The Drue Wands Invitational, Chickens & Pigs, and What Am I Thinking?

Random thoughts from freezing cold and wet south Louisiana.

“Some folks are long-winded when a small breeze would do just fine.” — Noah Dearborn

Let me apologize in advance for the length of this post. After I proof-read it I realized it was way too long. I deleted about a third of it so as to keep from boring you to death!

It feels like it’s been a LONG time since I wrote a newsletter post! As I mentioned back in October or November, my plan is to post about twice per month during the winter offseason months; which is what I’ve done, but that’s left me with a backlog of subjects to write about and questions to answer. This installation of the Rifle Silhouette Report will be a hybrid match report, answer to a question and random subject that I’d like to talk about. So strap in and let’s get started.

Last weekend, December 10-11, being the second weekend of December, was the annual Drue Wands Invitational at The Fusilier Complex in Arnaudville, Louisiana. This is the Louisiana lever action rifle silhouette state championship. The thing that stands out about this match to everyone that is not me is that the match is the only championship silhouette match in North America (I think) that takes place in December. The thing that stands out about this match to me is that I have to run it. I am the match director for three championship matches every year: (1) the Shamrock Silhouette Shootout (air rifle silhouette), (2) the Louisiana Silhouette Championship (smallbore & air rifle silhouette), and (3) The Drue Wands Invitational. The Drue Wands Invitational is absolutely, positively, without a doubt the most difficult match to run of all three. This is mostly because there is not a lever action silhouette range in the state of Louisiana and none of the three ranges that have hosted this match over the history of its existence has a single target rail or target or swinger or anything that is permanently part of the range. So, the range has to be completely built from scratch each year on the Friday before the match. That means every single rail, every single target and every single swinger has be be hauled to the facility, hauled onto the range and set up in about three hours — by me. This wouldn’t be a big deal if lever action silhouette didn’t require 40 full-scale targets in addition to sixty half-scale pistol cartridge targets and sixty half-scale smallbore targets plus steel rails for all of it. The full-scale rams require railroad iron rails that are as heavy as all of the other steel combined. Altogether there are THOUSANDS of pounds of steel that has to be set up on Friday morning and taken down on Sunday afternoon. My back just stopped hurting after a week!!! Add that to clearing things with the board of directors and NRA registration and invitations and finding target setters and registering shooters and squadding and food and drinks and awards and scorecards and scoring and running the match and calling the match and solving problems and keeping target setters moving and reporting scores - it is a TON of work!

Those are the bad things about running this match. The great thing about running this match is the phenomenal group of shooters that attend every year. And despite Sunday morning’s torrential downpour, these shooters made this year one of the best lever action state championship matches we’ve ever had.

HISTORY OF THE DRUE WANDS INVITATIONAL

Before I get into what happened this year, here is a little history of how this match came to be. Back in 2012, in my second year of shooting silhouette, several of us started dipping our toes into lever action silhouette. There were no lever action matches in Louisiana and very few Louisiana shooters were interested in lever action silhouette — but it was fun and it was very popular in other places, especially Texas. We started talking about the possibility of a lever action silhouette state championship match. We thought was a good idea, the only problem was we had no match director, no host range, no targets, no rails and no one that wanted to come to the match. With so few impediments, moving forward was a no-brainer!

Three “deals” were then negotiated that made this match possible. First, Drue Wands, one of the long-time shooters in our group, came to me and said that if I would serve as the match director he would take care of securing a range and finding targets. We had decided that setting the match during the winter when nothing else was going on would help get shooters to come to the match; so Drue reserved the second weekend of December at the St. Bernard Pistol and Rifle Range. Drue was a member of this club and the president of the board was a great guy and they made the deal. I think the club charged us something like $2 per shooter just to make things work for us. It was a great deal that I had nothing to do with.

