ninety- Nine
cowboy action shooting has grown dramatically in the past 15 years started by a group of
competition shooters who became disenchanted with the equipment race of IPSC competition
the wild bunch as they are known formulated a shooting sport that emphasized friendly
competition shooting skill cowboy-era firearms and authentic clothing the first end-of-trail
competition in 1980 attracted just 72 shooters but by 1995 more than 325 competitors from all
over the world and over 10,000 spectators enjoyed this three-day event the governing
body for cowboy action shooting competition is SAS which stands for single action shooting society
they have close to 10,000 members in every state of the Union plus 11 foreign countries
for more information on membership and competition contact SAS at the address on your television
screen Larry Cohen aka the Durango Kid is an accomplished cowboy action shooter with roots
in steel challenge speed competition and IPSC style shooting he made a natural transition to
the cowboy action sport he won the end-of-trail championship in 1991 and has been a consistent
champion at numerous other matches including the Durango Junction high country shootout that he
and his wife Shireen also known as six gun red put on every fall and there's an address to write
to for more information the Durango Kid is an excellent pistol and rifle shooter but when it
comes to the cowboy era pump action shotgun simply put he's the best in the world this program is
designed to give you a better understanding of the shooting techniques used to become a more skilled
cowboy action shooter it is our hope that by watching this program you will improve your
overall shooting skills now here's the Durango Kid with speed and accuracy cowboy action style
first pistol we're going to talk about is the Colt single action 45 and it basically is my
most favorite weapon five and a half inch Colt is probably the best shooting the best handling and
the best pointing pistol that that I have found to shoot with second to that would be the four
and three-quarter inch Colt which is this pistol four and three-quarter inch barrel I found however
that this recoils just a little bit too much it's hard to get your second shot off quickly however
it is great for twirling and putting back in the holster but this is what I would use for shows for
twirling what-have-you but not for shooting fast competition let's see the difference between those
two guns the barrel length they're basically the same gun they're both in 45 caliber it's just that
that extra inch on the end of the five and a half inch gun gives you just a little bit better weight
out front and points better and what kind of modifications have you done to these guns or
you want to get into that now or later basically we can get in that now okay what I have done to
this pistol to make it extremely serviceable and extremely fast is I've had an action job done to
it to where my trigger pull is about two pounds which is extremely light and I don't recommend
that for the average shooter I would recommend maybe three or four pounds the action work I had
done was by Lee gunsmithing in Orange California and it's just excellent everything is just as
smooth as can be it just works the hammer comes back smoothly I don't have to really handle it
hard to get it back to where it's supposed to be and the trigger is just a touch so when you go
you can really go uh-huh now compare that to a factory gun well let me just show you a factory
gun this is a Ruger Vaquero also a very excellent gun five and a half inch this one's in 44 special
and when you operate this gun it's just a little harder to come back and you a little bit harder
trigger pull however if you take this to a competent gunsmith you can also make this as
smooth as a root as a cold mm-hmm it'll just work dandy so what are they trying to do there
just smooth out all the parts or yeah they finally tune all the parts they make them fit better they
polish them so that smooth surfaces rub against smooth surfaces so the metal on metal is a nice
you bet yeah you bet it just works although I can operate this gun pretty fast as well but if it
had an action job I can go even faster I can actually get five shots off with this gun probably
in less than two seconds a lot of people don't think you can do that with single action guns oh
absolutely it's a fact okay it's a fact now this is a seven and a half inch cold and I have used
this in competition the only problem that I have is that when you shoot it the recoil because of
the barrel length the barrel goes up and then it comes down obviously since the barrel is longer
takes longer for you to get your sight picture back where this is excellent is in some events
called long-range pistol shooting because you've got the extra barrel length that means you get a
little bit more velocity means you can get even better accuracy and the bullets can hit their mark
and what have you done to this gun same thing action job everything basically the action job
this one I had engraved by Frank layman and it's as you can see it says Durango kid and it has the
end the trail logo oh how neat and you do an action job to all your guns these have all had
action jobs and there's one other very important thing about this pistol and all my pistols and
that is if you look at the front sight here you'll notice that there are serrations here and these
serrations here are basically there for one reason and one reason only and that is to be able to pick
up the site without a lot of light reflection from it now here's the Ruger no serrations and
you'll also notice this is a stainless steel pistol you'll also notice it's quite shiny right
shiny guns and competitions sometimes don't really get it because there'll be sunlight that glares
off the top of the pistol and you'll get a shot in the eye with a dose of sunlight and all of a
sudden you've lost your sight picture and you've lost your target this is your standard site black
now this is standard site black by birchwood Casey and if you have a nickel gun or a stainless
steel gun the way that you get by shooting this particular gun is by using enough site black and
here's what you do looks kind of ugly uh-huh but it shoots now when you look down that gun it's
perfectly matte black so it takes all the glare that's coming off the barrel and takes all the
glare off the only problem is is that in between each stage you'll have to redo this because as
soon as you put this in your holster it's gonna come right off starts rubbing off right and that's
a trick you use with stainless steel or nickel guns this gun for instance is my favorite gun
it's won all the major masters west of the Mississippi for me along with its mate in my
holster and I bought this in a pawn shop it's a first-generation gun it was made in 1901 or 1902
and I bought it got a fair price for it and I took it out and like magic at 15 yards it
just shot very well it put in like a two-inch group and you bought it at a pawn shop bought
it at a pawn shop how about the other one the other one I got at a sporting goods store in
Los Angeles uh-huh and it's a second generation Colt also or it's a second generation where the
other one is the first generation and it also shoots impeccable the only thing that usually
happens when you buy one of these guns is that they shoot high and that you can readily remedy
by just filing down the front sight and how would you determine that it is shooting hot well you go
out at 15 yards if that's where you want to side in you find yourself what you think is your good
load or a number of different loads and you sit at the bench and you fire at that target until you
find the bullets that group the best and if that is your load then you file your sight down according
to the load that you want to use okay and when you say off the bench you're talking
off a sandbag or something like that off of a sandbag okay now you've got a first generation
Colt and a second generation Colt is there a preference for you or and or is there a preference
for cowboy action shooting well actually any Colt is a good choice a Colt is a Colt a Colt is a Colt
and real men use Colts now there are a number of Colt Colt clones if you will out there that
are also just excellent they handle the same as a Colt they shoot as well and they're just excellent
as well but for me Colt's the name well sure Colt's got the the aura of cowboy action shooting right
and for that reason I shoot 45s and I'm probably one of the few people that do shoot 45s most people
that are really hot in competition shoot 38s because the recoil is less the bullet weight is
less and you can shoot those faster and it goes shot to shot supposedly faster and probably if
you really wanted to game this out a 3220 might even be a little bit better okay now so do you
have examples of a 3220 yes I do let's see what each one of these things look like and what is
a 3220 because I've never heard of that before okay a 3220 pistol would look exactly like this
except it's got a very small bullet as opposed to the 45 a bigger round right this is 45 caliber
and this is 32 caliber uh-huh okay um and it's a bottleneck cartridge oh I see okay and it's just
a little it's a small little bullet the calibers that you can shoot cowboy shooting in is anything
above 25 caliber now there is no 25 20 caliber pistol but there is a 32 20 there is a 38 40
there's a 44 40 there's a 44 special there's 45 long colt and there's 44 40 did I mention
that already I think I did yeah yeah so that's okay now so you can shoot any one of those
shoot any of these and you must use cast bullets cast lead bullets lead bullets and the velocity
must be kept at a thousand feet or under which is another trick here I'm going to teach you
and that basically is probably the best velocity to be shooting these bullets at anywhere from
185 grain bullet to 215 grain bullet is roughly between 650 and 750 feet per second and why is
that better accuracy better accuracy and also less recoil you have to remember this is a fast sport
we're shooting real fast with single action guns that date back to the 1880s or replicas thereof
so if you use mondo loads like 44 magnum or full house 3057s or something like that the recoil is
just going to be monstrous and it's going to pound the pistol and it just won't last as long
as you'd like it to and eventually you won't be able to do shot to shot as fast as you should
exactly right okay so now once you determine that you you know once you find the gun and where would
you suggest someone go out and buy one of these guns basically you can buy a colt at any sporting
good store you can order an emf clone called the hartford which is an excellent pistol
at any sporting good store guns made by cimarron uberty usa and also another new company that came
on the market is united states patent firearms which makes a little higher grade imported colt
looking clone and it's it's also an excellent looking and functioning pistol then of course
ruger has a full line of guns too now ruger is is not as traditional because rugers have coil
springs and such but they are still legal to shoot in cowboy action shooting but ruger has
as i showed you a minute ago just a very fine line of pistols they make a modern pistol which
is basically this pistol with rear adjustable sights and then they make this model called the
vaquero which is one of my favorites okay ruger also makes this black powder old army pistol
without adjustable sights the one with adjustable sights is not legal to use in our competition
we use these pistols for events called the plainsman event and you can also use this
