Cowboy
Action Shooting
By
"Abilene" SASS #27489
Howdy
Y'all – This site is horribly out of date (2007) Sorry!
Check
out my youtube channel for shooting:
Abilene
Cowboy Shooter
Photo page 1
of 8
(updated Oct 27,
2007)
More photos on page
2 & page
3 & page 4
& page 5 & page
6 & page 7 &
page 8
(Links,
articles and info at bottom of this page)
I started shooting in 1998, not having shot a
gun since we hunted as kids with a J.C.Higgins single shot .22
rifle. After getting into reloading and enjoying target shooting for
a year or so, I found out about CAS (Cowboy Action Shooting) and the
rest is history! I won't go too much into a description of CAS, as
it has been done well by others. I recommend Captain
Baylor's Ranger Camp for info on
the basics and getting started; and SASS,
the Single Action Shooting Society,
for the Shooter's Handbook which explains all the rules and has all
kinds of links to vendors and most of the clubs in the country so
you can find a club near you to check out. Basically, we dress up in
old west clothing and shoot old west style six-shooters, rifles and
shotguns. Everyone chooses an alias and that is what you go by. My
alias is "Abilene" which I chose since that's where I grew
up. We are shooting live ammo at steel plates in timed competitions.
But even though it is competition, most of us are into this just
because it is so danged fun! It isn't the fastest growing shooting
sport for nothing! I shoot smokey black powder cartridges which are
harder to load, slower to shoot, and a mess to clean up the guns.
But it is more period correct and a lot more fun to shoot!
In 2001 I shot 53 matches with 9 clubs in
Texas. On the 49th match (my 83rd match
overall since starting to shoot CAS) I finally shot my first "clean"
match (no misses) with the Butterfield Trail Regulators in Abilene,
TX. Yeehaa! It was 2004 before my 2nd clean match. Due
working on weekends for the last few years, I’m shooting less
– about 15 matches per year. But I am shooting a little more
accurately now and as of October 2007 I am up to 9 clean matches.
Here's some photos of me playing cowboy.
Click on the small photo to see the full sized image. Then click
RETURN or BACK on your browser to return to this page.
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At any particular CAS match, the shooters
are divided into posses, and you shoot all the stages (5 to 8
different stages, or scenarios) with your posse. Here are a few of
the posses I've had the pleasure of shooting with:
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Barbwire
Jack, son of 3-Cracker Jack. Yes, this is a family sport! Barkeep,
with his outstanding guncart that includes a working tap!
Handlebar Bob and Bad Jack entertaining at
Comancheria Days.
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Bronco
Birnbaum, Quick Majic, and Sexy Sadie at Comancheria Days 2000. Cody
King and Miss Red at Comancheria Days 2000. Deaf Laws, Aimless Annie,
and Halfhitch at Whoopin' Ass 2000
El Malo, driving force of the Tejas Caballeros at
Comancheria Days 2000. The infamous Gunzilla at Comancheria Days
2000. Part of Ivery's band: Daily Late, Ivery Keys, Grandad McBang at
the Travis County Regulators.
Lassiter Thunder and Newt Ritter at Comancheria
Days 2000. Ricky Shay Scout on St. Patrick's Day with Doubledare Kid
looking on, at Tejas Caballeros. Montana Greg, Bronco Birnbaum, Tex,
Chisler, Cookie Chef, Me, at Range War 2000.
Sam McDermott with Will Henry looking on, Tejas
Caballeros. Silver Bullet Bev with her most awesome holster rig. L.W.
Hannabas and Sundown Jones at Tin Star Open 2001
Gunsmith
extraordinaire and Cimarron dealer Bob "Pilgrim" Taylor and
Siata Senora. He founded Traditional Effects Co. and I bought a
number of guns from him. Bob passed away from
cancer on May 29, 2003. See Bob's
story. His son Robert Taylor and Martin Brummett
ran Traditional Effects for a couple years and I worked there for a
while. Sadly, it is no more.
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- We
need a guncart to haul around our stuff. Here's mine, made from an
old nightstand and a Home Depot hand cart. There are a lot of fancy
carts seen at the shoots. Some of them are so nice they look like
furniture. So I decided to just start out with furniture J
. It has served me well! The second picture is of
the cart after 100 matches. As you can see, the finish is wearing off
because I never waterproofed it, but it is still holding up. The
addition of cowboy boots to hold the butts of the guns was an idea I
got from Bad Ace.
