Monday, February 20, 2006

Miculek WINS...World Continues to Spin...Home Again!

Yes indeedy, Jerry Miculek — the legendary revolver shooter and S&W pro — eeked out a win in what he called, "the hardest easy match I ever shot!"

On the last stage of the SHOOTING GALLERY/Big Dawg Invitational, which featured 7 targets at ranges of from 58 yards to 98 yards and required the shooters to use a 3-inch Ruger Alaskan revolver in .454 Casull, Jerry, who had been leading since stage three, was barely able to stave off a challenge from a surprisingly strong Roger Sherman of the U.S. Air Force and Team SIG and a hard-charging Dave Sevigny from Glock.

The best performance on that stage, however, came from Capital policeman Phil Strader, who shrugged off the strategy of "run fast and throw shot" and chose to stand and shoot. Firing off-hand double action, he hit 4 of the 7 long-distance targets. "That wasn't so bad," shaking his shooting hand. Miculek, who hit 2 of the long-distance targets, edged Strader out of the stage win.

I'm too tired to really wrap this up, and I want to save something for the television shows...which are going to be amazing! This is going to be the shooting sports the way you've always wanted to see the shooting sports portrayed. Think X-Games with guns.

I've got a lot of people to thank...our primary sponsors:

• GUNSITE
• RUGER
• SIGARMS
• SMITH & WESSON
• SUREFIRE

• Match Director Dave Arnold
• "Gun Wrangler" Bill Laughridge of Cylinder & Slide Shop
• Gunsite Director of Operations Ed Head
• Color commentator Il Ling New
• On-the-spot Analyst Richard "Tequila" Young
• Ace Production Assistant Lisa Farrell
• Statistician Kerby Smith

and, of course, the athletes...

• Jerry Miculek
• Roger Sherman
• Dave Sevigny
• Phil Strader
• Max Michel
• Randi Rogers
• Julie Goloski

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mike,
I really enjoyed watching!

Couple of things I noticed:
The camaraderie amongst the shooters. The fact that they are pretty nice folks to begin with was obvious.
That they were shooting against one another didn't make them "adversaries".
If someone needed a piece of equipment, (like when Julie didn't have a functioning Surefire,) three of them showed up right away.

How sweet of a facility Gunsite is. Really top notch.

How personable you, the folks on your crew and Richard "Tequila" Young were to a total stranger who just showed up to gawk.
I was leery of getting in the way but everyone made me feel very comfortable and welcome. Il Ling New was also very friendly and easy to talk to.

THANK YOU ALL VERY MUCH FOR THAT!! :)

Now if I can get enough people to demand Cox Cable to carry TOC, I won't have to order DVD's of the show.
(Next stop Ben Avery - start a petition process with the shooters there and hit them with numbers.)

Again thank you,
kmitch200

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the work you are doing on tv. I really enjoy Shooting Gallery ,Cowboys and American Rifleman.Kep up the Good work.

Michael Bane said...

Thanks, all!

More shooting on television is better for all of us. Back when I worked with NSSF, Paul Erhardt and I came up with a plan for "normalizing" shooting...that is treating sport shooting and hunting as essential and "entrenched" parts of the culture, as "normal" as golf or bowling. a lot of what we do at the Outdoor Channel is moving in that direction.

Kmitch...good to meetcha!

mb