pistol in the black powder cap and ball events and as far as i'm concerned this is the pistol
to use it goes off every time i've tried many other cap and ball pistols like the navies the
1851s and such and and sometimes they just don't all go off so this is a very reliable gun very
reliable and it's it got to the point with the plainsman event is whoever's guns work the best
would win now if with everybody using this type of weapon now it's down to who's the best not what
equipment this front sight has not been filed down and you can see it's got a nice contour
nice round contour to it that's from the factory from the factory right and it stands pretty tall
yeah yeah and you would say that would shoot high from the factory or for the load that i use
in my cartridge firing pistols this sight is too high for the load that i use so what i have to
do is file that front sight down as you can see my file marks are still there this goes back many
years but i file the sight down and it hasn't come down too far right but right now it shoots
exactly to the point of aim in other words whatever i shoot at it hits now when you file
it down obviously you got to be pretty careful not to take too much off exactly if you take too
much off you're in big trouble so i would say you shoot the pistol about five times see what kind of
a group and where the group is located then if it's still too high you take another take a file
and take a few more swipes at it all right and do it very slowly so you're talking two swipes and
shoot yeah you're talking about half a millimeter at a time perhaps because you might not have to
move it right right yeah just a little bit at a time you bet so be careful yeah because and now
do this is something you could do by yourself or a gunsmith i guess could do this for you as well
you need a gunsmith with you at the range if you do this so you really need a good file and a good
position to hold the pistol so that when you use the file you're perfectly straight you don't want
your sight to go downhill in either direction right so maybe like a little vice or that sandbag
yeah sandbags would be fine or vice would be terrific okay good anything else that you've done
to this particular pistol being your favorite gun well basically the stag grips i have found
in all my shooting that the standard colt grips or stag grips or anything that is rough and gives
you the better grip because the name of the game is holding this pistol during recoil and obviously
you can't use rubber grips here in this uh this competition no rubber grips such as pack my grips
and what have you are outlawed you have to be somewhat spirit of the game which means we use
the equipment as best we can to those days of the 1880s right and the stags look pretty nice
right well let me show you something that looks even prettier oh okay
not only do we have a pretty gun but we have ivory grips wow now great gun i love it shoots great
the only problem is when i want to shoot fast it's a seven and a half inch pistol
and the grips are too smooth and as you can see it starts sliding it can start sliding because
after each shot the gun will roll up in your hand right and you don't want that to happen
the other thing you'll notice too i'm holding this pistol in a certain fashion that gives me
a better grip and that's the secret of shooting a single action pistol reloading is an integral
part of cowboy shooting because you just can't afford to buy brand new ammunition every time
you shoot so the reloading is where it's at what i have here are two of my own reloads and the
load that i shoot in my 45 long colt is the following it's 185 grain lead bullet round
nose as you can see and i use five grains of red dot when i want to go pretty good if i need to
go really fast i'll use four and a half grains of red dot however i don't like that load only
because it only goes out at about 570 feet per second although a lot of cop shooters shoot at
those speeds right i find that i need a little recoil to shoot to get the momentum going just
to get my rhythm going and then the other load that i use is the same bullet behind six grains
of red dot and that bullet will take down most any plate because it goes about 800 feet per second
and that's kind of a major load the ones i have here the four and a half grains of red dot and
the five grains of red dot are basically competition loads now when you reload do you
do these on a hand press type thing or is this a progressive press or how do you what's your
setup when you do the reloading my reloading room is basically set up with a number of different
types of machines however my primary machine is a dylan 1050 and it can put out like a thousand
rounds in an hour okay so you can use a progressive press to do the cowboy exactly exactly and as a
matter of fact i only reload like twice a year i wait until i have it all shot up and then twice
a year i'll load and that's it that's very smart you bet that way it keeps me from panicking the
night before a match now so uh the dylan the dyes and all the other equipment that goes with the
reloading is that also readily available for the cowboy action stuff absolutely as a matter of
fact dylan has been great about getting new calibers involved and he now allows the load
for 44 40 45 long cold obviously 38 357s he also has a couple other machines if you don't want to
get into the 1050 like the 650 and the 250 that certainly can serve your needs it's just a matter
of how much do you want to pay and how much do you want to load right my loads fortunately for me
work in every one of my guns i don't know how that happens but it just works it's probably because
at the most we're shooting at 15 yards mostly and maybe at the farthest pistol shot 25
right so with those ranges most any pistol will handle most any load and fairly large targets
you bet yeah so your accuracy is not uh as tremendously critical as your ability to line
up your sights and pull the gun well accuracy is extremely important for me it's especially
important my guns actually will group under two inches and maybe an inch the reason for that is
is there are times that i go so quickly that when my sights come on the target i don't wait for a
lot of target to be behind my front sight the minute i see target trigger goes off so if i
have a two inch group i could miss that target by an inch if i have a one inch target it cuts
my chances down now when i'm going too fast and i find that i have missed a target then in my own
mind i will actually shoot for the exact center of a target and in my mind it takes the speed
off enough that it makes me hit the target so the loads are extremely important to be very accurate
the recoil you can handle in most any gun because the recoil with these rounds are just not that
terrific every gun is different and it has to do with the size of the cylinder the size of the
forcing cone forcing cone is that part of the barrel where the bullet enters from the cylinder
and a lot of that has to do with recoil accuracy what have you so when you get an action job
however they take care of that that's all smoothed out so everything is just clean and slick right
so but work up the load do you load something come out of the range then go back and experiment
is that an experiment because at this stage of your career you've already gone through all that
but for the beginning shooter how do they work up that load for accuracy okay what you do is
you go to your first cowboy match and you watch and you ask a few questions and if you're at all
familiar with guns and if you're into reloading you'll talk to some people and they'll say this
is what i use or this is where i started from then you go back to your books like the lineman
reloading man manual the spear the hornety whatever you might have and it'll show you
certain loads that certain bullet weights will take you will also find that they don't go down
in powder like the people are telling you so sometimes these books are helpful sometimes
they're not because they don't go down to the diminished powder charges that many times cowboy
shooters use right so to push the gun to push the bullet for 500 feet a second they may not have
that in the book right and that can be very dangerous as well if there's not enough powder
in the shell sometimes you can get explosions instead of burning so you want to be real careful
when you get down to the low end of putting powder in cases so your best bet is to talk to people
that have already done so but getting back to how you work up the load basically what i do when i
want to work up a load is i'll sit at the work at the workbench with the loader in this case it'll
be like a 550 dylan right which i can load one at a time or what have you and i will load like
20 rounds of four and a half grains with this particular bullet then i'll load 20 bullets with
five grains then i'll load 20 bullets with six grains right and that's the the limit is where
i want to go then i will use go out to the range and i will shoot for accuracy i will also bring
a chronograph with me and the one that i use is made by competition electronics who also furnishes
the timers for our match here that this weekend but uh and i also get the velocities of these
different bullets so that i can kind of remember what they do and then i can kind of know what they
will knock over as far as metal plug you know metal targets do you take notes and everything
or yeah take notes and write everything down right and then you go back and analyze the data
and say well this round was more accurate and it had the velocity i need so that's what i'm
going to stick for my competition exactly if you if you'll see my loading books it's highlighted
in yellow coated a causal load which is end of trail uh winter range load and they all turn out
to be the same load five grains of red dot and 185 grain bullet does everything i want it to do
you can reload 32 20s however um i have found that loading 32 20s is extremely
painstaking because it's consuming the bottle duck barrel and all that for every five pieces
of brass that i successfully load i throw away one uh just extremely difficult to reload if you
have lots of time and have nothing else to do go for it you'll find that through this discussion
you'll find that i use nothing but straight wall cases and that's because they're easy
to load they're fast to load and you can use automated machines
so
there's an old saying if you can't shoot well you best look well you know and looking good is
really a part of cowboy action shooting uh sass rules dictate that you need to use somewhat
authentic material leather and what have you or anything from the b western movies and if you'll
see the rig that bianchi made for me you'll notice that this is something that is a little
bit non-traditional but extremely functional and you'll notice that i'm wearing two pistols
one on a strong side draw and one in a cross cross draw fashion and this is basically because
we use two guns many times in many of the stages that we shoot in cowboy action shooting you'll
need two guns at least to compete two pistols two pistols yeah okay now the leather itself
they have to be traditional or cowboy like right yes it has to be somewhat cowboy like they all
have to be leather there cannot be any nylon velcro or any of the synthetic materials right
and what are you looking for when you buy a holster basically when you buy a holster you
want to be sure that it fits you properly and the guns are located where they're supposed to be
located because when you go to draw the pistol you don't want to draw it where the pistol is not
