The Cowboy Mounted Shooting Classic gives people without previous experience a chance to learn how to shoot guns while riding horses.
Smoke Rise Ranch Resort will host a Cowboy Mounted Shooting Classic this weekend during which amateur cowboys can come shoot guns while on horseback in hopes of winning prize money.
“Basically, what it is is a competition. It is timed, and it is scored,” Rhonda Matthews, the office manager at Smoke Rise Ranch Resort, said. “What they do is they set up balloons in various different obstacle courses, and then the rider will cross the starting line. The balloons can be set up in different patterns, and then the horse and the rider will go through, and they will have to shoot the balloons. Any balloons that they miss, they are penalized.”
Matthews said the person who gets the most points wins the prize money, and the amount depends on how many entries there are.
“You can either bring your own horses, or you can rent a ranch horse and use one of our horses to do the competition,” Matthews said.
Cathy Cothran, a previous attendee of the event, said she has brought her own horses in the past to compete. She said she travels to the ranch from West Virginia because it is the only place in the area that she is aware of to provide experience and education about shooting off of horseback to amateurs.
“Not a lot of people know about it, you know, and a lot of people are scared to shoot off of horses, but they don’t realize how good the ranch helps you and how much they teach you,” Cothran said. “My horse has never been shot off of before I took it to the ranch.”
The horses are trained to get used to the sound of gunshots around them, and then, eventually, the ranch tests if the horse is comfortable with being shot off before it is entered into the competition, Cothran said.
“It was a lot of fun. They let us use their guns,” Cothran said. “So it was really neat to see theirs and how theirs worked and how nicely they were tuned up.”
Cothran said the ranch told her a lot of their horses used to do other jobs, such as barrel horses, and they may not have excelled giving them new jobs at the ranch.
Cothran said the ranch is very knowledgable about the personalities and origins of their horses, and they try to provide a safe and enjoyable environment for not only the customers, but for the horses as well.
“They’re really good and very helpful,” Cothran said. “It’s a really safe environment to teach your horses in, so it’s really nice.”
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