Slow and Steady

A Cold Start
I shot my third SASS match with the great folks at Thunder River Renegades in Magnolia, Texas last weekend. The day started out bitterly cold and most folks wore their normal costumes with authentic 19th century long underwear or old west “dusters” to keep them warm. My heavy canvas range coat and lambskin gloves were just enough to keep me from freezing until the sun came out and began to warm us all up a bit.

I’ve never shot a match in forty degree weather before and my fingers were chilled to the bone during the first few stages. It’s a strange feeling to grasp a freezing cold single action pistol and each round that I fired jolted my hands and arms. The first shotgun round I put down range jammed the Stoeger’s butt-plate deep into my shoulder and felt like I’d been kicked by a mule. I shot the first stage “clean” (no misses or procedural errors) but felt like I was moving through molasses.

Hammer – Magnolia, Texas
Copyright © 2012 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens hand held. The exposure was taken at 105mm, f/8 for 1/80th of a second at ISO 200. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 using Nik’s Color Efex Pro filters.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

 

Warming Up
There are no “warm up” stages in cowboy action shooting so everyone greets the first stage with the same sense of trepidation (for me it’s still terror, for others just nerves). On a cold February morning like this I knew I had to go “slow and steady” until my muscles (and mind) began to thaw out. I began to understand why the Civil War slowed down so much in the winter. I’m sure most Confederate soldiers hated fighting during those long winter months when just shooting your rifle in that bitter cold hurt like hell.

Speed – Magnolia, Texas
Copyright © 2012 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens hand held. The exposure was taken at 95mm, f/8 for 1/20th of a second at ISO 200. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 using Nik’s Color Efex Pro filters.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

 

Speed or Accuracy
I would love to be one of the many fine shooters I saw last weekend that could shoot both quickly and accurately but my days of being “fast on my feet” are long gone. I decided to see if a slow and steady course of fire would serve me better and shot four of the six stages clean with only one miss in each of the other two stages. After my nerved racked performance last month I was overjoyed to see my match “rank” climb into the bottom third of the group. I was also quite surprised to see that my overall time was not much slower than that of my previous match. Best of all, I had shaved off almost two minutes by shooting each stage as cleanly as possible.

Straight Shooting – Magnolia, Texas
Copyright © 2012 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens hand held. The exposure was taken at 105mm, f/8 for 1/125th of a second at ISO 200. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 using Nik’s Color Efex Pro filters.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

 

Reload – Magnolia, Texas
Copyright © 2012 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens hand held. The exposure was taken at 105mm, f/8 for 1/200th of a second at ISO 200. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 using Nik’s Color Efex Pro filters.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

 

Intensity – Magnolia, Texas
Copyright © 2012 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens hand held. The exposure was taken at 105mm, f/8 for 1/200th of a second at ISO 200. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 using Nik’s Color Efex Pro filters.
Click on the image above for a larger version.

 

Enjoying Myself Completely
I guess my nerves have settling down a bit since I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of last weekend’s match with the fine folks at Thunder River Renegades. There’s nothing better than getting together with fifty friends to enjoy a bit of outdoor fun and competition.

Next weekend, Bristlecone Jan has something special planned for us at the Willow Hole Cowboys match in North Zulch, Texas. Having the ladies design the stages should add an interesting twist to our colorful sport. Can’t wait to get some photos of her to post. I’ve taken so many images of Fairplay John’s great costumes and black-powder shooting that it seems only right to embarrass Jan just a little. 😉