Volume 1, Issue No. 5                                           (Web Edition)                                                     July  2003

Page 1

61 SHOOTERS DEFEND THE WEST OF OUR IMAGINATION AT JULY SHOOT

     Match day started sorta slow.  Only five cowboys participated in the buffalo shoot.  Tri placed 1st in the Open Sight Category.  Marshal Too Tall placed 1st in the Peep Sight Category, but it didn’t count because he was the only entry in the category.  Mesquite Millie was registering shooters, and at 9:30 the Posse Leaders and Assistants started their pre-match stage walk-through.  At that time, only 39 shooters were registered.  Posse Leaders for 5 posses were doing the walk through, and it looked like we’d have 

three posses. Then, BAM!  Folks started rolling in, and within a few minutes, 61 shooters were registered.  Sorta!  One of them cowboys could have been called Dos Hombres, 

On July 27, Colonel Allison, our Senior Cowboy, celebrated his 80th birthday. Congratulations, Colonel.

     Amongst our visitors were four cowboys from North Carolina.  They were impressive lookin’ hombres.  All wore black shirts, brown pants, white hats, and high top black boots with three red diamonds on the tops.  At their club shoots, the Gunpowder Creek Regulators, their stages all involve guardin’ the 3 Diamonds Mine, or protectin’ gold shipments from the 3 Diamonds mine.  They must be purty good at guardin’ the gold, 

L-R: Pocko, Ripshin (Regulators’ Range Master), Sixgun Shookster, Horsetrader, (Pres-Gunpowder Creek Regulators

‘cause the 3 Diamonds  Company evidently pays it’s Regulators well

     All joking aside, Cruel Hand Luke demonstrated mature range safety discipline at the July Shoot.  He shoots pretty fast, as in fast enough to be our Top Gun in July.  But on one of his stages, he fired a squib load.  The bullet went just far enough into the barrel of his pistol to allow the cylinder to turn.  Before the Posse Leader and his helpers could yell “Stop Shootin’!,”  Cruel Hand Luke had already stopped.  That means the cowboy is conscious of what he’s doing even when shooting fast.

SHOOT RESULTS

Traditional

Duelist

Cruel Hand Luke

Curly Top

Cool Waters

Dutch Al

Dustin Clays

Horseshoe John

Modern

Black Powder

Tarheel

T-Bone Angus

Catoosa Kid

Black Powder Joe (Coffee Joe)

Cowgirl

Senior

Killin’ Time

Linc

Abagail Rose

Rev. Adam Jones

Summer Dove

Sheriff Donald

Gunfighter

Buffalo Shoot

D.Q. Jones

(Open Sight)  Tri

Pleasant

Loose Cinch

Newletter Editors:  Deadman & Mesquite Millie                  Website Editor:  Tennessee Justice

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Volume 1, Issue No. 5                                           (Web Edition)                                                     July  2003

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TOP TEN SHOOTERS

Sixgun Shookster

COWBOY ACTION SHOOTING IS A FAMILY SPORTING ACTIVITY

3 GENERATIONS OF COWBOYS

The Wesley family. L-R: Izzy Ded Yet, Sixes, Whip Wesley

On July 11th, Blayde Hollister got himself married.  Yeah, he ain’t single no more.

     Blayde’s dressed as dapper as Bat Masterson would’ve.  Blayde Hollister has been shootin’ with us since 1998.  KD (pronounced – Kaddie) visited with us in November 2002 as an observer and said she enjoyed our game.                                                              

Congratulations, Mr. & Mrs. Blayde Hollister. Blayde is the son of Mesquite Millie and Deadman.

OCOEE RANGER BADGES

Good Day Pards,

     Received the first order of Ocoee Ranger badges, and they look great.  I did not receive them in time to get the badges to our June shoot.  Now that people have seen them, I imagine that some more folks will order once they see the badges.  Neil Swendsboe at Starpacker, our badge supplier, sent me the following message:  “Glad you like the badges and they met your expectation.  The price will

Happy Trails,

Tri

Dont forget – our next Ocoee Rangers’ shoot on August 23rd.  The cook will be there. Hamburgers, hotdogs, the trimmin’s and soft drinks and water are available at a very reasonable price.

SHOOT! MAGAZINE TO LIST OCOEE RANGERS SHOOTS

SHOOT THROUGH PASSES FOR OCOEE RANGERS SHOOTS

Remember:

3. In a year, you only get to play cowboy or cowgirl and shoot 12 times, unless you visit another group. So take advantage of your opportunity to shoot as an Ocoee Ranger.