Before
getting into CAS I was into self-defense guns and target shooting
with semi-autos and Colt double-action revolvers. Sadly, most of
these guns don't get to come out of the safe to play much these days.
This
was the 1st time
I tried the scoped Anaconda .44 Mag at 100yd. 4 shots in 1.46 inch.
Not bad for a handgun!
These
were the cowboy guns back around 2001. From the top, Baikal 12 Ga
shotgun, .45LC Winchester '94, .45LC stainless Navy Arms '92 short
rifle, Cimarron .357 '73 Carbine, Cimarron .44Spcl '66 short rifle.
The pistols aiming right are two Colt .44 Specials and a Colt .45LC.
The pistols aiming left are a 100 year old Colt .45LC, a 1915 Colt
32-20, and at the bottom is a Ruger Vaquero .45LC. Several guns have
been added since this picture.
I don't have a digital camera (yet). Most of
the pictures on this website are scanned photographs. But did you
know that if you lay an something (carefully) on the glass of a
flatbed scanner, it will take a pretty nice picture! That's how most
of the following shots were made:
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-Here's a few of the six shooters. At left is
a Cimarron antique finish .45, center is a 103-year-old Colt .45,
with the two together on the right. They make a good pair!
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Here's a Colt .44 Spcl, a Cimarron .38 Spcl 1851
Richards-Mason Conversion, and a Cimarron 44-40 Model P.
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Got a .44 Spcl Cimarron Thunderer shown here with one
of my .44 Spcl Colts, next is a 2nd Generation Colt 1971
NRA Centennial .45 with Ajax fake ivory grips "aged" with
brown leather dye, and my brother's 1st Generation 32-20
Colt with rare long-flute cylinder.
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A pair of Cimarron charcoal blue Richards-Mason 1851
conversions in .38 Spcl, engraved by Kelly Laster. Those were a bonus
from working at Traditional Effects - shot a clean match the first
time I used them! Second photo is after sending frames to Doug
Turnbull for case-hardening. Then I turned them into what I call
Thunderer-Mason Conversions! Have shot several clean matches with
these, and they are great with BP.
☺
..
And the.44
Spcl Colts in Bob Mernickle holster
rig. The next picture is a 357 '73 carbine and my first set of
1851Navy conversions with their new leather from Lone Star Leather of
Austin, TX
ARTICLES &
INFO
Here are several sets of stages I
wrote for the Travis County Regulators. Perhaps they will give some
ideas to you stage writers. These are Word Documents:
TCR1
TCR2 TCR3
TCR4 TCR6
TCR7 TCR8
TCR9
Collection of posts to the SASS
Wire and CAS-L on BP shotshell loading: BP12GA
Collection of posts to the SASS
Wire and CAS-L on '66 Replacement sights: 66sights
CAS-L post by Hellgate (thanks,
pard!) about debugging Cap'n'Ball revolvers: C&B
Article on loading BP in brass
shotshells, published in the January 2002 COWBOY CHRONICLE (Word
Document): Brass12GA - and
here is the file in Adobe Acrobat format: Brass12GA.pdf
(New - 18
Aug, 2002) Article on Loading BP (and
Substitute) Cartridges for CAS. This is a LONG article: BP_for_CAS
(New - 1 Nov,
2002) Article I wrote for the COWBOY
CHRONICLE on the Hampton family (Tally Book, More Ammo, Badlands Ben,
and World Champ Shalako Joe): Hamptons
Article on inexpensive clothing for CAS:
Duds
NEW (24 June,
2004):
Article on an interesting smokeless loading technique
using light loads of Clays and grits filler: Clays
and Grits
NEW (27 Oct,
2005): Article on easy adjustments on
toggle-link rifles: Poor Man’s ’66
& ’73 Action Job
Go
To Page 2 for More Photos
Click Page
3 for photos of the 2002 Tin Star CAS Open
Click Page
4 for photos of the 2002 Tejas Caballeros
Whoopin'
Click Page
5 for photos of the 1st Cavalry Division
Horse Cavalry Detachment performing at Range War 2002
Click Page
6 for photos of the Cimarron booth at
Winter Range and Shot Show '03
Click Page
7 for photos from End of Trail 2003
Click Page
8 for photos from Show Show 2004
Links Page
- various
interesting CAS websites and the clubs I shoot with.
email: dave42 <at>
suddenlink <dot> net (you know what to do)
Back
to Dave42 Homepage
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