cowboy mounted shooting
By The Baddog’s Gary and Megan Bennett
H
ello Readers! Hopefully everyone had a great
month full of shooting and horses! This month
my wife Megan and I, Gary “Baddog” Bennett,
want to talk to you about the rules of Cowboy Mounted Shooting. We both recently became certified Range
Masters with the CMSA (Cowboy Mounted Shooters
Association) which required us to do some serious late
night studying. Megan is still waking up in the night
yelling “Clean! That was a clean run!” I truly believe
Cowboy Mounted Shooting has taken over our lives!
Not that I’m complaining. It’s great! What is a Range
Master you ask? The Range Master is the safety officer,
the referee, the official, the judge, the police officer;
basically the king of the arena. So of course I wanted
to be one! It is the Range Masters responsibility to
keep the competitors safe, the audience safe, to make
the official call about the number of penalties racked
up in a run and to keep the shooters coming into and
leaving the arena in a timely manner. Soooooo, here
is a BRIEF rundown of the rules of Cowboy Mounted Shooting. Keep in mind there are a few different
organizations hosting Mounted Shooting events and
the rules vary slightly within each. The original organization was CMSA, the Cowboy Mounted Shooters
Association. We will be discussing the rules of the
CMSA predominantly in this article. There are two
other National Organizations within the sport: the
MSA, Mounted Shooters of America (www.newmsa.
com) and the CSA, the Cowboy Sports Association
(www.cowboysportassociation.com). These other organizations have similar rules but different courses of
fire. Each organization has its own rule book available
online.
One of the best parts about shooting is that you
don’t have to stress out the morning of a competition
wondering, “What am I going to wear?” It’s in the
CMSA rules! The rules state the minimum dress
requirements for male and female competitors consist
of: a traditional western cowboy style long sleeved