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Volume 1, Issue No. 5                                           (Web Edition)                                                    July 2003

Page 3

The reel West, the real West and the West of our imagination

     Alan Ladd was a little feller who made a number of movies, most of which weren’t Westerns.  But he made a few Westerns, two of which were very good and one was excellent.  In WHISPERING SMITH, Alan played Whispering Smith, a railroad trouble-shooter who was tall in the saddle and quick on the draw.  Well, quick on the draw is more like it.  The movie was good enough that another short feller played the part in a short-lived TV Western series:  Audie Murphy.  The other very good Western that Alan did was BRANDED.  In that movie, he played a gunslick who started out to swindle a rancher, but fell for his daughter and reformed.   The excellent Western that Alan did      

Alan Ladd in buckskins as Shane

was SHANE .  recognized as one of all time classic

Western movies.  In that movie, Alan wore buckskins, a gun belt adorned with silver conchoes, and carried a white handled, 7 ½ inch Colt.  Trying to hang up his six-gun, he hung up his buckskin outfit and tried his hand at farming.  But in the end, he put the buckskins and six-gun back on and saved the day by shooting all the villains.  Then, “he road back into the heart of the great and glowing west from whence he had come.  And he was Shane.”  With those words, that’s how the book ended. Most folks still remember Alan Ladd as Shane. All 5 feet 6 inches of him. After all, a person makes an impression on others, and size has nothing to do with it …. In reel life or in real life.  

     Dead Beat is a Cowboy Action Shooter who took a page from the scripts of the many Western movie heroes who wore buckskins.  There were the Ranger Rider, and TV’s Wild Bill Hickok, and Kit Carson, and Shane, and the list goes on.  When you look at ol’ Dead Beat in his buckskin shootin’ outfit, he’s a little like these cowboys.  He doesn’t talk much.  He has that steely stare of the gunfighter, but his gray hair makes him a little different.  Shucks, in the real West, most of the gunfighters were dead before they were 40.   The real shootists used black powder when they did their shootin’, and so does Dead Beat.  

If you visit a Cowboy Action Shoot with the Ocoee Rangers

Dead Beat in buckskins

or with the Smoky Mountain Shootists Society (the Knoxville cowboys & cowgirls) and you see a big cloud of smoke and you follow it to its source, it just might be that ol’ Deat Beat is shootin’ his guns and playing the cowboy shootin’ game. Say, “Howdy”, if you see him.  He’s a friendly sort of feller.

James Butler Hickok

     James Butler Hickok was one of the most legendary figures of the Old West, and he still is. In his adventurous life, he was a scout for the Yankees in the War of Northern aggression against the South, an employee of the pony express company, a cowtown marshal during the cattle drive days, a gambler, a prospector – though mostly at the card tables, a stage performer with Buffalo Bill Cody, and a man of the American West. Jim dressed sorta fancy, no matter what his role. In the cowtowns, he wore long dress coats, dress trousers, and a wide brimmed hat. In the stage productions in which he appeared, playing a genuine hero of the plains, he often wore buckins, and a wide brimmed hat. Sometimes, he wore holsters, and sometimes a red sash. 

James Hickok as Wild Bill Hickok

But no matter how he dressed, he carried two Colt .36 cal.

Till next month…happy trails.

Newletter Editors:  Deadman & Mesquite Millie                  Website Editor:  Tennessee Justice

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Volume 1, Issue No. 4                                           (Web Edition)                                                     June  2003

Page 1

63 Cowboys & Cowgirls Shot June Ocoee Rangers Match

     Well, cowboys & cowgirls, we had a terrific turnout for our June shoot.  63 cowfolks shot in the match, and several people came to watch, or keep score or otherwise be a part of the activity.  Two shooters shot clean matches: Whiskey River Nelson & Marshal Too Tall.  And not to be outdone by the cowboys, Flossie shot a very good match.  She missed only 1 target, and on the stage where tennis balls were shot for extra points, she hit 4 of the 5 balls.  That ain’t bad shootin’.  Diamondback Dennis was the Top Gun and winner of the Traditional category, followed closely by Cruel Hand Luke, who placed 2nd overall.  Carolina Gem was the top cowgirl shooter, finishing 12th.  Marshal Too Tall won both categories in the Buffalo Shoot: Open Sight and Peep Sight.     

