Inside the World of Cowboy Mounted Shooting

I've been riding my whole life and I just, I'm a speed junkie I guess. I love it. Why do you do it? Fun. That's the only reason. I like potato chips. Can't eat just one. This is mounted cowboy action shooting. It's one fun way to spend the day. I come out of there completely adrenalized. My hands are shaking, my legs are shaking. It's so much fun. Mounted shooting looks something like barrel racing with guns. Riders race the clock through a predetermined course, blasting balloons along the way. The guns are real, the bullets are blanks, but their black powder charge can kill a balloon up to 15 feet away. So by using the blanks that you have the sound and the black powder and the smoke, but it's really safe and we don't have to worry about, you know, shooting anybody. Joe Whiteley is president of the California Desperados, a mounted shooting group putting this match on. He spends his work week at Boeing, building spaceships for NASA. On the weekends, he's a cowboy. I work in the future and I relive the old west and sometimes they pick up a nickname to call me the space cowboy. His official alias out here is gentleman Joe. I don't know how I acquired that. I just came up with that name several years ago. I guess everybody thought I was a nice guy or something, so I kind of assumed that name. Of course, my son doesn't think that. He has other names for me. Part of the fun of reenacting the old west is making it as authentic as possible. So everybody goes by an alias and most everyone dresses the part. This is a riding skirt. This was very popular for the women riders back in the 1800s. Take Calico Star, for example. If you forget her name, just check out those holsters. This 21-year-old ain't your father's gunslinger. John Wayne never left lipstick on his horse's nose for good luck in a gunfight. That's his lucky kiss. Calico is also known as Kimberly Harmon. Mom and dad put her on a horse when she was three years old and taught her how to shoot at age 12. You can tell they were good teachers. You have to teach kids to respect the firearm. You have to teach kids how to use a firearm and use it safely. And then you make sure that they're not easily accessible. Guns are getting kind of a bad rap these days. Yeah, they really are. I don't agree with that. I think you have to learn how to use the guns, teach children how to use them, take them to target ranges, and just show them what's up. You know, a car can be just as dangerous as a gun. The Harmons have been playing Wild West as a family for years, performing in places like Tombstone, Arizona with a reenactment group called the High Mountain Gunfighters. One of her favorite things is always hitting me over the head with a bottle. And she's got to be quite good. I've been quite a few times. And just like the Harmons, this whole crowd looks like one big happy family. These mounted shooters range in age from 13-year-olds to great-granddads, and all those smiles speak for themselves. It's just being able to be in a great group of people, the whole crowd, all the mounted shooters, they're just wonderful. I love being around that atmosphere. I love being with my horse, and I just have such a high love for the Old West. So all that put together is like a dream come true for me. Where else can you go and relive the Old West and shoot off your horse and have a good time? You're invited. And just like those ground shooters, these guys will also help you get started. They even let me give it a try. I'm no Calico star. She and Ken McCline can outride most any man who saddles up with a 6-gun. And while they've both won national titles, the competition seems to take a back seat to just having some down-to-earth fun. It's a lot of fun. And I get to be with my horses, and that's the best part. If the horses weren't involved, I wouldn't do it.