So we had a match director, a date, and a range; but we still didn’t have anyone to come to the match or any targets for them to shoot at. Drue then came to the rescue again with the second deal that made this possible. Drue told me that there was a large metal shipping container at the St. Bernard range that was full of random targets and he was sure it included at least one set of full-scale silhouette targets. But the container hadn’t been opened in at least ten years and no one had a key to the padlock. So, Drue and I went back to the club president to make another deal. The president told us that he thought there was more than one set of full-scale targets in the container but he had no idea what condition they were in or how many were in there. I told him that it seemed obvious to me that the club members had no interest in the targets since they hadn’t even opened the container in more than ten years and I asked whether the board would be interested in selling the targets to us. He said that we would obviously need to open the container inventory the contents but I offered to pay the club a fixed amount for whatever was in the container. It could be one target or one hundred or something in between. I don’t remember the amount but it was substantially less than what we could have bought a single set of targets new. He took the offer back to the board and we made a deal to buy every target in the container, sight unseen.

The next step of this deal led to one of the most scary and disturbing memories of my life. After making a (hopefully great) deal on an unknown number of targets, Drue and I met a few members of the club to open the shipping container and see what we bought. The St. Bernard Pistol and Rifle club is close to Chalmette, Louisiana, way down south below New Orleans. It’s what people that have never been to Louisiana picture when they think of Louisiana - swamp and marsh. The range is surrounded by marshland. It is wet and swampy. The shipping container hadn’t been opened in more than ten years, so whatever was in this thing had gone through hurricane Katrina and several other storms. The container was probably 8 feet tall and 8 feet wide and maybe 20 feet long and the whole thing was likely underwater for a long while during Katrina. It was a total mystery what we would find in this huge metal box in the middle of the swamp.

One of the board members brought a set of bolt cutters and we cut the padlock off the back doors. When we opened the door, all we could see was a giant sheet of plywood that was a paper target stand on a wooden frame. Under the frame we could see one full-scale ram. I was hoping that there was more than just one ram in this thing! We had to get the big plywood target stand out so we could see what was behind it. It took three of us to grab it and pull it out. Behind the plywood, stacked all the way to the roof, were steel targets and steel target frames. They were just piled on top of each other in a heap. There were chickens and turkeys and pigs and rams and all sorts of other pieces of metal stacked haphazardly. There was also something else in the container, snakes!

Once we pulled the plywood away all I could see were HUNDREDS of snakes, maybe a thousand snakes, slithering around all over the place amongst the targets. A lot of them were water moccasins, but there were others; I don’t really know because by this time I was so terrified that I couldn’t think straight; I couldn’t see straight; I just wanted to scream like a little girl and go jump in my truck and drive as far away from St. Bernard and Chalmette and Louisiana as possible!

I didn’t scream and drive away, thankfully, but we were all MAJORLY freaked out and we all got as far away from that container as we could as fast as we could! I mean we all SPRINTED away from those snakes!

After calming down and changing our pants we had to come up with a plan other than shutting the container, putting a lock on it, and forgetting the whole thing. So, we all grabbed some poles and shovels and other gardening equipment from the tool shed and we each picked snakes out of the container and threw them into the swampy wooded area right next to the container. It took us an entire day that I still have nightmares about to clear out hundreds of snakes and slowly pick out the silhouette targets and put them into a trailer. Once we got the targets out of the way we could see a hole in the side of the container where the snakes had gotten in years ago and made a giant nest. The targets and other contents were COVERED in shed snake skin. It STUNK and it was completely terrifying and disgusting! I will never forget opening that container!

So after nearly suffering a heart attack and surviving an entire day of sheer terror, we ended up with about 30 chickens, 25 or so pigs, about 25 turkeys and 19 rams. Almost all of these targets were made of really nice AR400/AR500 steel. It ended up being a GREAT deal for the money, but not the best experience!

After buying targets we were good to go except we didn’t have anyone to shoot this match. Remember, at this time there were only about eight people in Louisiana that were lever action silhouette shooters; we had to find some competitors, and deal #3 took care of that. By this time I had become a pretty good smallbore and highpower silhouette shooter and thankfully enough of the other good shooters in our region knew who I was. I reached out to two shooters from Texas, Robert Massey and William Zander, who were two of the best lever action shooters in the world, and asked what it would take to get them to travel to the south Louisiana swamp in the middle of December to shoot a state championship. I expected them to tell me to take a hike, but instead they told me that the big bore lever action silhouette 120-shot national record was only 102/120 and they wanted to chase that record. The problem was that there were no matches in the country that had 120 shots of big bore lever action; so if we would have a 120-shot big bore match they were in and they’d get a few more Texas shooters to make the trip. I agreed and the match was on!

