Organizers will take a shot at recreating the recreational atmosphere of the 1920s this weekend as the Annie Oakley’s Booms Days Sporting Life Expo and Game Fair returns to Pinehurst.

The festival is in its third year and will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday on the mile track at the Pinehurst Harness Track off N.C. 5. Tickets are $5 for adults, with children under 12 admitted free.

The event is a cross between a traditional game fair and the historic Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

“It’s where the Wild West meets Southern hospitality,” said Carla St. Germain, an organizer of the event.

In keeping with the life and times of Annie Oakley, events will hearken back to the history and heritage of the 1920s.

One of the more anticipated events is a Clay Flurry Shooting Challenge, featuring a team of local shooters competing against a team of England’s finest. Teams of four shooters will compete in a fast-paced contest in which each team must shoot 50 targets in less than two minutes.

“This will be exciting,” St. Germain said. “It is as close as we could get to what competition was like in the 1900s.”

Bob Harding, of Pinehurst, will shoot for the U.S. team. He has been part of the winning team each of the past two years. He attributes his success to a simple strategy.

“We always say we have a plan, but we’ve had our success in shooting what you see,” Harding said.

Harding has been shooting for more than 40 years and calls the sport his golf. He says Boom Days is a fun event for shooters and spectators because it is fast-paced and features a lot of skill over a short period of time.

“This is a unique event,” he said. “It is people who like shotguns getting together to shoot and have fun.”

The Flurry competition will begin at 2:30 p.m.

Scott Matthews, a Benelli sharpshooter and Carthage resident, will pay tribute to Oakley with a sharpshooting display. Matthews grew up on a farm and says he can’t remember not hunting or shooting.

“As a youngster, I hunted with my dad every chance I could, and on my own I loved to shoot my BB gun at hand-tossed targets,” he said. “I always made sure the next target was smaller and harder to hit.”

Among the many tricks he has perfected and that he will be showcasing include shooting five clay targets with a shotgun from behind his back — for which Matthews holds the world record — and hitting a target in mid-air with a sightless BB gun.

He will perform at 3 p.m.

There will be a Cowboy Mounted Shooting performance, in which expert riders and marksmen dressed in period clothing from the 1920s will show off their riding and shooting skills. Jackson Springs native Don Jackson will hold a herding dog demonstration.

The Sandhills Pointing Breeds Dog Club will also stage a demonstration. The club has 65 members in Moore County. The group’s goal is to train and condition pointing dogs to be judged on their hunting abilities. Its demonstration will feature several of the nearly 20 pointing breeds to show how the dogs work in the field.

“It will be a demonstration of how hunting was done in Annie Oakley’s days in the Sandhills,” said Richard “Ozzy” Osborne, vice president of the club.

The Fort Bragg-based U.S. Army Ground Forces Band will perform a tribute to Annie Oakley, featuring Dixieland music.

Each demonstration will last 30 minutes and will run throughout the day beginning at 10 a.m.

The festival also will include an expo featuring a unique display of arts, antiques, crafts and demonstrations from blacksmithing to glassblowing.

Many of the performers and exhibitors have local ties to Moore County and the surrounding area. St. Germain said that “hearkens directly back to our heritage and history in the Sandhills.”

Oakley was one of the best-known and most-loved shooters of all times. Throughout her life, her shooting skills were admired worldwide as she toured with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Even today, her name still conjures up visions of shooting holes through an ace of hearts and shooting a cigarette from the mouth of royalty.

Oakley and her husband, Frank Butler, spent their later years in Pinehurst, where she managed the historic Pinehurst Gun Club in addition to teaching the art of marksmanship to more than 15,000 students, including 2,500 women.

Contact Tom Embrey at tembrey@thepilot.com.