obviously right so you want to be sure that in your natural scheme of things when you go
for your pistol it's always going to be in that position so if i wore this holster like this
obviously it wouldn't be in the right place however for this one it's in a better place
so when you buy a configuration like this very important that this pistol rides where it's
supposed to and this one is located where it's supposed to be on occasion you will buy some
cross draws and this holster will be actually back here which means you need to make too big
a stretch right to go for it now unlike in ipsc the holsters that are completely adjustable these
holsters don't seem to have that adjustability so when you buy it or have it made for you do you
specify where you want things to be if you want to get a custom-made rig then you definitely have
to tell the maker exactly what you want and how it is to fit whether you want a tie down or no
tie down basically tie downs are illegal so we've taken care of that subject but you need to know
where your holsters are and the maker needs to put it exactly where you want to put it
so do people end up usually buying something say off the shelf or do they get custom rigs i mean
how does the normal average everyday shooter do it well this is a custom rig that i had made
by bianchi i had another custom rig made years ago by gordon davis the rig is extremely serviceable
it works uh terrifically and it's the one i wanted to trail with oh so it worked so it's very
sentimental you'll notice also too as far as leather goes you'll notice this thing in the
center this is called the durango kit speed loader gordon davis and i designed it and made it
and it is probably the fastest way to retrieve two cartridges or shotgun shells from your belt
and put into your firearm we'll go through this later in the shotguns okay now does that have
any adjustability in it whatsoever or that holster is what it is basically this holster is what it is
except if i want to use two strong side holsters in other words take this left holster and make
it a traditional holster the loop is still here for it okay so you would have two basically you
know just like the basic cowboy draw right is that something you would say either call say bianchi
or gordon davis just say send me a cowboy rig or how does that work well you say send me a cowboy
rig and they say what would you like now if you say you want something with drop loops which is
what this stands for drop loop the holster goes through the loop or you can just order things like
i would like to have this money belt as a holster belt and i'd like your traditional holster which
is already made and then it slides right onto the belt this holster is made by red river
okay that's the maker of this one and you would attach that to a belt you attach this
to any belt any store-bought belt and you're in business right so and it even holds six rounds
in front so you can basically get started on a low end or a high end now what's it what's some
of these leather holsters cost golly this holster would cost like 75 or 80 dollars a good belt will
cost you 35 to 50 dollars how about a rig like the bianchi or the the gordon davis the gordon
davis rig or the bianchi rig would probably sell for somewhere in the area of 500 dollars
because they are all custom made custom tooled and hand built okay the next holster i want to
show you is the shoulder holster made popular by the movie tombstone as soon as that movie
came out everybody had to have one of these and look like doc holliday it's a great looking
holster it holds your pistol in place however for competition i would not recommend drawing from it
i feel it to be a little bit unsafe for the novice and just not very quick and the reason
for that is you are wearing it in a shoulder configuration right and when you do draw the
weapon you are indeed pointing it behind you right in many cases so in order to draw this
weapon properly you would have to stand like this you being down range and draw then turn
then point the gun down range and fire obviously takes too much time right and the secret to cowboy
shooting in a nutshell is the following you don't want to have any wasted movements and
good leather makes you go smoother and smoothness equates to speed that's when you're drawing and
presenting the pistol all that stuff is you don't want to be hung up on that right right you want
to be smooth as can be and sure you might be slow at the first but as you do it more frequently
your muscles will become we'll be getting what we call muscle memory and you'll be able to go
to your pistol draw it very smoothly and when you do that you'll become very fast
now you got a couple other belts down there right the other belts i have are basically that for
holding shotgun shells other belts are made similar to this that hold rifle shells pistol
shells and what have you and this is basically made for when you know you're going to be doing
a lot of shooting such as in team events and lots of reloading so you might see people walking
around with three belts like this in any configuration and just chock full of ammo
and it would look something like this and they may shoot all those rounds and you might shoot
these plus more in a team event in a team event you bet now in a single stage sometimes you'll
shoot as many as 12 or 13 rounds wow and that only holds what about 20 or so this holds about
20 so you got it made yeah but it's always best to have something that holds your shotgun shells
as opposed to putting them in your vest pocket or putting them in your shirt pocket because when
you go to pick them out if you'll notice when i go into my vest pocket it takes me a little
bit of time to get them out properly and then put them in the gun and my gosh i've just lost
and they may even come out wrong so when i go to this however very quick
two at a time right right okay and you have another bucket over here too right kind of a
leather bucket also too when you're out practicing and things like that we do shoot at aerial targets
and bianchi makes this just an explicit pouch to hold your shotgun shells in the empties while
you're shooting so overall that is when you look at the leather game you know what would be your
recommendation for a beginning shooter i would get something that's extremely serviceable and
perhaps very traditional something like this red river model especially if you have a seven and a
half inch gun but it comes in smaller models as well you know smaller sizes or this gordon davis
rig with perhaps a smaller belt that holds obviously the smaller pistol cartridges instead
of the long-range rifle cartridges that i have in here now and i would start with one pistol
then get yourself a second holster and then you start with two pistols and then you're in business
and then you start spending some money you bet now in cowboy action shooting we've covered all the
things we need to know about pistols and we also use rifles and shotguns rifles we'll get to in a
minute right now i want to talk to you a little bit about shotguns what i have in my hand now
is what we call a mule mule eared double barrel shotgun and why is it called mule ear well
basically you'll see these two hammers sticking up and they call them mule ears and this gun
operates by pulling the mule air back and then pulling the triggers and they go off and you've
got two triggers to operate each one of the right ears or the hammers i guess that's correct now in
single action shooting your shotgun must have or must not have automatic ejectors oh really you
can have an extractor such as this this is an extractor and what the extractor does
is it pulls the shell out of the barrel but just a little bit right okay an automatic ejector as
soon as you open the gun the shells fly five feet away right that's not to be had in single action
shooting because that wasn't the way it was back in this is not a traditional way of shooting with
automatic ejectors right now to get around that in cowboy action shooting what happens is we hone
our cylinders and we hone the chambers here to make them extremely smooth so that when we go to
open the gun all we have to do is go like this and the empty shells drop out which you will see later
when we go through the shotgun shooting demonstration uh-huh because traditionally
traditionally the shell will expand and you have to kind of pull it out right that's exactly right
and that's a very good question too because it brings me to another important point the
finest shells i have found to use in double barrel and winchester 97 shotguns which we'll
get to in a minute is the double a red load the reason for that is it's not so slick that you
can't pick them up and they slide in easily into the barrels and probably they also drop out
that easily you'll see this later now is that a uh this honing of the chamber or cylinder is
that something a gunsmith does a gunsmith would definitely be the person to talk to about doing
this i would not try this yourself and what else about this gun this has a rather short barrel is
this easier to shoot or is that the way they came from the factory uh this was made by rossi they
don't make them any longer um but this is the barrel length that that comes in my personal
recommendation for a barrel of a double barrel or a model 97 would be like 22 inches in length
and i'll show you my 97 here in a minute in my double which are just that and what is this about
20 or this is about 20 yes uh-huh and the other thing you want to not do with this weapon is to
cock it and fire it without anything in the chambers like dummy rounds uh or such as that
because you'll very easily break these firing pins oh okay so you want to kind of let the
hammer down easy uh-huh the other thing i'd recommend that you do although not on this gun
this one doesn't have it is a small shoulder pad so that uh you don't feel the recoil so badly
especially for the women that are out there that shoot this match what kind of loads you're
shooting what kind of shotgun shells basically i use light eight uh trap loads from winchester
now is it all 12 gauge or can you go 20 you can use uh any gauge above 20 20 16 or 12
and those are the limits but most people use most people use the women use 20s some of the men use
20s and and most of the men use 12s the real men use the real men use 12 although it it doesn't
take much to knock these targets down so uh they might be using 12s because it's a just a bigger
round easier to handle oh easier to get hold of easier to reload uh-huh yeah to manipulate the
shotgun shells and also too when you go to buy shells it's easier to buy and many times a lot
cheaper what does the next gun get the next gun i have is my double barrel ithaca and you'll
notice this has no exposed hammers but it also has no automatic ejector again it just has the normal
extractor this also has a safety which if you'll notice the other gun didn't have a safety because
it had manual hammers but this has a safety and when you go to close the gun the safety comes on
so before you go to fire the gun you must push the safety off and then fire and i see uh did you
do the same job inside the cylinder there to uh lighten that up or to loose or to polish it up
this one has been honed out as well very smooth you'll see this shoot again and you'll see how
easily the shells fall out right and you do have the pad there the recoil pad yes this does have
the recoil pad and i would definitely recommend it and this is the 27 inch barrel this is a 22
inch barrel 22 right 22 inch barrel and also double triggers and remember it has the safety