The 2012 Louisiana State Cowboy Lever Action Silhouette Championship was the first championship match I ever directed, and I quickly learned many of the things about running a match I didn’t know that I didn’t know. Looking back on it, I realize that it was a barely-held-together disaster. For rails, we used pieces of 4x4 boards nailed into the ground. We didn’t have any target setters, so the shooters all piled into the back of a pickup truck to go downrange and reset targets. Thankfully we only had 16 competitors, because with any more we would have certainly run out of daylight in the short December days trying to shoot a 60-shot CLA match and a 40-shot smallbore or pistol cartridge match each day. Jerry cooked a good gumbo and several shooters from other clubs in Texas brought extra half-scale targets so we’d have enough. Drue took care of running the line and my dad helped haul targets and other things from home (2 hours away). We had a small but good group of shooters and ended up having a very competitive match. William Zander was the first Louisiana Grand Aggregate Lever Action Rifle Silhouette State Champion. No one broke the big bore 120-shot national record but I tied it at 102/120. In 2019, Jerry Boydstun shot 110/120 at a match in Texas (I believe) to break that record.

And so the Louisiana Lever Action Rifle Silhouette Championship was born and survived its first year. Drue kept our deal going with St. Bernard Pistol and Rifle club and we got better rails and the match grew to 21 shooters in 2013. In 2014 we moved the match to Gonzales, Louisiana to make it a lot closer to me and the Texas shooters. That year we changed the match to the format it is today (120-shot invitational match) and limited participation to 32 shooters to make sure we could finish with enough light to see the targets during the short December days. The match filled up and it’s been full basically every year since. In 2017 we increased the competitor limit to 48, which was too many so we moved it to 40 in 2018, which is still the limit today. In 2020, the match was moved from Gonzales to The Fusilier Complex in Arnaudville, Louisiana, just outside of Lafayette.

This match has been very popular throughout its history. Participation is by invite only and shooters that participate one year are guaranteed an invite the next year. Only if a shooter gives up his/her spot is another shooter invited. Shooters rarely give up their spots so invitations have been hard to come by.

On Friday, October 19, 2018 most all of the Louisiana shooters were making our way to Zwolle, Louisiana for the annual Highpower Silhouette State Championship. Most of us in south Louisiana carpool up to Zwolle for the weekend. On the way to pick up Drue for the drive to Zwolle, one of our local shooters got a call from Drue’s wife, Lisette, to say that Drue never woke up that morning. The news spread to all the shooters heading to the match and we were all shocked and heartbroken. Drue died unexpectantly at only 67 years old. It was a serious blow to our group. The Louisiana Lever Action Silhouette state championship would have never been possible without Drue, so in 2019 the match was renamed the Drue Wands Invitational and it will be so every year from here on out.

2022 DRUE WANDS INVITATIONAL

The big prize at the Drue Wands Invitational is the Louisiana Grand Aggregate Lever Action Rifle Silhouette State Championship. This is the shooter that fires the highest 120-shot aggregate score from each of the 40-shot state championship matches in Pistol Cartridge, Smallbore and Big Bore. Pistol Cartridge is the first match Saturday morning followed by the Smallbore match Saturday afternoon. The weekend wraps up on Sunday with the Big Bore championship match. The aggregate state championship came down to five shooters this year: Jerry Boydstun, Chris Cawthorne, Bruce Finley, defending champion John Mullins, and me. Other than some early morning fog that burned off about time the match started at around 9:00, Saturday was a nearly perfect day to shoot. It wasn’t cold; it wasn’t hot; and it wasn’t windy.

Bruce struck the first blow Saturday morning, shooting a 37/40 to win the pistol cartridge championship. Jerry and I were one shot back at 36/40. John and Chris jumped into the championship mix during the smallbore match. Chris shot the highest score of the weekend to win the championship with a 39/40. John was right behind him with a 38/40 and Bruce and I tied with a 37/40. I soundly defeated Bruce in the sudden-death shootoff to take third place!

