Cuttin’ Wood

Last Saturday we finally got the weather to cooperate for the first time this year so that our local cowboy action shooting club—the Colter’s Hell Justice Committee—could hold our monthly match. Actually, this match isn’t part of the monthly schedule; we have a match around April 15th and call it the Infernal Revenue Shoot. This particular shoot was designated a Wild Bunch shoot, an offshoot of the normal CAS that allows 1911 pistols and certain pump shotguns. Every once in a while one of our guys brings a BAR (semi-auto) for a side match since 1917 water-cooled Brownings are a little scarce around here. The Wild Bunch matches are to commemorate the 1969 movie of the same name.Instead of the BAR this year, the side match was a team match, and in typical redneck fashion ours was simple, yet barbaric. Two teams shoot it out on respective fence posts set about 10 yards downrange. Using 1911 pistols and Winchester 1897 shotguns (we had one contrarian who used his 1887 Winchester shotgun replica just so he would stand out), the object of the game is to cut the post in half. First team to do so wins.It took about five minutes of constant shooting to get a winner, and the round count for both teams was well over 500. I’m thinking the next time we do a post shoot that I’ll sneak in some slugs. After all, if you’re not cheating you’re not trying hard enough…or so they say.To have some 14 or so shooters all close together madly shooting and reloading for five minutes would likely cause an anti-gunner to faint—and cause the heart of a gunner to go pitter-patter. With all that frenetic shooting reloading and shooting some more, there wasn’t a single case of a safety breach. Quite simply, it was a heck of a lot of fun.