right now the safety should never be disengaged or made to make be inoperable although if you
make your safety inoperable you can shoot the gun faster the next gun is my personal favorite
this is a mild 97 winchester it is a pump it has an exposed hammer and this is what makes this
gun legal and competition in single-action shooting if it wasn't exposed it would not be
of the era if it were not exposed it would be called probably a model 12 this was made in 1897
and sass has ordained this gun to be legal to be used as well as some of the marlin pumps as well
as some of the lever action winchester shotguns that are available what kind of work have you
done to this one this gun has absolutely had nothing done to it that i can recall
other than the recoil pad and perhaps i have put swing sling swivels right in the butt
and on the forearm and this goes back to the days to where you had to carry so many guns to the
ranges you just needed a sling to carry them all right now we all have gun carts so we don't need
the slings any longer right but so this gun is basically out of the box factory this gun was
bought in california at a gun show as is evidently it's been re-blued i guess i did do something to
it i cut the barrel down to 22 inches and that's about all well i take it back i did do something
else to this gun after the barrel was cut it had an open cylinder you know wide open bore right so
what i had done is i had a modified choke put into it uh-huh and that enables you to get tighter
right a modified choke i found is probably the best all-around choke to use because it gives
you a nice tight pattern to knock over many of the metal plates that we shoot at and what kind
of distances usually you're working with shotgun distances are basically maybe at the most 15 to 20
yards and your shot pattern at that range is perhaps oh 12 to 18 inches which is not much
now aerial targets that we shoot are much farther ranges and your shot pattern there at maybe 30
yards is like three feet but you definitely need a tighter pattern to knock over these
pepper poppers that you'll see soon basically with a shotgun you're throwing out like uh 800 pellets
right at one time it shoots a pattern of about 12 inches so basically you want to be sure that the
shotgun fits you in other words when you put the gun up you want to be able to look right down the
barrel and see this white bead uh-huh if you look down the barrel and you see nothing but
this hammer then obviously you're not looking where you're supposed to be let's see your
shoulder of the gun what are you talking about okay basically you want to be like this and see
the front sight because when you're shooting a shotgun in single action competition you're
usually shooting at static targets by that i mean they are stationary they're usually metal plates
that fall over so basically you need to shoot this shotgun like you would a rifle which means
you use your front sight with that being the case if your front sight is on the front end of the
barrel then where's your rear sight well basically your rear sight is your eye as it sits on the stock
looking down the barrel
now that we've talked about pistols we've talked about shotguns now we'll get to the last
member of the group and that's the rifle the rifle that you need to have for cowboy action shooting
must be a pistol caliber rifle meaning it should be in a pistol caliber
for example 44 38 357 45 long cold any of these calibers 38 40 are all fine you must also use
again lead bullets and the velocity must be under 1400 feet per second and those are basically the
rules other than that um the weapon i'm showing you now is one that i've gotten from emf company
in santa ana it's made by uberty in italy and it is a replica of the model 1873 winchester
this gun i prefer over all others because i've had all others and this is the only gun
configuration that does not and cannot jam and i assume this is the gun you shoot in competition
this is the gun that has won every major match for me and you'll notice a few things that i've
done to it first of all i have removed the sight that it comes with and put a more of a traditional
sight on it that works a bit better and is a bit quicker again the front sight has been checkered
so that there is no glare off of it
the other thing you'll notice in this game you many times have to operate the lever
extremely fast and on occasion if you have a very small hand and you want to go very fast while
you're doing this your hand sometimes falls out of the lever that's one of the reasons why this
leather strap is located on the bottom of the lever it kind of gives you a little bit less room
to do that with and something to kind of press against right right but make it look decorative
because otherwise some people will think you're trying to go fast
okay now do you do like action jobs on these i would assume you would the lever itself there's
a lot of motion there well the only thing i've done to this particular rifle is i cut the
trigger spring down to about 60 percent of what it is normally and the reason for that is is this
hammer is going to be pushed back by the bolt and if the spring is real heavy then obviously
you're going to meet resistance this way you can see how easy it is one finger it works great
and the trigger works even better and no trigger job or anything just cut the spring down on these
and you're home free the other thing i do for this for decoration as you can imagine is i put a
little leather on the buttstock and basically that's just so that the gun stays where it's
supposed to stay on the shoulder there is no slipping and that's basically what i've done to
this weapon and how accurate is this gun this gun will shoot about a one inch group at 50 yards
wow and it is in 357 caliber which is my caliber of choice because it is a flat shooting bullet
i can shoot clear out to 100 yards with this gun and and do very well so in a long-range pistol
caliber rifle event this gun can win and it can also win in the regular matches shooting at
20 yards to 50 yards it's just a great all-around gun right it's barely any recoil hardly yeah
hardly you can operate this gun to where you can get a shot off every eight tenths of a second
wow and you're gonna show us that later we'll show you that later okay good what are the guns
you have here okay the other gun i have is my wife's gun and this is a model 92 winchester
but it's made by browning it's their reproduction of the winchester 92 this also is a very excellent
gun i had one of these once and it did stove pipe on me and that's why i went to the 73
however my wife uses this gun with impunity it works all the time and it shoots the same caliber
this shoots 357 also and it also has the leather on the butt the only difference this gun has is
that i sent it to lee's gunsmithing in california and he did an action job on this and this one is
even smoother than mine i mean it just is like butter so the action job can be done for leave
action job can definitely be done it can be done also on shotguns it just depends on on what you
like but these two guns i would say are the ones to buy okay now there are some other events too
in the cowboy action a long-range rifle there is a long-range rifle event and there's also a
plainsman event that we shoot and the plainsman event i'll start with first because that you use
two black powder pistols you use a black powder shotgun such as the muller shotgun i showed you
before and also a black powder cartridge single shot rifle which this is one of this is a browning
reproduction of the winchester 1885 high wall its caliber is 45 70 and it just works
superbly it's quick to reload and it's as accurate as can be now that is that also basically a
factory gun this is a factory gun i've done absolutely nothing to it out of the box it
shoots probably a two inch group at 100 yards okay the shell for the browning is the 45 70
we will sit it next to a 45 110 which is the next rifle i'll show you made by shiloh sharps
and it is a big bullet this little bullet shoots a 300 grain lead projectile this bigger bullet is
a 500 grain lead projectile wow this is for really touching really going out and touching
something are they like a buffalo gun or what it was this is the original buffalo cartridge
oh i see in the sharps the 45 70 is also a very popular buffalo gun cartridge as well
all right let's see the gun itself
stuff and the gun is more of a piece of art than it is a weapon it's beautifully made
everything fits shoots well from the factory you'll notice it has two triggers the reason
for the two triggers is one is a set trigger and then this trigger in front goes off at about
two tenths of a pound wow and you can adjust that any way you like to shoot but when you set off
one of these big cartridges sometimes you really don't want to know when it goes off
you want to be perfectly surprised so that you know you got a good shot
the other thing you'll notice about this weapon is it has a vernier rear sight and it can be
dialed all the way up to shoot clear out to a thousand yards this is the gun that was
using quigley down under although it has one modification to it and it comes like this you
just have to put the sight into the front aperture as you wish if you'll look at the front aperture
of this site you'll see crosshairs you can put a post in there you can put a round circle in there
you can put whatever you want that shila will provide for you i happen to like these crosshairs
because you can really take a fine bead with it now that little peephole in the back there is
uh quite small but when you look through it up close you can really see a nice sight picture
you bet you can see everything you need to see yeah yeah now these guns uh are pretty expensive
uh this gun i would imagine costs around two thousand dollars and they operate as a single
shot rifle in other words you have to open the lever the extracted shell will come out
you put another shell in close the lever pull the hammer set the trigger fire the gun wow
now if you remember that 1885 i showed you a minute ago and i said was very fast
let me put this down
and show you how this operates this operates you pull the lever down
shell pops out new shell goes in hammers already back all you do is pull the trigger much faster
yeah so the speed is something you you know so speed is something that you're after but accuracy
and long-range rifle is what you want if you happen to shoot all 10 targets and hit each one
of them in the shorter period of time than the next person you've just won that match so speed
does enter in here now what about these rifle cartridges are these something that you reload
or is this something that you buy or how do you how do you make these things the 45 110 you
definitely have to reload you can you can buy the cases nowadays from various manufacturers
however they cost about three dollars a piece just for the casing so obviously you don't want
to leave these on the ground after you shoot them the lead bullets obviously you can find
anywhere the powder is is whatever you can find or whatever your choice is the 45 70 also
is obviously reloaded because the cost of these things gets exorbitant with the number of shells
that you shoot and practice and also the matches it's a hand loading process here yes uh-huh and
you can use these in the dillon oh really yeah dillon 550 is what i use to load both of these
oh i wouldn't expect that you could do that with a dillon yeah you can do anything with a dillon
great great and uh now what kind of uh accuracy do you expect out of a rifle like this um this
