North Carolina State Championship

Lannie Oakley and I headed over to visit our youngest daughter and her family and I was able to shoot the North Carolina State Match while we were there.

Side match day started out a little rough for me, they do all the speed events in one bay so you can load pistols, rifle and carry your shotgun and do all three back to back. Rifle and pistols went ok but when I loaded my shotgun it refused to go bang. I thought maybe I had pulled the trigger after I opened it so I started over, still no bang. Fortunately I had my back-up shotgun and it worked fine.

I ran across Widder, Slater, Rounder,Purly, Two-Step Net, Three Cut, Key Hay and a slew of other folks we I first got there. After a few runs Iron Maiden and Whiskey Creek Johnson came up and Iron Maiden and I decided to try the couples match. We thought they need at least one all duelist couple to try it. It was a lot of fun and we had what I though was a real good run. Time rolled around pretty quickly for the 4 stage warm-up match and I met up with Dodge City Dixie and Reno Mustang on my way to that bay.

They have big bays and set up 2 stages in each bay. I think the 4 stage warm-up was shot in bays 5 and 6. I've shot at places where they did this and it was sometimes confusing but here they do it right. They typically have 1 type of common targets but 1 stage starts on targets on the left and the next starts on completely different targets on the right. It works out real well and saves a lot of walking over the course of a day. Most of us were hoping we got all the gremlins out during the warm-up match. On the last stage my back-up shotgun failed to fire the second barrel on the first 2 targets but worked ok after that.

The entire week prior to this, the match weather forecast was terrible, but it just goes to show the Good Lord enjoys a good Cowboy match as the weather turned out great.

Here they shoot 2 posses together, I was on 17 with Ramblin' Royce, Loco Linda, RJ Ricochet, Nunn Faster, Reno Mustang, Dodge City Dixie and Cherokee Maddog. We were shooting with posse 18, Barbwire Ben, Hoss Blocker, Swift Stoney, Kid Nama, Tom Bullweed, Ridgeback Jack, Dollar Bill Newman, Whiskey Creek Johnson and Iron Maiden. One posse would work while the other shot and it worked out well, we had a great group.

I started the the day with a miss with my left pistol but managed to shoot the rest of the day pretty good for me. I even managed to shoot stage 9 with 10 pistol, 10 rifle and 4 shotgun, with pistols and rifle shot from one location and shotgun from another, in under 20 seconds. I managed to finish the first day with a 23 second average. We shot the afternoon wave so it warmed up quite a bit before we finished but it was a nice day.

Saturday morning we shot the early wave and the weather was warm early so I'm sure the afternoon posses had a scorcher. Elm Savannah came out Saturday and helped with our posse all day, keeping the score sheet and taking videos, thanks Elm for all your help.

I started the first stage of the day jacking out a rifle round and jacked out I think 4 before the day was over. I've had better days. After Saturday my  average went up to 27 seconds. We had some really good shooters on our posse, Dodge City Dixie and Swift Stoney both shoot really good matches.

I really enjoyed being able to shoot a match and spend lots of time with family so I can't say how the banquet was but I hear it was really good.

Christian Mortician was the Top Gun of the Match, followed by Red River Ray, Three Cut, Swift Stoney, Doc Pill Filler, Linden Kid, Sixgun Sallie (also the Ladies Top Gun), Earl E. Bird, High Noon Henry and Big Whiskey rounded out the Top 10.

Sixgun Sallie was the Ladies Top Gun followed by Shamrock Sadie, Dodge City Dixie, Ms. Jewell and Kid Nama rounded out the Ladies Top 5.

Complete Scores

As I mentioned earlier Elm Savannah took lots of videos on Saturday and here is a link to them.

Videos

I don't have all of them linked yet but I'll try to have them done in a few days.

Here are videos from the Shoot-off from Dodge City Dixie and Reno Mustang.

Shoot-Off

From Wartrace, Dodge City Dixie was 1st Ladies B-Western won the Ladies Shooting Costume award and made the shoot-off, Reno Mustang was 3rd Senior Gunfighter and I was 1st Senior Duelist and won the Speed Pistol Duelist side match.

I have to thank JM Brown and all the crew for putting on a great match and I plan to return next year.
Hopefully Dodge City Dixie, Reno Mustang and I will bring some more Wartrace Regulators with us next year.

Next travel match on my agenda is the Black Gold Shootout I'm sure it will be another great one.

Black Gold

If you are planning to shoot the Tennessee State I suggest you book your hotel room soon, I hear they are filling up fast.

Tennessee State Championship

Happy Trails until we meet again.