We have a championship for each individual animal on Saturday. It costs $10 to enter one of the championships and the shooter that hits the most of each target on Saturday (out of 20) wins all the money for that target. Master and AAA shooters can only enter the turkey and ram championships; AA shooters and below may enter all four. We had 5 shooters enter both the chicken and pig championships, so there was $50 on the line for each of those. 14 shooters entered the turkey championship, so $140 on the line. 13 entered the ram championship for a $130 prize.

Eric Harper hit 17 out of 20 chickens to win the $50 chicken championship. Kenny Landers beat Wimpy Page in a Mexican-style shootoff for the $50 pig championship after they tied with 17 of 20 pigs. We shoot off these individual championships Mexican style because the idea of an individual animal championship comes from Mexico. In Mexico, winning an individual animal championship (they designate it in terms of distance instead of animal, e.g. 40 meter, 60 meter, etc.) is almost as important as winning the entire match. It’s a big deal. They settle ties by shooting a bank of five targets with the regular time delays, but instead of the person that hits the most out of five being the winner, it’s the person that misses latest in the string that wins. For example, lets say that Shooter A and Shooter B are shooting against each other in a Mexican-style shootoff. They come to the line and get a ready just like a normal 5-shot bank. After the fire, lets assume they both hit their first target. Shooter B then misses number 2 and Shooter A hits number 2; Shooter A misses number 3 and Shooter B hits number 3. They both hit numbers 4 and 5. Shooter A would win the shootoff because Shooter B missed first in the string (number 2).

Both the turkeys and rams also had to be settled in shootoffs. Chris Cawthorne and John Mullins tied with 19 of 20 turkeys and both cleaned their first set of five turkeys in the shootoff. John finally missed a turkey in the second bank of shootoff turkeys and Chris took the $140 prize.

Bruce Finley and I tied with 18 of 20 rams and had to shoot that off. Bruce missed the third ram before I shot my third I heard him miss and the pressure was on! I barely rubbed about 1/16 of a bullet on the belly of the third ram to slowly nudge him off the rail to win the $130.

After Saturday Bruce was in the lead at 74/80. John and I were tied for second at 73/80. Chris was sitting fourth at 70/80 and Jerry was fifth at 69/80. This match would be settled on Sunday with the big guns!

Sunday came, and with it came rain, LOTS of rain! In fact, I think it rained all night. Then it rained some more just after sunrise. Then it rained some more just after practice started. Then it rained more just after the match started and continued throughout the first half of the match. There was water everywhere. At one point, I went down to the rams to help the target setters fix a problem and all five rams had been shot off one of the rails but I couldn’t see a single ram on the ground. They were all completely covered with water. It was a huge puddle. Every time a target fell off the rail there was a big splash. It looked like they were falling into a pool! You could read the wind by watching the direction the water blew after it splashed up into the air! Thankfully, The Fusilier Complex has a large cover over the firing line so none of the competitors had to worry about themselves or their equipment getting wet, but the poor target setters (my 20 year-old nephew and one of his friends) had a miserable wet, cold day. The shooters came through for them and tipped them very well (THANK YOU!!!) but they certainly earned those tips.

Jerry Boydstun and John Mullins tied for the Big Bore match win at 36/40. Jerry won the Big Bore championship after two 5-shot banks in the shootoff. You can see a video of the deciding bank on Facebook here.

The 36/40 in Big Bore earned John the Louisiana Grand Aggregate Lever Action Rifle Silhouette Championship with a score of 109/120. John won this Grand Aggregate championship last year with a match-record score of 111/120. Last year John won all three of the state championships to win the aggregate; this year was the third time ever that the Grand Aggregate winner didn’t win any of the individual rifle state championships. Last year John won by ten shots, this year he won by three. This was a VERY competitive weekend! John Mullins is the greatest Lever Action Silhouette shooter of all time and he showed it winning this championship; but there were other great shooters at this match and they also showed it by winning the three individual match championships. It was a great match and I’m very pleased with the competitive results.

Here are the full results of this match, I hope they are readable on this format.

