Cowboy Shooting

Jan 24, 10:58 AM

Cowboy Action Shooting, I guess I should say…

2nd go ‘round on it tomorrow. I shot a match a few weeks back and it was a real hoot. The last two weeks or so have brought on a lot of anxious feelings – could not wait until the next match! There was supposed to be a match last weekend at the range for the Sybille Creek Shooters (Sybille Creek), but it was canceled because of high winds. Tomorrow, the shoot is at the Pawnee Sportsmen’s Center, home of the Briggsdale County Shootists.

But, I think I am getting a little ahead of myself….

The 1st go ‘round was with The Cheyenne Regulators, here in town. I’ve been ready to go for The Regulators for a few weeks now but the past few matches held at the Cheyenne Regulators range were canceled for one reason or another. On the 1st Saturday of the year though, there was a match.

I got my final revolver in mid December, so I had a few weekends to make sure I was comfortable with both 1875 Army Outlaws, along with the Henry Big Boy and the USSG coach gun. Even though I have put a good couple of hundred rounds (maybe thousands) through each gun and felt comfortable with them, I was nervous as could be for the competition.

The entire match was 5 stages. Lucky for me, I was able to shoot clean on the 1st two stages (no misses!). However, don’t get too excited – the times were nothing at all to be proud of. My feeling on this, it is much better to make sure I am following procedure and doing things right.

The 3rd stage was almost a disaster for me. The shooting order was way different than the previous stages and I messed it up. Even though I hit every target, I hit them in the wrong order. The final tally for that stage, because I shot out of order meant that two target were a miss. Also, because of not following the order, there was a procedural error, resulting in an additional 10 second penalty. Oh well….

After that, things went kind of okay. Took a lot of time on the 4th stage – it had a lot of shotgun targets and the external hammers on my coach gun really tend to slow one down. I don’t care – the coach gun is cool and I’m not getting rid of it!

Overall, on the 1st match I went to, I ended up finishing second in my category (Cowboy)! Again though, don’t get too excited with my success. Because it was January and still a little nippy, not too many people were there (there were 4 people in the Cowboy category, I believe).

If I can do as well tomorrow, I’ll be happy. I’d like to shave a few seconds off of each stage. I’d like to hit all the targets (a clean match!).

UPDATE — 23 Jan 2012

Scores were posted for the match. Again, second in the category, but there is nothing to be proud of there. There were only two people in the category!! I did lower my time by 29 seconds over the 1st shoot that I went to. Now, to keep working on that and get the time down to something respectable. A lot of tricks to getting a good time – I’ll be working on one of them at the next shoot. I am going to try a different shotgun slide and practice with it this week.

Les

General Ramblings, Cowboy Action

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Comment

  1. As they say in Nascar, “2nd place is the first loser.” Just kidding. Sounds like your having fun killin the cowboy targets.

    Jim Nadon · Saturday February 11, 2012 · #

 
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