AURORA, Colo. — First a little clarification.  It’s not pumpkin chucking, it’s punkin’ chunkin’.

And it’s the 2015 annual Punkin’ Chunkin’ Colorado contest held at Arapahoe Park horse track in Aurora on Saturday and Sunday.  Eighteen teams from around the country are here to see who can launch a pumpkin the farthest.

And it all started with the trebuchet, a type of catapult that was used as a siege engine in the Middle Ages. Now, it’s used to launch pumpkins up to a half mile.

Brian Scarborough from team Not In My Driveway describes his team’s pumpkin pusher.

“This has got about 100 2-inch torsion garage door springs that we pull lengthwise.  It develops about 14,000 pounds of pull together to rip the beam around,” he said.

And rip it does.  After the warning air horn to let folks know they are locked and loaded, and there’s fire in the hole, the countdown begins.

“Three … two … one …” and before you know it, you’re watching a 15-pound gourd fly through the air so fast, hard and high, that you’re concerned no animals downrange will be meeting their maker before their time.

It costs thousands of dollars and hundreds of man hours to build these crazy looking and powerful pumpkin poppers.  And the men and women of the gourd travel ‘round the country to compete not for the purse, but for pumpkin pride.