45 110 at 250 yards will group about four inches and if it were a buffalo obviously i'd have meat
on the table uh the 45 70 at that yardage in this particular gun uh i found groups about two to two
and a half inches so i guess i need to make my load better on the sharps because it's capable
of shooting better right basically the long-range rifle events are indeed separate events they don't
add into the total pointage if you will of the entire match so it's basically a side event and
we have a winner for that particular side event and we have three different kinds of events there's
a single shot rifle the lever action rifle caliber rifle which would be calibers i just showed you
or the lever action pistol caliber long-range event and there's a trophy given out for each
one of those right now in but in the normal everyday competition of the cowboy action matches
when you have the three guns and you have the shotgun rifle and pistol
do is the pistol skill more important than the rifle skill or the shotgun skill or do
you have to be good at all of them well i guess my claim to fame is i can handle most any of
these guns on demand you need to be good at every one of them if you falter in one you're
going to lose the match so you best be just good and practice each one of them the shotgun is
important the rifle is important the pistol is important i've often wondered the same question
i guess i've lost the match because of my rifle and i've lost the match because of my pistol
so they're all equally the same so you just don't want to miss that's the key that's the key and
you don't want to miss fast
i think the first thing that's probably the most important thing is where do you stand
at to shoot a target down range basically i found if you stand somewhat like a boxer does with
one foot forward usually pointing right at your target the other foot maybe at 45 degrees you're
actually in pretty good balance you can't be thrown off too easily and actually you're you're
just like you're going to fight because what you're going to do is you're going to gunfight
okay so let's load a pistol and see if we can shoot a group so is that one of the first things
you want to do when you come to a range shoot a group yeah yeah you got to know that you're in
sync and you got to know that your gun is shooting and you're not too nervous that day
and if you shoot a good group it gives you some positive reinforcement that hey i'm pretty good
today now the way that you reload a single action pistol is the following
in all competitions we load one round we skip a chamber then we load the other four
rounds now if all my calculations are correct when i go to cock the pistol i'm on an empty chamber
and the way that you know that is you can kind of look in the side here or this side here and see
that there's no casing underneath the hammer that you're about to put down you don't pull the
trigger here you just let the hammer down okay and that's how we load it only five rounds five
rounds always only five rounds now the question is is how do we hold this pistol
the way that i hold my pistol in competition is the following
my two fingers here trigger finger outside the trigger guard and my little finger underneath the
grip and that kind of keeps the gun from recoiling so badly in my hand my other hand
goes like so with my index finger going around the trigger guard like so my other three fingers
and the depressions from my other hand and my thumb is sticking up straight in the air
and you'll find out why that is when we start to shoot because what we're going to do at first
is shoot some groups and i'll show you how to cock the gun and fire and hopefully we'll shoot
some good groups as well
there's a pretty good group looks pretty good so far huh
so they're all touching three shots one hole fire one more
oh
sorry about that yeah that last shot got away from me now we're going to show you how to unload
you take the gun put it to half cock position now you'll notice that i fired all five rounds
and if i open the gate we're at an empty chamber that's about right this comes to be important
sometimes when you have to reload one round to finish your game because some of these
cowboy action matches they'll let you shoot five then you have to reload one more so what you do
put the gun in half cock put the one bullet in spin it five times and you're right there
very good okay but getting back to how to unload this i've seen all kinds of people unload their
guns in various ways the fastest way that i found is basically you hold the gun in your left hand
with your index finger on the ejector and you rotate the cylinder with the thumb of your left
hand and sometimes if your loads are real good they just fall out and if they don't they need
a little help there you go with the ejector then you check to be sure that it is indeed empty
close the gate put the hammer down and then you're safe to put your gun away so they're just
picking the gun straight up that's really gravity do its work you bet but you don't want to cross
the 180 degree line either you want to keep it pointed this direction again you put it at half
cock hold the gun in your left hand operate the ejector with your index finger rotate the
cylinder with your thumb it's one movement no wasted movements and you find that's fastest
this is the fastest except for another gun and that is the ruger vaquero
you don't have to put this gun to half cock to unload it
all you have to do is again spin the cylinder with your left thumb and use the ejector with
your index finger and it goes that quick so that's an advantage of that gun this gun definitely
has an advantage if you have to reload under time because you don't have to pull the hammer to half
cock which may be tricky to find under pressure you bet under pressure it's easy to pass by
and you're sitting there fumbling with your gun when you should be unloading it
that's the advantage of the ruger vaquero what we're going to do now
now after we know we can shoot a group we're going to go over to the metal plate and shoot
some single shots from the draw and basically that's the most important shot that you'll ever
make and that's your first shot if you miss your first one chances are you can miss a couple down
the line but if you hit your first one that means you're in tight you're behind the gun
and things are working plus you don't throw your brain off health and scatter because you
miss that first one it's very stressful when you miss a target my hand power if you will
i'm holding the grip very firmly with my right hand my left hand is actually pushing back
onto the pistol so you're pulling back i'm pulling back towards myself in other words
my right arm is straight my left arm is pulling against the straight hopefully immovable object
which leaves my thumb capable of just cocking the hammer right because you have to have that
thumb loose exactly and if you think about it and if you look at the way i'm holding the gun
this index finger of my left hand acts like a pivot point for my thumb it actually anchors it
so i can go quicker as opposed to like this which puts the thumb too low right and you can't get a
good right and some people shoot like this they'll pull the hammer back and their thumb stays back
here you'll notice when i shoot i pull it back thumb back up in the air so it's like a spring
boom you bet and that's why my hand is higher my thumb is higher i'd have to really mess up to miss
this hammer with this big thumb right right so uh when recoil that left finger probably helps you
control the gun too exactly both hands help control it the left finger helps control it
and during recoil is when i'm cocking the gun and as soon as i come back on target i shoot it again
now you don't want to change your grip while you're shooting you hope to have the same grip
through the whole shooting event so no movement whatsoever the grip in your hand none whatsoever
remember no wasted movements equates with speed right okay before we get into the single shots
however i need to show you how to draw this pistol properly with efficiency and speed
the way that i do it is basically i stand as i told you before my hands will be relaxed at my side
or your hands can be straight up in the gabby hayes surrender position or they can be in front of you
these are all things that you'll find in a cowboy action shooting match or you could be sitting
there tapping your finger on your pistol waiting for the buzzer to go off but at any rate there are
basically five moves to draw the pistol properly and they are the following the first is you grab
the gun second is you pull the gun from the holster your finger also at this point is always out of
the trigger guard it's very important now you'll notice where the pistol is you go well what's
going to happen next the third part is the second hand comes over grips the gun as we push out which
is the fourth part i'm going to cock the gun as i do that i'm watching my front sight extending
the pistol and as soon as my arms extended my front sight is on the target i pull the trigger
uh-huh now looks pretty complicated doesn't it a lot of parts but basically all you're doing
is you're pulling the gun out bringing it to center bringing your other hand over cocking
extending and shooting when you do that in one sweeping movement you are incredibly fast
your first shot goes off and you hit your target what's the hardest element of the whole thing
getting the grip or cocking the hammer probably the hardest part of the draw is picking up your
front sight right here ah right here because you have a tendency to be looking out there
right but if you're looking out there and you're focused out there how can you focus here in about
two milliseconds you just can't do it so you might as well pick up your front sight here
and push out towards the target if things aren't totally lined up this is where you adjust
and as you're cocking the hammer and as soon as you're adjusted you pull the trigger so you can
basically have your eyes follow the sight you bet and then your muscle memory presents the gun to
the target exactly and after you do this for a while you can stand here with your eyes closed
do the draw open your eyes and you'll find out that you could hit the target you're right on
it's amazing it works yeah what kind of practice have you done on just this presentation technique
is this a dry fire thing you see you can do this at home can't you you can do this at home be sure
that you have an empty weapon right matter of fact you might find me checking my weapons to be sure
that they're still empty at any time because sometimes i might have loaded one for some reason
and forgotten about it right but yes you can definitely practice this at home and you can
practice in the mirror and i think the key element you said was which was surprising to me
was picking up that sight at that early level yeah it's kind of difficult to do or think about
because you're going why would i want to do that well the reason you want to do that is you you
need to be doing something while your hands are doing something so put your brain to work look at
that front sight and you'll watch it come up you'll watch it fall into the rear sight and it only
takes a millisecond of your brain's time to let that front sight settle in and the minute it does
you pull the trigger what i'm going to do is go through this very slowly at first
and then we'll just kind of basically get you to the point to where you feel comfortable
what we do is we come we grip number three is here number four is here stretch shoot
by gosh i hit the center
