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

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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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