Lou Graham, # 26112

It was always entertaining to shoot with the Mountain Clan. Great memories and U.B. was always a lot of fun. My condolences to the family.

T Bone and family will be in my prayers.

I'm in the southeast end of Anthem - 7 minutes to the first entrance to Ben Avery. I belong to ACSA (the cowboy club at BA) as well as the Cowtown club. Sending you a PM.

Once Ducey lets us out of detention, come to a match, gear or no gear. We can show you around and many of us have extra guns and gear if getting everything together is going to be an issue.

Oh Driftwood, I remember when you guys first got Gus and how happy you were. I'm so sorry your little buddy has crossed the rainbow bridge.

I buy primed, low brass Cheddite hulls from Graf's. For cowboy, I get 2 or 3 uses out of the ones that don't get stepped on. Using reclaimed hulls from store-bought smokeless 16 ga didn't work out very well for me. Hulls are not very sturdy and the amount of time I spent fooling with the failed ones to take it apart for the components wasn't worth it to me. Wads are Remington SP16 and I cut down the petals a little bit. I also use an overshot card to aid in a nice crimp. You are on the right track with some good suggestions for starting points to develop your load. Lefty is Da Man when it comes to 16 ga for sure! You do want to get compression on the powder, as with any BP load but it's easier to overdo it with plastic hulls than brass cases so either use a case checker or drop them in the shotgun and tip them out to make sure the load fits.

I've missed one WR since 2003. It was 2010 before I was fortunate enough to come to AZ early enough to see BA in it's "normal" state, before all the WR crews worked their magic to transform it. It really hit me at that point what an incredible effort it is and why it takes so many people to make it all happen. Now that I live here, I have gotten to know many of these hard-working people better. None of them want their cowboy company to go home unhappy from this signature match in the annual cycle of SASS events. But is does seem something is out of sync based on the number of people that see issues with the match itself. Is that real or perception? The published scores don't tell us all the data needed to know. We do know the number of clean shooters was far below the "norm" for most other big matches and has been getting lower by the year for WR. ( 105 clean in 2018, 56 clean in 2019, 37 in 2020) I would love to see the P and miss counts, too, but just the lower number of clean shooters does provide some indication of incremental change in difficulty - and the difficulty covers a LOT more than just target distance. The other thing that is not even being talked about is - what are the MD's across the country at clubs, state and regional matches doing? Is there a unified effort to make state harder than a monthly and regional harder than state or do they each have their own "character" and do what they have found to be popular year after year? My guess is the latter. The principal that that National Championship should be more of a skills test makes sense and is a worthy goal. There may be a disconnect with MD's around the country on what that means or even a lack of awareness this is happening. I know some have said they set targets back farther the month before to prep for WR but that seems pretty inadequate. Shooters need high and low, knockdowns for pistol and rifle, unusual target layouts and sequences and especially some practice figuring out the "write your own" stages with multiple options on how to shoot it. Those things need to appear regularly at monthly matches until they are as familiar as a stand and deliver, double tap Nevada on 3 targets. Maybe it's time we took a look at SASS "recommended" distance and size for targets and set a minimum distance and acceptable size range to help standardize what we're shooting at from the club level up. Maybe some sample stages (like the old postal matches) should be published for all the clubs to use so start positions, wording on how to shoot the stage, sweeps, the target distance, size, layout etc will be familiar and not a shock when the shooters arrive. More than anything else, we have to decide the question: Are we a game or a shooting sport? It used to be a game - a bad hatchet throw or draw of the wrong card could cost you big time. Getting it right or a little luck might make you the winner. Most of our changes have been toward becoming more like a shooting sport. Is that what we want? If it isn't, then why are we doing that? We need to make up our mind. Straddling that fence makes planning a match to cover the various wants from the participants SO much harder, it's really just about impossible.

Way to go Grazer! You need some BP to go with your awesome GF skills

Congratulation to DJ, a wonderful young man, incredible shooter and my Soot Buddy! Your Posse Mom is proud of you but chasing after you with a timer wore me out quicker than two year old triplets.

When my posse got to the train stage and I saw the car with Union Pacific Railroad on it, I couldn't help myself. Whatever the line was supposed to be wasn't getting used. We had to hold a golden spike, so I incorporated it. "This spike belongs to E.H. Harriman of the Union Pacific Railroad." It was a great match and the trains ran on time!

I'm sure DS and PL will take good care of you as long as you are following doctor's instructions. Step out of line and there could be trouble. Please be good and heal up fast.

It's a beautiful buckle. It's a very thoughtful gift. You earned it. Wear it with pride and just pretend it makes you faster

Much mirth and great friends made and kept over the years. WR in maybe 2004 or so - long before Wild Bunch had rules. It was a 4 man team side match with some caveats like at least one person had to shoot duelist and one person had to be female. Somehow I ended up with FJT, Evil Roy and I can't remember the other shooter. Maybe FJT will remember. What I do remember is that it hurt to breathe the next day because we had laughed so much!

Black powder is about a whole lot more than shooting - it's a whole process. From melting lead and cleaning it up to make plump, shiny bullets to tearing guns down for cleaning, the whole thing is about being a Soot Lord or Soot Sister. I'm sure my mother rolls over in her grave every time I use my childhood ballet training to go lower, lower, lower to get below the smoke. Smoke is good, but I like a side of flame with it. The Darkside beckons many, the force is strong in only some and Driftwood is my Yoda.

Heddy (that's HEDLEY!) converted to PDF and you can save them for forever. The Open Range existed for a long time after it was not longer an active forum but it was taken down just a few months ago.