now we do that again
and these are not what i consider fast draws but we're hitting the plate
so all these are the fundamentals aren't they these are fundamentals and even top shooters
follow fundamentals when i find myself not being able to practice in the snow
here in durango i find myself shooting at the indoor range shooting 22 pistols for trigger
control and so that comes springtime i can shoot up here uh-huh and once again just fundamentals
fundamentals as a matter of fact if you feel you're going too fast you feel you're missing
what you need to do is shoot groups and single shot draws and when you find that you can hit
that plate at 12 to 15 yards and have maybe a six inch group that's terrific now if you're
getting a one inch group it tells me that you're shooting too fast or too slow actually right
you know you want to be a little bit on the edge of your envelope but you don't ever want to go
over that envelope now in your practice do you bring a timer out yes uh-huh the timer we use
is a competition electronics timer which is the match timer of our match and many others
and it works just great right and what kind of times are you looking for
uh actually i'm looking for the hit first then i look at my timer and go that was good
or i'll go well that was good enough because you can fight or play games with your timer where
you're constantly trying to go faster and that gets to be an exercise in futility once you know
you're solid you've got good basics you can draw the gun you can hit your targets chances are
you'll be in the top five one of the things i i neglected to mention that is probably one of the
most important things you need to do or actually the three most important things you need to do
is once you've drawn the gun and once you've extended your arm and once you've pulled the
trigger you need to do a couple things one is when you pull the trigger you need to squeeze
and you need to follow through and what follow through means is the following after i pull the
trigger i want to see my front sight totally disappear with the hammer and if i've done that
i know i've hit the target and that's extremely important that many times will get rid of your
flinch it'll keep you concentrating on what you need to concentrate on and again it only takes
milliseconds for your front sight to fall into your rear sight squeeze and follow through
and that's all you got to do now how about for fast shots too how do you you know how do you play
that game well once once you've got the basics down all this is automatic it just happens i've
gotten to the point now to where when i draw my pistol and i see any part of the target on my
front sight my trigger goes off and that's how you pick up the speed and we'll show you that right now
okay
wow don't blink huh now that was a little bit ragged that was at 12 o'clock an inch almost
off the target but i saw metal and as soon as i see target on the end of my front sight i'll pull
the trigger now if that targets another 10 yards out i'll have to be a little bit more careful won't
i right so i'll let that sight drift in a little bit better and take those milliseconds let the
sight settle and then fire conversely if it's a little closer you can if it's closer it's cake
right but you always use your front sight even if that target is two yards away from you
you stand by ready
1.15 not bad you want to strive for under one second but that's what i strive for 1.15 is
plenty fast right because if you have to shoot five targets and it takes you a half second in
between targets what would i have shot five targets in yeah so just add another two seconds
add another two seconds so how many how much is that 3.15 there you go that's not bad that's
pretty good you bet there's a special way to draw with cross draws because they are somewhat
similar to the shoulder rig a little bit inherently dangerous almost facing down basically
because when i'm standing like this or if i'm standing like this and you're down range from me
where's my gun pointing over your shoulder and it is loaded yeah okay so when you draw with a cross
draw you have to be cognizant of the fact that you need to do some movement during your draw
and that's the following if the target is down range you need to position yourself again
more towards the target
with your gun pointing somewhat down range
and if you're going to use the cross draw you'll notice that when i draw the gun
my left hand gets the heck out of the way because i don't want to sweep my hand with this pistol
coming out of this holster like so that's not safe and i hate to even demonstrate it but you've
got to know what's not right so what i do with a cross draw my hands are like so gun comes up
this hand gets out of the way but it gets ready to grab the gun the minute it's pointed in a safe
it's pointed in a safe direction and from this point everything is the same push forward cock
the gun sight settle pull the trigger follow through everything's the same you just need to
point your cross draw holster in a safe direction and keep your left hand out of its way so you
bring that hip up a little bit more bring that hip up a little out of the way down range yeah
you bet okay the other two things i haven't touched on is basically two types of shooting one is
called strong hand or the duelist method which is one hand strong shooting or strong hand shooting
and the other is weak hand shooting these types of shooting the strong hand duelist shooting is
a very popular shooting stance these days the weak hand shooting i think you should probably
only find in those top gun events or the top 10 events because we can shooting for most people
especially women with small hands is extremely difficult and i always worry about the safety
factor in that point so let's show you how to shoot duelist category one-handed okay when we
do this we stand a little differently when you shoot duelist now you take your right foot and
you're pointing it towards the target your left foot is back here giving you some balance you're
basically going to do the same thing with the draw but you're not using a left hand and what you do
is you draw the gun your finger is out of the trigger guard the hammer gets cocked back and
from this point you push forward squeeze and hopefully you don't flinch but that's a common
problem uh-huh and how do you squeeze the second shot then how do you because you shoot the whole
match with one hand right right what you do since this gun is empty you just keep coming back
with this thumb straight back and brush it down put that thumb back down pull the trigger
brush it and then down trigger brush it down trigger right and you keep a particular
emphasis on that trigger finger to push it up don't you you bet you bet but
and that's how we accomplish single hand shooting right weak hand shooting we turn
the other direction and with your weak hand many times you're shooting with your right hand or you
have to pick up the pistol from another position but there's usually very little weak hand shooting
done but we're going to just touch on it for a moment your gun say is in your right hand you
draw it with your right hand you transfer it to your left hand when you transfer you don't go for
the trigger finger in the trigger you go for the gun so to speak then you transfer it and you can
make your adjustments right here with your grip you grip the gun finger goes into the trigger guard
cock the hammer stretch out and squeeze uh-huh same thing it's just weak-handed
and then you do the same thing that you did with your right hand cock it keep your thumb down to
grip pull the trigger cock it thumb down trigger that's simple many times in cowboy action shooting
your gun will be placed on the table for you to retrieve and start the match with there is a
specific way to pick up these guns many times you probably have gone to this table and gone like this
or gone like this or gone like this or whatever anyway you're going for a specific part of the gun
the best way to pick a gun up off the table number one is to keep your eyes on the gun because your
hands will go to where your eyes are seen and the way that i pick up a gun is basically scooping it
up like so you've noticed that my grip on my left hand is already there my grip on my right hand is
already there all i've got to do is bring the gun up cock the gun bring it up and fire okay let's
go through this one more time slow and then we'll pick up the pace and show you how we do it at a
match slo-mo is kind of like so pick up the gun grip it cock it shoot it and then in the real world
it kind of works like this one sweeping movement you're basically just scooping it up cocking and
shooting now you're able to pull the trigger as soon as you're on site as soon as i'm picking up
my front sight once again i'm keeping my eye on the front sight right now because i know what the
rest of my hands are going to be doing and as soon as i'm safe i cock the pistol my front sight is
coming up it's starting to level into the rear notch it's almost there it's there and i pull the
trigger it's that simple but you got to learn the basics and you got to go slow before you can go
fast we have five multiple targets here we have four in the form of cowboys with rifles that want
to do you in and we have one round plate i've positioned the round plate between the third and
the fourth cowboy and basically that's for a reason because you have big targets three of them then
you have a much smaller target next to a bigger target and you need to know how to shoot this
because you don't shoot it all at the same speed believe it or not the first target you'll take
second and third quickly the fourth you'll take milliseconds again to let your sight settle in
and then as soon as you do that you'll quickly retrieve on the fifth target and take him out
now when you go from target to target do your eyes move to the next target after you execute
the first shot or do you do you drive the pistol with your eyes or how do you get to the next target
basically as i'm shooting my eye is on the front sight after i fire the first shot and follow
through i am cocking the gun my eyes on the front sight as soon as i see more metal on the second
target i pull the trigger so basically what i'm doing is i'm shooting i move or sweep to the
next target i stop the gun which is important just long enough to pull the trigger then i sweep stop
shoot sweep stop shoot very important to stop that gun if you don't you'll be missing as you go
you'll be shooting at moving targets okay let's go ahead and do a run okay
we'll take this one somewhat at at uh slow speed or average speed and here we go
there i had i slip hammer in other words i tried to operate the gun
and the thumb didn't make the hammer go all the way back is that something that happens a lot uh
it's something that happens on occasion especially when you haven't been shooting for a long time
you know or practicing uh-huh so we'll try that again all right uh i've had people say well gee i
went too fast or i went too slow my feeling is you should have basically one speed it's just that
your concentration wasn't there at the time so you don't want to slow down so to speak you don't
want to speed up milliseconds is not slowing down aha milliseconds is concentration okay here
we go again okay here we go
uh a little faster but a little bit faster but that's your speed isn't it uh no my speed is a
little bit faster than that uh-huh but if you look at the target i've got all good hits which means
i'm not on the edge of my envelope on the edge of my envelope means those bullets would be hanging