TOP 10 SHOOTERS

Diamondback Dennis

Cruel Hand Luke

Lucky Larry

Cool Waters

Dustin Clays

Tabasco Jot

Whiskey River Nelson

Badlands Beck

Curly Bill

Pleasant

Cowgirl shooters  L-R:  Sadie Lou & Carolina Gem

SHOOT RESULTS

Traditional

Duelist

Diamondback Dennis

Horseshoe John

Cruel Hand Luke

Dutch Al

Lucky Larry

Sheriff Jack Cooley

Modern

Black Powder

Limp Along Charlie

The Catoosa Kid

Sundance McNeyman

Deadbeat

Tarheel

Cowgirl

Senior

Carolina Gem

Tobasco Jot

Sadie Lou

Kenesaw Kid

Tennessee Hawk

Gunfighter

Buffalo Shoot

Pleasant

(Peep Sight)  Marshal Too Tall 

Loose Cinch

(Open Sight)  Marshal Too Tall

Challenged Cowboy

Cowgirl

C. Rider

Carolina Gem

Sadie Lou

Newletter Editors:  Deadman & Mesquite Millie                  Website Editor:  Tennessee Justice

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Volume 1, Issue No. 4                                           (Web Edition)                                                     June  2003

Page 2

SPECIAL BULLETIN

SMOKY MOUNTAIN SHOOTIST SOCIETY July Benefit Shoot For Curley Bill

Curley Bill

On July 12th, the 2nd Sat. in July, the Smoky Mountain Shootists Society (Knoxville) are holding a special benefit shoot for Curly Bill (aka Bill Kelly) and his wife, Melinda.  This cowboy and his family need our help.  They recently received bad news in a one – two punch: critical medical information about Melinda and that Curly Bill had lost his job on that same day.   If you can, come up to Knoxville and shoot with us on July 12th.  You’ll help Curley Bill and his family by 

doing so, and you’ll have another chance to play cowboy and shoot.  The shoot fee will be $25.  Sign up will start at 8:00 a.m.  The benefit shoot will start at 9:00 a.m., just after the safety meeting.  I would like to thank everybody for the collection that was taken up for Curly Bill and Melinda at the Ocoee Rangers’ June Shoot.  We, the Smoky Mountain Shootists, really appreciate what the cowboys did.  We had a great day shooting and visiting with our friends.

Thanks again. Flossie

A FEW WORDS FROM DEADMAN

SHOOT! MAGAZINE TO LIST OCOEE RANGERS SHOOTS

SHOOT THROUGH PASSES – OCOEE RANGERS SHOOTS

Remember:

3. In a year, you only get to play cowboy or cowgirl and shoot 12 times, unless you visit another group. So take advantage of your opportunity to shoot as an Ocoee Ranger.

     On June 12, Gregory Peck joined the posse of silver screen cowboy ghost riders in the sky.  During his movie career, he wasn’t necessarily considered a “cowboy star”, but he made several Westerns, one considered a classic.  If you like cowboy movies, you’ve surly seen at least some of his Western movies.  If you ain’t a Western movie fan, you’d better not admit it. Them’s fightin’ words.  Some of ol’ Greg’s Westerns include:   

The Bravados, The Big Country, McKenna’s Gold, Shoot 

Gregory Peck

Happy Trails, pardner. We enjoyed your movies, especially the Westerns.

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Volume 1, Issue No. 4                                           (Web Edition)                                                    June 2003

Page 3

The reel West, the real West and the West of our imagination

     Henry Fonda was an actor from the golden days of Hollywood, and he lived to be and old geezer.  In his many roles, he played cowboy parts and other stuff.  But his cowboy parts are the ones cowboy shooters find most interesting.  In his career, Henry played gunfighters, marshals, bounty hunters, outlaws, cavalry officers, and cowboys.  A 

Henry Fonda as Frank James

lot of hoop-la is made about one cowboy movie that he was 

in, The Ox Box Incident.  But it’s a depressing tale, and one this word slinger usually avoids. Among his many characters, Henry played the outlaw Frank James.  In fact,    

he played Frank James in two different movies.  The first was Jesse James with Tyrone Power, who played Jesse.  In that one, ol’ Tyrone was blasted into eternity, and Frank quit his outlaw ways and reformed.  But drawing power and sequels were present even back when that movie was made.  So, Henry saddled up, picked up a Remington pistol, and rode back into the west of the silver screen in “The Return of Frank James” to again become Frank James.  Both movies were pretty good.  If you haven’t seen’em and get a chance to do so, give’em a look.     

     Ben Shot, aka Frank James, has been cowboy shootin’ for a couple of years.  A quiet feller, he lets his guns do his talkin’.  Of course that doesn’t mean that when he’s around that there’s a lot of silence.  Granted ol’ Ben Shot doesn’t talk much, but his pardner makes up for it.  He usually shoots with Horseshoe John.  Before he joined SASS, Frank James shot as, you guessed it, Frank James.  But some other hombre had already selected that alias.  So, Frank James became Benjamin 

Schiatske.  Well, sorta…Mesquite Millie and Deadman 

Frank James as Ben Shot

couldn’t spell or pronounce the last name when registering him to shoot and assigning him to a posse, so Ben simplified it to “Ben Shot”. 

