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End of Trail at Founders’ Ranch
24 years after the start of Cowboy Action Shooting, the annual big event now has a new permanent home. End of Trail has moved to 480 acres of ranch land outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. We’re taking you there with 900 shooters, living the roles of their childhood heroes and recreating our Old West heritage with six guns, rifles and shotguns.
Of all the shooting sports we’ve covered over the years, there is no question Cowboy Action Shooting is by far the biggest. The Single Action Shooting Society now has more than 65,000 active members shooting in local clubs across the nation and around the world. That’s because there is much more to this shooting sport than winning. It’s the festival of reliving the old West that brings people in to wear a membership badge and play the role of their cowboy heroes. But in the years of holding End of Trail in Norco, California, SASS was renting the shooting range and could never build permanent facilities dedicated to reliving the Old West. Now, on 480 acres of ranch land in New Mexico, you may expect a Western Town to spring up, much like the development recalled in the TV series Bordertown and Deadwood.
And already, with 16 shooting bays at Founders Ranch, all the space for RVs, and with the affordable resources of Albuquerque just 20 miles away; you shouldn’t be surprised to hear there are more competitors shooting at End of Trail than ever before—nearly 900.
It is an extraordinary success story that began when Harper Creigh, better known as Judge Roy Bean, invented this sport to enjoy shooting the guns of the Old West. What’s happened since is truly amazing and in the words of the Judge, New Mexico makes it even better than California ever was.
The Judge: “That’s what makes it great. To get out of all the anti-gun laws the, regulations and everything and come to a state that’s pretty much free and where personal freedom really means something. It is so great to be here it’s kind of like taking a very large weight off our back.”
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