10 seconds ago 2009-12-04T15:20:04-08:00
NEW ORLEANS – His trusty six-shooters loaded, the cowboy gallops off, reins in one hand, pistol in the other. As his horse twists and slews, he shoots. Pow! Pow! Pow!Pow!Pow! Now it's a straight run: PowPowPowPowPow! Nine of the 10 balloons are dead, dead, really dead.
Part barrel-riding, part marksmanship, part costuming and several parts noise, it's cowboy mounted shooting — a sport that started with three guys at a Phoenix shooting range in 1992 and now has about 7,000 members in 42 states and Sweden.
The Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association's calendar lists 436 events from Florida to Alaska — at least 10 a month, with December off.
Louisiana's state championship is Saturday evening in Amite, about an hour's drive north of New Orleans. It's among nine events just this weekend and 57 this month.
Chuck Duncan, president of Louisiana Territory Guys, Gals & Guns and an assistant professor of kinesiology and education at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, expects 20 to 25 competitors. "We're still trying to establish the sport here," he said. Spectators get in free.
The sport is a spin-off from cowboy action shooting, in which costumed contestants run through full-size sets and shoot bullets at full-sized targets. Cowboy action shooting devotees not only span the United States, but include clubs in Canada, Australia and Europe, including Switzerland and Scandinavia.
The mounted version has no bullets; its targets are balloons on sticks set in traffic cones. "Galloping horses, live ammunition and broken glass bottles didn't gel as a safe shooting sport," Jim Rogers — who shot bottles from horseback growing up in the late '50s and 1960s and created the sport as an adult — wrote in an essay on the Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association's Web site.
The ammo is black powder blanks, which will blast a balloon to bits at 15 feet. But it needs a well trained horse and the ability to shoot straight at a gallop.
Earplugs are a good idea, says Duncan. He wears them whether competing or watching. But then, he notes, "I wear those when mowing the lawn or weedeating or doing any of those loud noisy chores any more. It's always a good idea to protect your ears."
Some riders make earplugs for their horses. Duncan doesn't.
Each run is graded by time and accuracy. The latter gets more weight: there's a 5-second penalty for each missed balloon, on courses where times average 15 to 35 seconds.
The rules make it clear this is no place for hifalutin' showoffs: "Deliberate gun twirling in an arena shall be a 5 second penalty." That's for safety, to avoid the chance of a dropped gun, Duncan said.
A show volunteer loads guns as riders head into the ring and unloads any remaining rounds as they exit. Only five rounds are loaded into each six-gun.
Fun, not safety, is the reason there's a fashion sheriff.
The typical, basic get-up is five-pocket jeans with chaps, a long-sleeved western shirt, western boots, and a cowboy hat. One can dress from an earlier time period but there's no mixing eras: no jeans with 19th-century blouses for women. If you want frills, wear a full-length skirt that fits the part.
For women sporting one B-movie Western look: "sleeveless camisole tops may only be worn with Victorian-styled undergarments, such as when portraying the `soiled dove' look of the Old West era. These may not be worn with any other combination of apparel," the rules warn.
And nothin' tight, ma'am. "Spandex or other modern body-hugging, fitted tops are not permissible under any circumstances."
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On the Net:
http://www.cowboymountedshooting.com
Louisiana site: http://www.cowboymountedshooting.com/louisiana.htm
