Shades of the Old West

This is the land of the Cowboys. There are plenty of boots and hats. And guns. Gun ownership is widespread and many of the younger cowboys experience firearms at an early age. As did I. I begged for a .22 just as soon as I was old enough to own one. We had rifle instruction at Scout Camp and it was one of the high points for me. I got a Remington bolt action .22 rifle at 14 and I still have one just like it. But yesterday was about handguns. My cousin and her husband enjoy a sport called "cowboy shooting". It uses authentic firearms to recreate contests based on the Western experience. One facet of cowboy shooting is called "fast draw". Think Marshall Dillon in the opening of Gunsmoke. The idea is to draw and fire a handgun quickly and accurately at a target a few yards away.

While there are professional shooters who use live ammunition and are blazingly fast, that can be dangerous, especially for a beginner. Check out Bob Mungen on You Tube. To make the sport safer and accessible, modifications have been made to the ammunition. The cartridge case is opened up to take a shotgun primer. The bullet is molded of wax, and no powder is used. So there's no recoil, almost no smoke and very little noise. Normal gun safety rules apply, of course. This allows practice at an inside range and we just happen to have one here. It's not much, just a stack of cardboard against the wall and a way to hang clay pigeons to shoot at. It's out in the farm shop. My cousin's grandson is interested in fast draw and he invited me to shoot with him yesterday. What fun! Not much in the way of fast gun handling but a lot of fun shooting and trying, emphasis here on trying, to break the targets. The wax bullets aren't quite as accurate shooting as I'd like but they still get the job done.

The guns are the real thing. We used modern Ruger Vaquero single action revolvers in .357 and .45 calibers in authentic leather holsters and belts. The picture above is the rig I used.