on the edges and that would tell me if there's a lot of good competition then i better shoot for
centers which takes a little bit of time off and time again is milliseconds okay now it appears
that and this may not be correct in my uh we'll see what happening but appears that you're almost
keeping the the the trigger finger depressed on the trigger and just thumb on the hammer does
that ever happen or no every shot is its own shot i'm pulling the trigger every time remember
i've only got about a two pound trigger right and all i take is a little bit of pressure okay i mean
it doesn't take much pressure to release a two pound trigger well let's step up the speed and
see it again okay we'll try this one from the cross draw which might take a little bit longer
only because i have to reach for the cross draw i have to break my wrist and straighten it out
but we'll see how we do are we ready
very good and that was five from a cross draw again my first shot was a little ragged it's
right off to the edge but i knew i had the target the rest of them are exactly where you want them
at least two or three inches in from the edges now what we'll try and do and what i do in practice
many times is we'll shoot the five shots at the larger targets we'll holster our pistol and then
we'll go for the four targets on the ground and for our last shot we'll hit the metal plate
and basically what this does for me is it gets me into multiple guns multiple targets multiple
draws and after i'm through for the day day meaning an hour of practice if you will i've done an awful
lot and i've just kind of kept my skill level at a certain plane now we'll load this second pistol
because it works better that way and again you notice my technique for unloading the gun
it just works really fast here's what we're going to do
one pistol at the five targets and then one pistol at these smaller targets and
then the last shot on the white plate and here we go
all right 10 shots 10 hits you can't miss
got all of that and so to get to this level larry what kind of practice you need to do
well since i live in durango right now the only practicing i get basically is if i physically come
out here and do what i'm doing now for about a half an hour and i might do that before a major
match maybe four or five times at the basic skill level that i'm at in any top shooter
basically all you need to do is be familiar with your your weapons know that they shoot well
and get that muscle memory back do you still do any dry firing yourself no i don't do any
dry firing hardly at all i for me that's boring but it's really necessary if you want to become
a good shooter and get to this level so did you do that when you were growing up well when i first
started i think i did do some drawing because it was foreign to me nobody taught me how to draw
uh i didn't have a videotape i could watch that would cut my learning curve i actually bought all
the wrong equipment i felt like the guy in silverado that bought that smith and wesson where the
cylinder fell out you know i just had the wrong equipment i bought the wrong rifle it would jam
the pistol wouldn't shoot right the pistol i bought was a 44 40 that grouped like this
i didn't know what to expect in cowboy shooting but hopefully after this video you know what to
expect okay now for a practice regimen what's today uh an average or beginning shooter do when
he comes out to the range when you come out to the range you should do what i always do first and
that's basically you shoot groups at about 12 to 15 yards at about a four inch circle and you can
buy four inch circles like from birchwood casey they come nice and orange so you can see your hits
and i would shoot maybe 15 rounds you know you don't have to spend all day knowing you can shoot
a group then what i'll do is what we did earlier and that single shot draws at one target right
and i will do that for maybe again two or three chambers full which is about 15 rounds then after
that i'll go to multiple targets like you've just seen here except what i might do is go
first shot second shot first shot second shot and then i'll reload my pistol and go maybe five of
them in a row and that's basically what i'll do right and then just practice over and over again
and and get to observe your results exactly you want to see what you did wrong and know what you
did right and always concentrate on the positive because along with all the the shooting the guns
the rifles the shotguns the reloading and all this you have to have three things to compete with and
that's be a little bit aggressive you also have to have some mental match toughness
and know that when you're doing well hey that's okay to do well and when you're winning it's okay
to win you know and the third is just be relaxed and shoot within yourself and that's all you need
to do
okay now that we've talked about the pistols and finished that we're going to talk a little
bit about the rifle the rifle is a bit easier to shoot because you've got two hands on it it's in
your shoulder all you have to do is watch the sight picture it's very difficult to flinch but
you do have to remember to operate the lever in order to fire your second shot basically as you
see on the leather i've got this piece of leather here and that's basically to keep my hand a little
tighter in the lever as i'm trying to go fast from target to target we mentioned that earlier
on the tape but here again now you'll see how it works now you put three fingers in there right
right yeah you want to put three fingers in the lever finger outside the trigger guard
when you're not planning on shooting uh-huh also remember with a model 73
that your lever lock is not pointed in the wrong direction unless you will be operating a locked
lever such as this and obviously it won't work that has happened it matches under the heat of
of competition people kind of get flustered basically when you are shooting the rifle the
rifle is given to you or is positioned with nine rounds loaded in the magazine nothing in the
chamber so basically your weapon is not ready to or capable of firing the gun is also usually put
on a hay bale or sitting upright against a building or something of that nature when you go to pick up
your rifle you want to just again keep your eyes on where you want your hands to pick up the gun
once you've picked up the gun and you have it kind of in this position
you want to start levering the gun as you're moving it up to your shoulder push the
butt into your shoulder press your head against the stock close the lever and again you've been
watching the front side all this time you pull the trigger and that's just one sweeping move
and the way that works is like that
just like so how about for the second shot well the second shot you move over remember to stop
shoot sweep as you're levering your target is already on your front sight so you might
as well pull the trigger again on the fourth again on the fifth so as you're levering between
the targets you're basically your front sight can already be there which makes you shoot very fast
and again as soon as you see metal on your front sight pull the trigger and you get pretty fast
with this lever action can't you uh yes you can let's load it up and see all right any tricks to
loading here uh basically the only trick here is to be sure that your loading gate doesn't have
a spring that is so heavy that you can't push the bullets in this is very easy for right now
that's what happens sometimes and that's when it gets starts to get filled up okay i think we have
about nine in here what we're going to try and do is shoot these targets until we run out of bullets
and we'll start with the left and we'll go to the right and here we go
oh
okay that's how you do it pretty fast pretty clean and obviously you don't want to take that
gun off the shoulder or away from your uh away from your sight picture while you're cycling
here's what i find people doing and the only way i can describe it is to show you
they will do let me load the gun and i'll show you how they really do it
okay
we'll just load it with four bullets because that about covers all the mistakes
okay and what they'll do is they put the gun up they'll cock it then they'll shoot
readjust put the gun down
and put the gun up and continue to shoot but they're bringing it down every time i could
be done with all five shots by the time they fired their second one so the story is when
you run run when you shoot shoot and basically when you're out here shooting it's for speed
and you can also drive fire at home on targets on your wall just to get the speed up and get
that motion of the lever because that motion of the lever going a little awkward a little
different you know it's kind of a you really have to get that just know what you're going to do there
absolutely but you also want to hold the gun which is very important the same place every time
don't hold it one time here or one time here if you pick up your rifle like this from a table
be sure to get it to where you want it where you're in control and shoot
and you might also notice too that when i do shoot i get a little bit aggressive and lean into it
like so and that's the name of the game get aggressive get into it i do the
same with a pistol and the same with a shotgun
we've done the pistol we've done the rifle now we're going to get into the double barrel mule
air shotgun and basically shooting a shotgun is relatively simple it's more of a point and
shoot type weapon because it throws out a pattern as we described earlier at this range of probably
about 18 to 24 inches so what we're going to do basically is start with an empty gun i'm going to
load two rounds cock the hammers shoot two targets unload the gun load it again cock the hammers and
shoot two more rounds now in a competition you usually start with an empty gun in competition
you're always starting with an empty empty shotgun okay so here we're going to go
and with a mule there you notice i cock both hammers with my thumb same time at the same time
then we come up then they fall out if they don't they they went ahead and fell out like they're
supposed to that quick while you're coming back with your shotgun you're also coming up with two
more rounds close the gun cock and off you go four more and they just drop out and you just keep going
as the case may be and that's how it double works now without the mule ears everything's the same
except you don't have to cock it so a regular shotgun without exposed hammers is obviously going
to be faster and in time you can get this double barrel to operate almost as fast or as fast as a
model 97 right and that's by dumping them and loading two automatically loading two at a time
yeah that's the key too is the loading two at a time the key is this speed loader you pick up two
at a time the rounds are right there they close close the gun and you're ready to shoot and then
being able to drop out with no friction that was you bet you'll notice the double a's in this gun
whose cylinders are not polished fell right out right and that's the key but 97 is just a very
fun gun to shoot it actually holds five rounds it's great for team events and team events are
those where you have five people on your team and you're all shooting 97s and they put out 100
targets and whoever knocks them down the fastest wins so it's really a shooting finale team events
are fun for that reason and that's why a lot of people own a 97 now why are you so good with this
shotgun what's your what's your what's your trick what's your secret here actually i wasn't always
