Archeologist and gentleman adventurer Dr. Morgan Blanchard is back for episode six of Gordon's Gun Closet to talk about the sport of Cowboy Action Shooting. We thought we'd put a few supplemental things here on the blog just for the heck of it...
All the images in the header image at CSICON (and here above) are pics of Morgan, Gordon, Mrs. Frye, and a group shot of some of their friends at a SASS shoot back in The Day.
This nifty portrait of Morgan was taken by Stephen Jacobson sometime in the 90s at a house party.
This shot of me dressed as a Californio ca. 1850s was actually taken at a SASS shoot ca....80s? Let me think about it. My hair was less "blonde" back then, at any rate.
On the show we mentioned the additional sport of mounted action shooting, using blanks to pop balloons from a moving horse. Here's some footage from 2009 of me (and our friend and jousting buddy Bev) competing at an event not far from where we live. I'm on Gryphon (the black guy with the blaze). He was an amazing old appendix quarterhorse who wasn't thrilled about jousting but didn't mind gunfire. Go figure.
Mounted action shooting takes the "walk and chew gum" analogy up a notch, as the rider has to guide the horse, shoot relatively straight, not shoot your horse...and then change guns halfway through.
Safety tip: this sport is good way to demonstrate to the uninitiated that blanks are NOT safe. The muzzle blast that pops those balloons is very dangerous and can shoot a hole through an aluminum can from just a foot or so away. People die every so often messing around with stage/movie guns, loaded with blanks, because they think "no lead" means "no danger". They are wrong.
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