Mounted Shooting Clinic - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Mounted Shooting Clinic

A new gun sport has made its way to North Dakota.  Reporter Arielle Johnson takes you to the arena.

It's one of the fastest growing sports out there, and
a cowboys dream-.  It's called mounted shooting
(Jerry Klusak / Owner of GunHutt) says: "The love of guns and horses just go together!"
 A timed event-- shooting at 10 balloons around a course.
Jerry Klusak is the man who helped bring this sport to North Dakota.
"This is going to be huge,we've been contacted by so many people even b4 the rodeo about wanting to do this, it's from all over the state.  There are women contacted by people by who are doing this right now, who are from ND but they stopped doing it because they got tired of driving to South Dakota, Montana, Iowa, and Minnesota.
Not to worry the bullets in the gun can not hurt you
" They use in mounted shooting are  real 45 login colt guns the diff in the bullets that this is a real one where you can see the projectile or the bullet on the top  this is what they actually shoot, this is a blank and you can see the difference the bullet has been removed and so this part is gone the only thing in here is black powder.  
What you see coming out of the gun is the black gun powder and that is what actually breaks the balloon.
2011 Level 4 World Champion Laura Pickop is here teaching a clinic out at Flying D Ranch
Laura says it is a sport for female and males of all ages.  You don't have to start at a young age to be good.
(Laura Pikop/ 2011 World Champion) says: "You'd be surprised at how many older women are starting and how many people who have never had a horse before, and never rode before and are starting to shoot so any one can do it."
Proof of that is 2011 Level 4 World Champion Laura Pickop who started in 2008.  
Laura was used to slow pace riding with showing Western Pleasure Horses
 "I like people to know that I started at a trot, so you go at your own pace, and so now of course I've worked myself to a much faster pace so it's at your own speed."
She says that this sport will never get old and she'll be doing it all her life
"big adrenaline rush, even when I started and was at a trot that rush of shooting off a horse and there's always different patterns there's over 60 patterns to chose from so there's always something different"
Laura says don't ever limit yourself, once you get your first match out of the way you'll be hooked!