Category: Shooting

While I was happy that in the last episode of History Channel’s Top Shot, Caleb seemed to have finally learn his lesson about hostage shooting, it would seem that this episode caused Caleb to be eaten by the Drama Llama, having been eliminated after being compared to several species of the order Rodentia, and possibly the Mustelidae family as well (I’d have to go back and watch again).

Several people have stepped up to defend Caleb. Chris Byrne makes some very good points. Les Jones also makes some good points. I will stake out a middle position of saying Caleb is neither rat, nor fink, or any member of the Mustelidae family for what transpired on last night’s Top Shot. But I don’t agree he took the high road, because I’m not sure there’s much high road to be had. It’s not a shooting competition, where sportsmanship and excellence play the biggest role. It’s reality TV. Shooting is relatively incidental; a backdrop for the drama. Caleb was trying to survive the game, same as Adam. Any fan of reality TV shows knows that the nice guys often finish last. I’m not going to blame anyone for setting up voting blocks or otherwise thinking strategically about how to get to the end of this game. Adam probably figured he needed a voting block to get rid of some of the top shooters on his team if he wanted to have any prayer of winning. Caleb probably figured he was better off currying favor with the top shooters on the team. Unfortunately for Caleb, that turned out to be a bad political move, and you only get to make one of those, unless you’re a really good elimination shooter, which Caleb almost was.

On to the shooting.  In the last episode before this one James made me cringe where in a shooting style that called for a more tactical stance he took a traditional high-power style offhand shooting stance — very good for accuracy, not very good for speed. In this episode I cringed when Caleb chose a tactical stance for what was looking like an accuracy game. I think the fact that the target was basically rotated 90 degrees threw them both off from what they practiced on, and evened things up a bit. I think a more traditional stance would have worked out better, because you would have been more stable, and still been able to work up a reasonable volume of fire needed to sever the rope. But this is arm chair stuff… if Caleb ever hosts the gun blogger competition he’s talked about, I totally want to try traditional vs. tactical stance and see which one works better for the rope shot. I suspect that kind of game is something a silhouette shooter would be good at — we don’t have all day to aim at our targets like slow-fire standing in high-power shooting, but we still have to hit with reasonably good accuracy at long distances.

In other news, I think I really need to get a flintlock muzzle loader. It looks like fun. Anyone know a decent brand? I know little about smoke poles.

The scale of the annual Swiss Shooting Festival, basically the Swiss equivalent of our National Matches, is utterly astounding.

A few other gun blogs have already linked this commentary on the archery aspects of last Sunday’s top shot, but it’s well worth a read if you haven’t already seen it.

I think Les Jones and I are pretty much of the same mind on this episode. Next week is shoot, no shoot scenarios, a topic I sincerely hope Caleb has improved on since I last shot with him. My dad, who is also not a shooter and never owned a gun (I do not come from a gun owning household) is watching the show as well. I continue to agree this show is great PR for the shooting sports.

We still don’t really know who Caleb is, but I still think that’s because we don’t need to really know who Caleb is yet. My speculation is that he probably did pretty decently. When they start featuring him, is when I’ll start to worry he’s going to get voted off the show.

Last night Bitter’s mom was up, who is a fan of Surviver, and likes Colby. She really liked the show, but noticed Caleb had a tear in his shorts when he was lounging outside. Sorry Caleb, you’re HDTV’s bitch:

I thought the challenge at the end, shooting while on a zip line, was pretty good. I definitely would have difficulty with something like that. Most of us have some shooting and moving experience, but not that kind of shooting and moving experience. I feel like the wrong guy was eliminated, however. So far I think the Red Team has a lot of talkers, while the Blue Team is working better together. The exception to that, so far, is Kelly, who I am rooting for on the Red Team.

Molly is one of the up and coming junior shooters sure to have a bright shooting career ahead of her. I met Molly and her family at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous last year. Molly blogs over at the Molly Minute if you’d like to follow her shooting.

Joe Huffman has an observation about good shooters:

This episode also confirmed my hypothesis that if someone brags about how good a shooter they are it is near certain proof they are crap. All the great shooters I have personally met are extremely modest or at least silent about how great they think they are.

That’s been my observation as well. I shoot with some great shooters at my club, none of which speak about how great a shooter they are on a regular basis. I know some who have a competitive nature, but that’s different from talking about what hot shit you are all the time.

I watched the premier, along with most others. I was all prepared for a drinking game, that I’d take a swig every time they mentioned Caleb, but they only mentioned Caleb once that I noticed, and that was 20 minutes into the show! Nonetheless, this probably speaks well, since we didn’t need to get to know Caleb in the first episode, since he wasn’t eliminated. We will get to know the little giant later. But nonetheless, he got on target, and helped the blue team win.

On the other side, I thought Kelly seems particularly strong. Knowing his background in shooting, it seemed like he’d have better fundamentals than many of them, and he came through the first episode well. I expect his fellow teammates will be looking for reasons to get rid of him, however. You noticed a good bit of that even in the first episode.

UPDATE: In the comments, Kevin points out how good the show is for non shooters. I agree. It presents shooting in an interesting and non-threatening way to new shooters. NSSF couldn’t buy shooting sports coverage this good! Pretty clearly the show isn’t about shooting so much as human drama, as people try to work together as a team, but also win the competition. Now I see why they picked caleb. Caleb probably has that right kind of mix of personality traits that make him a good candidate for reality television.

UPDATE: A differing view here. I think most high power shooters would have no difficulty making those shots. But that’s not really the point of the show.

UPDATE: Continuing on the meme that this shooting should be easy. Yes. It should be. If you gave me my own rifle, on a quiet range, I could knock out that 100 yard shot offhand. But the contestants don’t have their own rifles. They have rifles who’s condition is unknown, who’s sight settings are dubious, and with which the contestants are only barely familiar, and spotters who are under time pressure and are presumably also using unfamiliar equipment. I’ve taken new rifles out that couldn’t hit paper at 100 yards because they were that off. I’d be reluctant to say I could do better under these kinds of constraints and on national television, with the adrenaline pumping.

There is little time left before fellow blogger Caleb’s giant premier on Sunday on the History Channel. Caleb was seen on NRA News last night with Cam talking about the show, which you can listen to here.

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Since the premier is on the anniversary of D-Day, I’m going to be very disappointed if the first episode of Top Shot doesn’t involve Caleb trying to scale a sea wall while the other contestants shoot at him.

This post comes to us from the Firearms Blog:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyq90LEZe4k[/youtube]

I’m going to guess that membership in this club isn’t cheap, but it’s an interesting way to solve a lot of problems shooting ranges have. Namely, I’m going to guess that lead management is no issue here. I notice they have neat buckets on the trap range, and you see no shells on the ground. I guess no good German would want to dirty the range.