Mounted shooting event

Pics of horses in motion always deserve a click.

There was a lot more people today than there was yesterday. There's also camping with full hookups in this area, its mostly for the horse people because their are stables here also the horse folks can rent. But I believe anyone can stay here. If the horse people aren't having an event like this.

I'm not writing much today because I didn't do much of anything to write about because a lot of my day was spent at the shooting arena watching folks shoot while riding a horse.

 I have to admit it's not as interesting as a rodeo, since the horses at a rodeo are purposely trying to throw folks to the ground and stomp on them, but when you put people and horses together, and make them both go fast, you can never predict what's going to happen.

But even though nobody got thrown on the ground and stomped on, I still enjoyed myself. The horses were pretty, the contestants were really nice folks, and since there wasn't many people here watching the event, I was able walk around and take pictures anywhere I wanted.

                                                             Theboondork

There was a whole bunch of horse trailers parked all around the event arena. Not as many as the roping events at Wickenburg, but still a lot.

There are men competing in this event, but it looks like mostly females are here. The event announcer said there were 108 contestants at this event.

I was rather surprised to see they didn't have the automatic balloon machines that blow up a balloon after the rider shoots it. At this event they just had a gang of kids run out and replace the 10 balloons that each rider shoots at.

Like I said yesterday, they don't use bullets in their guns to shoot the balloons, for obvious safety reasons, because by the end of the event all the cowboys and horses would be dead. So they use something like a blank. It's loaded with Black Powder, and a small amount of steel filings, with a cardboard cover over the end of the case to hold everything in place.

If you look carefully at this picture you can see the tiny pieces of steel shavings coming out of the smoke cloud. It doesn't take much to break a balloon, so these steel filings are harmless after a couple of yards

I didn't see any children competing in this event but it looked like any adult, male or female, relatively young, or old, was welcome to compete.

This was the only contestant I saw with a regular belt and holster. Almost all the contestants wear a funny looking belt and holster up really high so they can easily reach it while sitting on a horse. They have to shoot 10 balloons so they have to be able to quickly and easily re-holster their empty gun and drawn another one.

The girls are surprisingly good at this and seem to be able to compete against men on an equal level. After all the horse provides the strength and speed that's needed, and all the rider has to do is rapidly acquire a target and shoot semi-accurately.