You have to excuse Jose, he is a man of few words, but many opinions, so I know he will keep things interesting. But lets talk a little about Cowboy Action Shooting.

Cowboy Action Shooting (CAS) is a competitive shooting sport involving firearms common to the late 1800's in the American West. Competitors shoot up to 4 firearms on a timed stage. The winner is the one who completes the scenario in the least amount of time with the fewest misses. Simple really, or at least it should be.

Some of the things I know will be explored by Jose on this blog deal with the definitions, opinions, and beliefs of the over 60,000 participants in this sport. We will talk about the "Spirit of the Game", Competition, Firearms, the American West, the Rules, Scenarios, Ranges, Matches, Personalities, and just about anything else we can come up with.

I thought I would start with a quick rundown on how and why I got into the game. I enjoy shooting and have done so for almost 25 years, but I never competed. I decided I was interested in joining one of the shooting sports. I looked at IPSC. It looked cool, but the 2,000 dollar race guns, skeleton holsters, intensity, and unbelievable shooting times kind of scared me away. Next I checked out IDPA. That was pretty close to what I was doing at work, and using the same equipment. At first I thought that might be for me, but after checking out a few websites and see a few shows on TV, I started to get a bad feeling about IDPA. See, I didn't want to develop any bad habits that might carry over into my work, and watching some of the IDPA stuff I figured that I might cause myself more harm the good by joining. Lastly I came upon CAS.

I read several articles and started checking some of the stuff out on the websites. It is a shooting sport, so it met my first criteria. It involved weapons (sorry firearms) that I didn't use on a regular basis so no bad habits to carry over. And finally it looked like a lot of fun. The fun part came when I found out that you HAD to have an alias to shoot and you MUST dress in period appropriate clothing (or close to it). In other words it wasn't only a shooting sport, but it was a bit of roleplaying and historical reenactment all rolled into one.

Finally I went to a match and saw a bunch of people having a great time. That cinched it for me. So Jose, why did you get into CAS?