good with this until a friend of mine brent minehart better known as doc holiday who's also an
excellent shooter we decided one day that we weren't very quick with this so we spent about
four hours deciding what's a wasted movement how do you hold the gun what's the best way to load it
and get two shots off reload and get two more off so we came up with this way to load and then
i went to gordon davis and he designed me the speed leather and uh that's how it goes well show
us what you learned okay basically with the 97 what we're going to do is we're going to load two
rounds we're going to put one in here we're going to close the action and you'll notice that the
butt of my gun is between my elbow and my belly very important because that makes this gun very
solid right now it's not like this okay when i put this in you'll notice that my hand let me
open this up and we'll show you my hand will go like so bottom round goes here i close the gun
and you see where my elbow is so you're holding the gun yeah holding the stock
this one goes in like this boom notice i took a step forward and get aggressive
uh-huh a lot of weight weight transfer huh right and then the 97 that i have i just unloaded it
and we'll start over except this time we'll do it for real okay we're going to load and shoot
twice reload and shoot twice more and we're going to shoot at all four of those tarts
and you should mention here that uh in cowboy action shooting you can only have two rounds in
the gun at a time is that right exactly correct we make the shotgun or the pump equal to the double
barrel by only shooting two rounds at a time so that a double barrel which only can shoot two
is equal to this weapon itself that we shoot two load two and shoot two hence your statement earlier
that the double barrel can be as fast as the pump can be it just takes practice
but practice is the name of the game all right let's see it okay so what we'll do is we'll load
two we'll go again and we'll go again that's how you do it
so
along with your hands being in the right position the butt of the gun being in your elbow
the most important part of this is watching where your hands go so you watch when you pick
up these two rounds from your belt because sometimes you pick them up and they drop on
the ground because you weren't watching what you're doing you pick up the two rounds you
watch the one go in you close you watch this one go in and you're ready to go well now i will defer
that you know it seemed like when you were doing the speed stuff that you were not watching that
second one you're looking at the target or looking at the site um it seems like you almost know where
that gun's at and you're just sticking that second one in there by feel uh that's probably
correct however i have muffed some reloads by doing it by feel you always want to watch what
you're doing let's see a couple more okay here we go you'll notice i muffed one of those the last
one the last one right but very accepted and you always have to remember you can't miss yeah you
know you can reload fast but if you miss one target because you were in such a hurry the key
is smoothness and on every one of those reloads i was smooth except for one and i recognize that
so i've got to correct that i might make one mention about these rounds that are in the speed
loader sometimes you want to position them so that you know they're going to come out smooth
without any kinks on occasion sometimes talcum powder on the inside works really nice
all right okay okay so timer's going to start and you're going to perform the first reload
okay all right shooter ready stand by
8.34 seconds that's for six shots yeah and the first ones don't go off until about uh
two seconds that's about right yeah
so that means i'm doing a two second reload which is good huh which i think is very acceptable
anything under two and a half seconds is terrific that's two shots too that's right that's right now
the other thing i might mention about shooting a shotgun is when you're loading i don't realize
that i'm doing this probably but as soon as i'm loaded my eyes go immediately to the front sight
okay so as the gun is coming up just like with the pistol the bead is on and as soon as it's there
pull the trigger rifle the same way yeah it's all the same always front sight always front sight
your front sight will never be traded think about it great okay what you see in my hand right now
is a derringer and basically at some cowboy action shoots you will see a derringer as part
of the match so let's touch a little bit on derringers and their inherent strengths and
weaknesses basically a derringer is somewhat of a little bit of a dangerous weapon because
the barrel is so short the other part about a derringer that is tough is that if we open
this up and say we want to load it right now we'll open the derringer up and if you look at the
firing pins there's a firing pin extruded already past the bolt face
in this case it's the upper barrel so if i were to load a bullet in this case in this chamber
at this point and close this very hard it could go off so obviously i'm not going to do that
what i am going to do however is close the pistol lock it put it in the half cock position
then i can open it and as you'll notice there are no firing pins protruding so which means
it's in a safe loadable situation now you can load this with a bullet in each or with a cartridge
in each chamber you can close it and you'll notice when i go to close this and say this is a loaded
gun i'm pointing it away from me and pointing it down range i will close it now i'm ready to shoot
and the way that you shoot a derringer is basically one of two ways you can do it
single-handed and derringer hammers have always got about a 20 pound hammer pull and you can do
it like this and you'll notice what happens is half the gun is not being gripped any longer
which again is inherent weakness then you go back to grip it and then you pull the trigger now on
a derringer i found that if you pull the trigger towards the bottom of the trigger you've got a
better lever arm and it actually is a lighter trigger pull because they're normally pretty hard
aren't they very hard and what i where i pull out on the trigger is right here on the base
and it gives you a little bit lighter trigger pull because you have about a half inch lever
arm there which which helps you the preferred way to shoot a derringer and probably the most
safest is to use again two hands and you hold the derringer with one hand like so
cup your other hand around it and cock it like so with your thumb then pull the trigger and again
do it again all you get is two shots now some people i've seen shoot derringers they will
shoot it will recoil and the derringer will go up like this they will then try to cock it again
and obviously it's not going to work so they have to again readjust their grip with perhaps
with perhaps a loaded gun which i don't think is real safe and then position their hand where
it's supposed to be then cock it then they're safe again then they fire so basically if you
hold the gun tight the first time cock shoot cock shoot you'll be safer and everybody will be happy
so
John Bianchi is the most recognized personality in the firearms industry known internationally
as the father of the modern holster and the master of concealment John Bianchi is responsible
for the design and production of an incredible 20 million holsters belts and accessories during
his 40-year career in the early 1950s John Bianchi started as a police officer making
holsters in his garage his business expanded rapidly and by the mid 1970s Bianchi International
had grown to be the industry leader occupying the 60 000 square foot facility in Temecula, California
John Bianchi's numerous achievements include authoring the industry best seller blue steel
and gun leather creating an international pistol shooting competition the Bianchi Cup as well as
over 200 patents trademarks and copyrights his holsters were used in virtually all Hollywood
movie productions from the mid 1960s but perhaps his most important contribution is the design
development and manufacturer of the m12 military holster currently in use by the
United States and NATO forces worldwide
John Bianchi sold Bianchi International in 1989 and now personally handcrafts custom western
gun belts that are considered to be works of art that are truly becoming collectors items
these are available through his new custom shop Frontier Gun Leather
this program is volume three of a three-part series featuring the artistry and secrets
of advanced western holster making John Bianchi shares with you more than 40 years of experience
in working with leather tools and supplies to make the highest quality holsters and belts
in the world the information you're about to see can be applied to all leather making projects
with particular emphasis on holsters and belts now here's John Bianchi
Masad Ayub is recognized worldwide as an expert in the use of firearms for self-defense and
law enforcement applications he is the author of several books and hundreds of magazine articles
dealing with the use of lethal force he is a firearms tactics instructor for law enforcement
and civilians and the founder of LFI the lethal force institute as a champion pistol competitor
Masad Ayub has been a member of several all-state and state champion handgun teams in both bullseye
and combat style shooting and he is an expert witness who appears in the defense of police
officers involved in shootings to say the least Masad Ayub is uniquely qualified
to present the material you're about to see
the purpose of this video is to help you become better skilled in the use and handling of firearms
in particular using a handgun for self-defense after all handguns were invented for just one
thing to give the owner the ability to carry an effective self-defense weapon on his or her person
at all times in this program we're going to explore the three basic principles involved in
learning how to use a handgun effectively for self-defense weapon presentations for the act
of presenting the pistol to the target you wish to shoot and doing so so that the sights are lined
up with your intended target trigger pull which is the actual motion of pulling the trigger
while at the same time maintaining your proper sight alignment
and drawing the handgun from a holster or other method of carry with a major emphasis on safety speed and efficiency
plus we'll tie all three of these elements together in a nine minute workout that is
guaranteed to improve your handling skills your accuracy and your overall ability to shoot a
handgun with confidence I'm Lenny McGill stay with me as we begin handgun workout
drive fire training system
so
the revolver has been around for more than 150 years and it's still considered to be one of the
most reliable defensive handguns one could own mastering revolvers
so
and it came out right here
speed awesome speed there's nothing quite like it nothing so impressive as when man and his
weapon become one what's it take to develop this skill for you to be fast on the draw and fast
from shot to shot well that's what this program is all about we'll look at some of the fastest
shooters in the world compare their equipment their techniques and methods and talk with them
one-on-one all in an effort to find out how to shoot fast and accurately
hi I'm Lenny McGill shooting fast is easy it's when you have to shoot fast and accurately that
it becomes a lot more difficult now I believe there are certain things you can do and concentrate
on that are going to help you shoot faster and that's what this program is all about
so
so
you