It was a packed house inside Ox Indoor Axe throwing in Billings on Sunday as people gathered to cram a season's worth of axe throwing competition into just one day.
A total of 43 throwers from California, Wyoming and different parts of Montana came together for the marathon hatchet throw, meaning each person competes in 28 hatchet games over the course of one day. The group started at 8 a.m. and likely wrapped up competition into the evening hours.
Points earned here will be added to a throwers league total, the hope being that they will earn enough over the season to make it to the worlds competition.
Ken Smith made the eight-hour drive from Trego Montana - about 30 miles north of Whitefish - to Billings to put points on the board and have some fun with his friends.
"If you can do well in these tournaments. You get extra points that benefit you more than a guy that just throws at one venue."Smith said."And the camaraderie. We've got friends that came from Sheridan, Wyoming. We met last year here. We met them in Denver throwing axes. It's kind of a family group."
Ox opened its doors in 2019. One of its owners of Ox, Nick Richardson, said it was good to see the sport growing in Billings after the relatively short time its been available.
"It's great to see the sport growing like this. I couldn't have imagined anything like this happening two or three years ago when we first started out. Now we've got 43 people, and a lot of them are locals here to Billings. I think we have probably 25 or 26 from here in town and the rest are from out of town. It has been a really blessed thing to happen. It's really cool," Richardson said.
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