CHICKENS AND PIGS

The results listed above lead me into the second topic of this post. I am regularly asked which target shooters should practice on the most. The most logical answer can appear to be that shooters should practice on the turkeys most because that’s the most difficult target to hit and that’s the shootoff target for match wins. However, my answer to this question is that you shouldn’t focus on a specific target for a few reasons. First, and I’ll explain this much more on my upcoming series on practicing, you shouldn’t be concerned with ANY of the targets; you should learn to shoot at spots and treat every target the same. Another reason you shouldn’t focus on turkeys is because matches are won on the chickens and pigs! Yep, you read that right, if you want to win championships, hit more chickens and pigs than everyone else. It’s that simple.

In about 95% of championships, the champion wins on chickens and pigs. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at some numbers. We will use the above Drue Wands Invitational results and the results of the two most important matches in the world this year: the U.S. Smallbore National Championship and the Mexico Monarch Cup.

Notice that in all of these matches, and I’ll bet most all of the championship matches you compare, the CHAMPION has separated himself/herself on the CHICKENS AND PIGS.

Let’s start with the Drue Wands Invitational.

Here are the top five with their total scores out of 120 shots:

Shooter Score

1. John Mullins 109

2. Bruce Finley 106

3. Dustin Flint 106

4. Jerry Boydstun 105

5. Chris Cawthorne 104

Now, here are the top five in order of the number of chickens and pigs each hit out of 60:

Shooter Chickens & Pigs

1. John Mullins 59

2. Bruce Finley 58

3. Dustin Flint 57

4. Jerry Boydstun 56

5. Chris Cawthorne 53

Look familiar? Notice that the champion hit the most chickens and pigs.

Let’s look at the U.S Smallbore National Championship:

The top five with their total scores out of 240 shots:

Shooter Score

1. Dustin Flint 215

2. Laura Goetsch 210

3. John Mullins 207

4. Cathy Winstead-Severin 206

5. Edgar Rueda 204

The top five in order of the number of chickens and pigs each hit out of 120:

Shooter Chickens & Pigs

1. Dustin Flint 113

2. Cathy Winstead-Severin 110

3. Laura Goetsch 108

4. John Mullins 108

5. Edgar Rueda 108

Notice, again, how the champion separated himself on chickens and pigs.

Now let’s look at the Mexico Monarch Cup:

The top five with their total scores out of 120 shots:

Shooter Score

1. Nancy Leal 112

2. Edgar Rueda 107

3. Jake Stine 104

4. Dustin Flint 103

5. Pedro Rueda 102

The top five in order of the number of chickens and pigs each hit out of 60:

Shooter Chickens & Pigs

1. Nancy Leal 60

2. Jake Stine 57

3. Dustin Flint 56

4. Edgar Rueda 55

5. Pedro Rueda 54

Notice, again, how the champion, Nancy, was perfect on chickens and pigs and separated herself on those targets.

I could go on and on showing you examples of this at championship matches all over the world, but I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying, “okay okay Dustin, that’s interesting, but you could show the exact same thing on turkeys and rams. There is nothing special about chickens and pigs.” Lets Check out the data!

Back to the Drue Wands Invitational:

Shooter Score Chickens & Pigs Turkeys & Rams

1. John Mullins 109 59 50

2. Bruce Finley 106 58 49

3. Dustin Flint 106 57 48

4. Jerry Boydstun 105 56 49

5. Chris Cawthorne 104 53 51

If we look only at the turkeys and rams, the champion, John, wouldn’t have won. Chris hit the most turkeys & rams!

Now the Smallbore U.S. National Championships:

Shooter Score Chickens & Pigs Turkeys & Rams

1. Dustin Flint 215 113 102

2. Laura Goetsch 210 108 102

3. John Mullins 207 108 99

4. Cathy Winstead-Severin 206 110 96

5. Edgar Rueta 204 108 96

Again, if we look at just the turkeys and rams, the champion doesn’t win straight-up. Laura and I tied on the long line, but the chickens and pigs made the difference in the championship.

Finally, the Mexico Monarch Cup:

Shooter Score Chickens & Pigs Turkeys & Rams

1. Nancy Leal 112 60 52

2. Edgar Rueta 107 55 52

3. Jake Stine 104 57 47

4. Dustin Flint 103 56 47

5. Pedro Rueta 102 54 48

Again, here we see the same trend as the U.S. National Championship if we look at the turkeys & rams. The champion does not win straight up; Nancy and Edgar tied on the long line but Nancy set herself apart and won the championship by hitting the most chickens and pigs.

