helice arena, Stephen Imes, of Columbus, passed away unexpectedly in the summer of 2021.
Invented in Europe early in the last century, helice’s popularity has grown slowly but steadily. In the South, where the roots of quail hunting still tap deeply into tradition, helice has begun to grow and attract shooters from all across the country. Primarily at the insistence of Imes, Prairie Wildlife, near West Point, built and opened its first helice range in 2018.
“Stephen and I went to Alabama one day to shoot helice and, all the way back, he talked about how much fun it had been,” Bryan said. “After continuing to talk about it for five or six months, he talked me into partnering with him on helice here, and we set about building our first helice ring.”
Black Prairie Helice, located at Prairie Wildlife with Imes as managing partner, was the result.
“Stephen was the prime motivation behind it,” Bryan said. “He was looking forward to having more time to pour into it, but time just didn’t work out.”
Partly because of its natural appeal, more significantly because of the ambassadorship demonstrated by Imes, both the game and its practice at Prairie Wildlife have flourished beyond all expectation.
“It’s very rare for us to see a facility be founded and grow at the pace Black Prairie Helice has,” Mimi Wilfong, of Dallas, says. She’s a past European and world champion helice shooter and past president of the United States Helice Association.
“Other places have taken decades to do what’s happened here in three years,” Wilfong said. “Stephen was the chief spark of growth of helice in this region. It’s really seen a big benefit from his drive.”
Unique among shooting disciplines, the science of addressing a bird or target moving through the air is a balance of form, function and reflex, blended into an expression of instinct only practice can refine. Consistent success can be elusive and fleeting. Helice is a game that highlights all of these. In its pursuit, more than a shooter’s ability is revealed. Along with what a shooter may do, helice demonstrates who a shooter to be. In both regards, Imes truly shone.
His legacy lives on in the West Point operation’s continued success.
Last week Prairie Wildlife and its helice operation, Black Prairie Helice, hosted 115 shooters on Friday, 120 on Saturday and 118 on Sunday. Together, the groups represented one of the largest fields ever to compete the United States Helice Association Open Championship. It was the largest field to compete a championship at the West Point facility by a fair margin.
Winners included the high over all champion Mike Bogetti, of Sacramento, California, along with champions in five other sub-categories. Bogetti claimed high over all with rounds of 28, 27 and 27 out of 30 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday respectively. Bogetti and his sub-category cohorts will help represent the United States in the world helice competition later this summer in Italy.
“I have always aspired for us to host national competitions, and our staff did a brilliant job of making this one, our third, the very best of all,” Bryan said. “Everything just went perfectly, and the guests didn’t realize how much went on behind the scenes to make everything work. Our staff worked out the organization, parking, shuttles and related logistics brilliantly. It was just like a beehive around here.”
Todd Robinson, general manager of Prairie Wildlife’s operations, said it was especially gratifying to see the facility thrumming along at maximum capacity.
“It was really exciting to see the lodge and all of our housing facilities full, all of our capacities completely maximized,” he said. “It’s not every day you see a facility this large completely booked, and that was good for us.”
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