Frank James As Frank James

     The most famous, or infamous, outlaws in western history were Frank and Jesse James.  Farm boys from Missouri, they entered the War of Northern Aggression and emerged as boys who were never again satisfied to stay settled on the farm.  Some say their Yankee sympathizing neighbors drove them to a life of crime.  But it’s likely that the quest for excitement, easy money in quantity, and the companionship of the like-minded younger brothers contributed a large measure of what set them on their trail of 

Frank James As Frank James

gun smoke. Frank was the older of the two James brothers,

Till next month…vaya con dios.

Newletter Editors:  Deadman & Mesquite Millie                  Website Editor:  Tennessee Justice

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Volume 1, Issue No. 3                                           (Web Edition)                                                     May 2003

Page 1

May Shoot:  Light Turnout, But Fun For Those Who Did

     It rained all around the area on Saturday.  Shucks, for a few minutes it even rained at the range, before the shoot began…but only for a few minutes.  Then, it stopped and the 38 shooters who ventured out had a great…well, a very good shoot.  And that ain’t bad, considering all the competition for shooters’ attentions.  First, Mother Nature made it look like it would rain all day, but it didn’t.  Then several local schools had graduation ceremonies.  And the Knoxville cowboys had some kind of special event going on, and only a few journeyed south to shoot with us.     

     Ain’t that a sad story?  But what the heck, Marshal Too Tall and Tri started the day with a bang.  They won the Buffalo Shoot: Tri in the Open Sight and Marshal Too Tall in the Peep Sight categories.  Then Pleasant, Tarheel and Double Eagle each proceeded to shoot 5 stages without missing any targets.

     Pleasant won the honors as Top Gun.  But, two other cowboys made definite impressions on the range.  Deadfoot showed up wearing a Mexican sombrero that would put the Cisco Kid to shame.  And Tennessee Hoss made his return shooting black powder with brass shotgun shells plum full of black powder.  Every time he fired, he made so much smoke that cowfolk on other stages thought something big was on fire.  His shells were so hot, that when he fired his shotgun, the primers were burned out.  He was overheard asking a couple of other cowboys how much powder was enough.  The answer they gave him was…”less than you’re shooting”.

SHOOT RESULTS

Traditional

Duelist

Ocoee Red

Horseshoe John

Dustin Clays

Dutch Al

Whiskey River Nelson

Tri

Modern

Black Powder

Limp Along Charlie

T-Bone Angus

Tarheel

The Catoosa Kid

Sundance McNeyman

Coffee Joe

Junior

Senior

Chickamauga Clint

Tobasco Jot

Gunfighter

Buffalo Shoot

Pleasant

(Peep Sight)  Marshal Too Tall 

(Open Sight)  Tri

     Shadrack Jones was the only entry in the Classic Category and can’t be officially recognized as a category winner.  However, he epitomized the Classic Cowboy look and performance.  Ol’ Shadrack was dressed in high top Buffalo Bill horseman’s boots, a buckskin jacket, white hat, slim Jim holsters, and he shot a Henry rifle, a Spencer rifle, a brace of conversion colts, and his shotgun.  He was a perfect example of a classy cowboy shootin’ Classic Cowboy.

OCOEE RANGERS SASS AFILLIATED

     It’s official!  The Ocoee Rangers are now SASS affiliated.  That means our monthly shoot will be listed in the Cowboy Chronicle and on the SASS website, we can put the SASS logo back on our Shooters’ Certificates, and we’re officially back in the SASS Cowboy Action Shooting family.

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Volume 1, Issue No. 3                                           (Web Edition)                                                     May 2003

Page 2

The reel West, the real West and the West of our imagination

     Dale Robertson was a B-Movie cowboy actor back in the ‘50’s.  Sometimes he played a good guy, sometimes a sleezy gambler, and sometimes he was just sorta part of the crowd.  Then in the heyday of TV westerns, he became a household name, at least if you liked cowboy movies.  Now if you say, shucks, I didn’t, shame on you.  Anyway, Dale rose to our attention as Jim Hardie, Wells Fargo agent and trouble shooter in Tales of Wells Fargo.  When the series started, he

Jim Hardie aka Dale Robertson

looked after stagecoaches.  Then as the series continued, he spent more and more time with railroad troubles. He became,

if you will, a railroad cowboy.  A left handed one at that. Ol’ Jim was fast on the draw, rode a nifty looking horse, corralled all the bad guys, and he and his alter ego, Dale Robertson, were a bit outspoken.  Once when talking about cowboys, guns, holsters and such, ol’ Dale commented that Tom Tryon, who played “Texas” John Slaughter in the Walt Disney movies, would be dead in a heartbeat if he really tried to draw on somebody using the cross draw that he carried.  And he was convinced of his opinion. Now in real life, the real “Texas” John Slaughter carried his white handled Colt in a, you guessed it, cross draw holster.  And the ol’ boy lived until a ripe old age doing so.  So much for one man’s opinion.

