Splitting a troop

[JerseyScout 10]

When I was a Scout, my troop ran up to about 100 boys. We happened to have a great group of leaders who managed us very well. We couldn't split, no one wanted to leave. So we went along with trips having between 40-60 kids on them. What does that mean? More patrol boxes, more food, more equipment, more trailers, more ASPLs, more everything. Otherwise, it all worked the same, and it was a great couple of years.

 

We tried to camp at wilderness campsites as often as possible, as there were are rather large boundaries at most of them. For some trips we'd split up into "crews" to avoid numbers problems on the trails, etc. If you set everything up right, the trips themselves work out just fine.

[Oak Tree 15]

If I were to try to split a troop, I'd follow the model that a lot of churches use when they create a daughter church. Identify who the new leader will be, let people know that he'll be starting a daughter troop, see which boys (or parents) might be interested in moving to a new, small troop that they can help shape from the start. Let the new troop have its own personality, maybe go camping in places that a large troop couldn't go.

 

And if there were a few people who wanted a new small troop, this would be fine. Otherwise I wouldn't necessarily pick any limit to a troop size. The biggest, 100+ boys troops in our district seem to operate pretty effectively.