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Cowboy Mounted Shooting Nationals
The Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association National Championships are fast and exciting. Picture a barrel race on steroids and that’s Cowboy Mounted Shooting, with competitors firing single-action six-guns from the back of a horse running 30 miles an hour. Shooters ride and compete on a challenging course and along the way try to break ten target balloons by shooting them with .45 caliber blanks. Top shooters not only clean all their targets, but they ride each course at breakneck speeds, with times clocked down to a-thousandth-of-a-second. It’s a thrill for spectators and shooters, alike.
Cowboy Mounted Shooting competitions are divided into classes to give shooters of all ages and skill levels a chance to compete and win – even at the Nationals. There are classes for men and women, juniors and seniors and five different levels of competition within each of those classes. Shooters move up to a higher level as they gain experience and ride and shoot their way to victory in local, state and regional matches. Competitors, no matter their class or age, are dressed in traditional Western attire, adding to the “Old West” atmosphere.
“The Gun that Won the West” – the .45 caliber Peacemaker - is the standard firearm of Cowboy Mounted Shooting. Most competitors shoot modern reproductions, made of stainless steel, but a few traditionalists come to compete with first generation, original Colts. They take the approach that a gun’s not much use unless someone is shooting it, even a firearm as valuable as an original Colt. Shooters compete with a pair of six-guns, requiring a gun change -- holstering the first and drawing the second gun -- in the middle of each stage on a speeding horse.
The Mounted Shooting National Championship is decided over six stages of competition, spread across two days. Your score is your time and the low total wins. A missed balloon costs a five-second penalty and a single miss will probably cost a shooter his chance at the title. Competitors learn at the start of each day what each course of fire looks like. All six are different, but you can bet on one thing, they all require shooters to ride fast and shoot straight.
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