Cowboy Mounted Shooting
An offshoot of Cowboy Action Shooting is called Cowboy Mounted Shooting. Cowboy Mounted Shooting requires that the contestant ride a horse through a course of fire while carrying the same guns used in Cowboy Action Shooting. The rider competes in a timed event to shoot up to ten balloon targets with firearms loaded with black powder blank ammunition. (Not all black powder will burn during the ignition process and the remaining unburned black powder will travel approximately twenty feet with enough force to break a nine-inch helium balloon target.) Stages designed for Cowboy Mounted Shooting are most commonly designated as "Mounted Revolver Competition" using single-action revolvers of the pre-1900 style loaded with five blanks per gun. Less frequently there are "Mounted Rifle" stages requiring the rider to engage five "revolver targets" with a single revolver and then draw a lever-action, pump or revolving carbine from a scabbard and engage five "rifle targets." A third type of competition requires the rider to use a single revolver and a double-barrel shotgun to engage seven targets.
In addition to the main stages listed above, side matches such as team stages and fun stages require the riders to team up with a partner to run a course of fire while carrying a bag of "gold" or hand off a set of saddle bags, or engage helium-filled balloons that are set free to float away and may escape before the rider can shoot them.
Modern Cowboy Mounted Shooting was developed by Jim Rogers and Phil Spangenberger. Spangenberger is an American Old West historian, researcher and writer, and as part of entertaining talks he would shoot balloons with blanks from old-west guns. Jim Rogers, a founder and former director of the C.A.S.-S.A.S.S. Single Action Shooting Society, approached Phil to develop the sport of mounted shooting.
The three primary governing bodies of International Mounted Shooting are: CMSA (Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association), SASS (the Single Action Shooting Society), and MSA (Mounted Shooters of America).
Read more about this topic: Cowboy Action Shooting
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)