Anyone see the grand finale of “The Top Shot” last night? On the History Channel. I lucked onto it.
Dang, all the shooting sports in one elimination-format reality show contest, for $100k prize.
It was sweet!
You had knife-throwing, archery, pistols — old and new, rifles –old and new, and military firearms — old and new.
You can watch the whole show via the link. (Thrilling! 🙂 )
OK… I’m going to do this here at OYB HQ: it’ll be the Backyard Top Shot! Actually, I *have* done it here before. I have pellet guns we can use. (Just search up my previous posts on my Backyard Olympics.)
Anyway, 16 different dudes with skills and experience in different areas, some with none at all (I guess they tested aptitude in some way) all went head to head over a few days and shows.
These guys did well! One older guy shot two out of three nails in the head to drive them in.
They even had a biathlon type event where they had to run up a steep cliff to different stations along the way up and shoot several different kinds of firearms. Dang! They all did really well on that one, even the older, chubbier, burlier dudes.
For the grand finale, I kinda thought that Iain maybe shot single action in his double-action “Horse” challenge. The camera showed a stationary hammer at least partly rearward. Was it cocked? In hindsight, I’d say it wasn’t. It was a S&W and those hammers are farther back when cocked. I checked out the show’s forum and many other’s noticed this also, but folks say it’s called “staging” — you pull the trigger halfway back as you raise the gun then finish the pull to fire. I suppose some guns are easier to stage than others — apparently cops used to do it often — and maybe he knew it was doable on this gun since they shot it in previous challenges. In my own limited experience, I find staging to be darn tricky. But it would be a great trick if the gun “liked” it! So kudos to Iain. The other dudes missed — and they did obviously full constant-motion double-action — which is hard to control on many pistols.
The thing is … THAT SHOULD BE ME! 🙂
Like probably millions of other dudes, I’ve enjoyed lifelong skills in all the shooting sports. Who knows, maybe I’m pretty good even. It would be fun to find out! I mean, I can get bullseyes with anything at any distance. Yo!
That one-handed Schofield gambit really backfired on J.J., eh? In that HUGE crosswind you HAD to work close.
Anyway, I really like seeing these sports grouped en masse in ‘all-rounder’ contests like this.
It reminds me of the national Ultimate Outdoorsman contest that I’ve posted about here before (links elsewhere) where they shoot rifle, shotgun and muzzleloader, fly-cast, bait-cast, do archery, chop wood, and handle an ATV. Oh yeah! Pile it ON! (They have regional qualifiers for that one. Lots of pro-guides do well in it.)
The man-hugging seemed to be over the top, but they were trying, and it was something new and I’m sure they did have PLENTY of fun. At least they didn’t do much jumping up and bumping their chests or group pile-on hugs. But they probably do/watch lots of team-sport so what do I know.
https://www.history.com/shows/top-shot