     As all good things eventually do, the Tales of Wells Fargo series ended, and before long, back was ol’ Dale.  But this time he was a railroad owner who rode his rails and seemed to get into as much trouble as when he was a lowly trouble-shooter on someone else’s railroad.  That series was in color, an hour long, and wasn’t near as good as the 30 minute shoot’em up.

     Now in modern times, cowboys still come in contact with trains, and rails, and such.  Limp Along Charlie is such a feller. Just like Jim Hardie, aka Dale Robertson, he hitched his star to an iron horse, and he’s become a railroad cowboy.  Limp Along Charlie’s been cowboy shootin’ for about 2 ½ years.  A member of the Cleveland Hunting Rifle & Pistol Club, he went out to the range one day to shoot skeet, and he saw Pleasant, Tri, and several other fellers cowboy shootin’.  So, he went 

over towatch.  They offered to let him use their guns to shoot, 

Limp Along Charlie

but he declined. But it looked like fun.  After seeing the cowboy shooting, Charlie went home and dug out his Ruger Black Hawk, in .45 Colt.  Not long thereafter, he traded his deer rifle for a Ruger Vaquero, also in .45 Colt.  Next he bought a ’94 Winchester and a shotgun.  But he was still working weekends.  Then one day he was closing a boxcar door at work, and the door fell on him and broke his hip.  Five surgeries later, he had a limp.  So when he looked for a SASS alias, he selected Limp Along Charlie.  Making contact with a work acquaintance, and another railroad cowboy, C Rider, Limp Along got C Rider into reloading and C Rider got him into Cowboy Shooting. And the rest is history. And that is the story of Limp Along Charlie, Ocoee Ranger and railroad cowboy.

 THE REAL WEST

     Now I know what you’re thinkin’. What the heck did Tom Horn have to do with trains.  And that would be a valid question. There’s a valid answer, but before we give the answer, let’s consider ol’ Tom. In his day.  Tom Horn lived an exciting life.  He was an army scout in the Apache Indian wars in Arizona Territory.  He was a prospector, but he obviously didn’t get rich.  He was a cowboy, a mule packer, a champion rodeo competitor, and a hunter of men, rustlers & thieves.  And apparently, he bagged his share of rustlers.

Tom Horn

Unfortunately, he just couldn’t keep his mouth shut.  The 

RANGE SETUP – THANKS HORSESHOE JOHN & WADDIES

Till next month…happy trails.

Newletter Editors:  Deadman & Mesquite Millie                  Website Editor:  Tennessee Justice

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   Volume 1, Issue 2                                                                                                                 April 2003

57 COWBOY AND COWGIRL SHOOTERS CELEBRATE APRIL SHOOT

If you attended the Ocoee Rangers’ April Shoot, you know what’s here: it was a beautiful day, and everything went terrific.  We had lots of shooters (57), we had a number of non-shooting visitors / observers, the weather was great, the shootin’ was fast and fun, our new chuck wagon cook, Kathy Ervin, and her gals provided a real nifty BBQ lunch, and Whiskey River Nelson and Dutch Al both shot 5 stages without a miss.  What more could we have wanted?  Cruel Hand Luke was the Top Gun of the Shoot, and Prescious Commodity was the top cowgirl shooter.  Ol’ Prescious ain’t been with us for quite some time, but she returned with a

 bang and led the cowgirls in shootin’ metal targets. The day started at 8:30 am.  Marshal Too Tall & Tri conducted the 1^st Buffalo Shoot that we’ve had in some time.  Shootin’ on the 100 yard rifle range, 9 shooters competed in 2 categories:  open sight and peep sight.  When the smoke settled, Marshal Too Tall was the winner of both categories.  Tri came in 2^nd.  This was the 1^st shoot in which we’ve had the Classic category as a class in main match

cowperson entered that category:  Shadrack Jones.  Several shooters shot in the Seniors category.  We had 3 cowgirl shooters and a couple of shooters competed in the Cap & Ball Pistol category.  So, there was a real variety of happenings going on. 

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