October 6, 2001

FTER GOING A MONTH WITHOUT SHOOTING I wasn't expecting great things from myself at the Old North State Posse match in Salisbury, NC. Most of the other cowboys and girls were off shooting in the annual J.V. Ferrell two-day match in Charlotte (and it was raining to boot), so there was a light turnout at a place that normally draws over 50 shooters. Which was fine by me, since it would make it a little more relaxed and easy-going — I'm still mighty new to this cowboy game. Nevertheless, I was happy to take home the First Place Duelist card for the day, even if I was the only Duelist competing that day... it'll likely be my only first place finish for quite some time!

It was a cool morning (and did I mention that it was raining?), and we split the two dozen intrepid shooters into two posses (mine was posse number 2, and I had a few folks I knew on it with me) and headed for the stages. Pixelwiz came along to watch and shoot some pictures, though the wet weather (it was raining, remember?) kept her cameras under wraps for most of the morning. There were eight stages set up in four berms (and the newly redone range in Salisbury has got to be one of the finest on the East Coast). Not many props, but a LOT of targets — especially rifle targets! Several stages had nine or ten of them set up all along the rear of berm, which made for some looooonnng rifle sweeps (and there were some mighty tiny bits of steel to try and hit on those sweeps, too!).

One stage in particular had us up on a raised wooden platform (and shooting down on targets is certainly different than shooting at them on the same level) and a series of rifle targets which include a pair of small circles on a pivot — so when you hit the first one, the next one was moving slightly as you took aim at it. I thought I'd hit all of them, since I took care to slow down and get those little discs in my sights before squeezing the trigger, but was given a miss on one anyway. Ah, well, I'm sure it won't be the last time that sort of thing happens to me!

The other interesting thing that happened on that raised platform was the practical joke that Jinx (SASS #21521) played. It was raining and he walked up on the platform wearing his long cowboy duster. Cajun Kid (SASS #5690) hollered, "You can't wear that while shooting up there!" So Jinx obliged him and took off the duster, revealing a pair of boxers he had over his pants with a "full moon" showing through. The cheeks were fakes, of course, but it was mighty funny. I can't remember how he did on that stage, though.

The shotgun wasn't my best friend, either. The gun's recoil was beating up the middle finger on my right hand and gave me a nice little lump — I must have been holding the thing badly, I dunno. We did shoot a lot of shotgun targets, though.

I don't know how many misses I had (way too many, though), or if I even shot any of the stages clean. I was just having fun shooting after being away from it for a while. I do know that the last stage of the day was a disaster for me — stage 4, where my right hand didn't seem to be able to use the revolver very well and I got three or four misses for my trouble. I wish I could blame it on the rain, but it had stopped long before then... I seemed to hang in at about 15 to 17 in overall time on the other stages, which I guess is okay for a beginning duelist. I'll get better, eventually.

Here are my stage results:

Marshal Harland Wolff (SASS #5019), shooting in the Traditional class came in first overall with a Total Time of 226 seconds and 29 Rank Points. Most everyone else was shooting in that class, too, except me (Duelist), Lone Scout (Modern), Grizzly Greg (Frontier Cartridge and the day's only black powder shooter), Shady Jim (Senior) and Sweetwater Kim (Ladies' Traditional). My buddy from work, Coachman (SASS #12028), came in 12th shooting Traditional with a Total Time of 342.63 and 82 Rank Points.