All of this is here to prove this point, championships are won on the chickens and pigs! If you are going to win, you have to be the best on the short line.

Why is this? I don’t really know, but I have a theory. I think this happens because silhouette is a game of skill and the chickens and pigs are the targets that most exclusively test the shooter’s skill. Turkeys and rams are set further out and a hit or miss on a long-line can easily be determined by something other than the shooter’s skill. Chickens and pigs are not as affected by wind or light changes or a sight setting that is slightly off. A shot on a turkey or a ram can easily be missed by a little bit of wind that is not accounted for or a sight setting that is half a MOA off or a slight change in the light that affects the point of impact. Several factors go into hitting turkeys and rams and, everything else being equal (like quality of the spotter), those things tend to even themselves out over the course of a match.

Chickens and pigs don’t even themselves out because misses on those targets are generally the shooter’s fault and the shooter that is shooting the best is usually going hit the most chickens and pigs (and win the match). Wind and sight settings and light don’t cost hits on chickens & pigs nearly as much as they do on turkeys and rams. For the most part, if you break a shot in the center of a chicken or pig, you’re going to get a hit. I believe that chickens and pigs show which SHOOTER is shooting the best, and that’s who usually wins. I’m not saying that you can’t lose a match on turkeys and rams, but chickens and pigs are where you earn your wins!

WHAT AM I THINKING?

I received the following question from a young shooter recently:

“What is your thought process while on the line shooting or spotting?”

First of all, I have no particular thought process while spotting. The key to spotting, once you know how to read the conditions, is to figure out what the conditions are doing and communicate to the shooter exactly where to aim. There is more to it that I will cover in the future in a post about spotting (with at least one guest contributor who is a great spotter), but the more to it doesn’t really include a “thought process.”

Shooting is different, there must be a thought process to every single shot you ever take at a silhouette target, and that process needs to be the same every single time. Here is mine:

First I need to note that my thought process is completely copied from “With Winning In Mind” by Lanny Bassham. His system works; there is no reason to reinvent a wheel that rolls just fine.

My thought process consists of three steps:

Step 1: This step takes place while I load the rifle. I shoot single shot with all my rifles but if I shot a repeater this step would take place while cycling the bolt. This is when I visualize what I want to happen, so in my mind I picture what it will look like for the target I’m about to shoot to be hit. If it’s a white freestanding smallbore chicken I picture the bullet mark appearing in the middle of a white smallbore chicken and the target flying off the rail. If it’s a black highpower turkey I picture the bullet hitting the black turkey and it falling off the rail. If it’s a swinger I picture the swinger being hit in the center and the target swinging. This is when I visualize what will happen to the target when I make a perfect shot and the viewpoint is more from the spotter seeing the hit than anything I will see as the shooter. I am visualizing what I want to happen to the target.

Step 2: This step takes place as I mount the rifle. I visualize what I want myself to do. It’s what I want to see inside my scope as I make the perfect shot. I imagine my dot slowly go to the middle of the target (or to the call if my spotter has given me the call) and I visualize the dot slow down no near zero movement as I break a perfect shot.

Step 3: This step takes place as I’m aiming and about to break the shot. I tell myself what I want myself to do. I repeat the following mantra in my head: “smaller, slower, smaller, slower, smaller, slower…” I do this during the entire time that I’m letting the dot settle on the call that my spotter has given me. I’m telling myself to move slower and make my hold smaller. It’s amazing how our bodies will do what we tell them to do. This mantra also keeps my mind from wandering to other things that don’t help me hit the target.

I break the shot and that’s it. There is no set thought process after the shot until I load my next round, whereby step 1 starts again.

We will talk more about this in a post on the mental game when I explain the “why” behind each of these steps and how to modify this for yourself but there is no real reason to understand the why or to modify it. I copied this and it works for me so there is no reason that any of you shouldn’t copy it and see if it works for you. (I suggest you try anything new for a minimum of a year to see if it works.)

There you have it. I’m tired of typing so that’s all for today. Please email me any questions or ideas for topics (dustinflint@yahoo.com) and until next time, keep shooting!