[Jeff Higgins]

Good shooting by a practiced hand, for sure. Like some have already stated, however, it's really not all that remarkable to those of us who grew up shooting.

I had the good fortune of growing up here in the Pacific Northwest with several of my aunts and uncles being farmers with plenty of room to shoot at their places, right off the back porch. That's how dad and his brothers kept the kids busy, entertained, and out of trouble. They would sit on the porch drinking beer and we would run the empties out onto the "range" and shoot them. Good clean fun...

But I digress... The real good fortune of growing up in this area was living just south of one Elgin Gates, founder of the International Handgun Metallic Silhouette Association. This was the epicenter of that game for years. This game was (still is) played with a variety of handguns over two courses of fire. The "hunters'" course is fired out to 100 yards, the "long range" out to 200. On the 200 yard course the chicken is set up at 50 yards, the pig at 100, the turkey at 150, and the ram at 200. These are half size targets (half size of the NRA rifle targets). Course of fire is ten shots at each. "Unlimited" pistol, using scope sighted single shots (T/C Contender and Encore, etc.) will typically almost clean the course. Open sight, production revolvers will typically shoot into the low to mid 30's (out of 40), or you won't be taking any trophies home. The 150 yard turkey is generally acknowledged as the toughest target, but you better be able to hit it 8 or 9 times out of 10. It's less than knee high, and maybe 10" wide. Oh, and these are 1/2" steel plate, and you have to knock them over to score. No mamby pamby squib loads here - full house .44 mags, .454 Casulls, .357 Maximums, and stuff like that. We used to play this game darn near every weekend at the Custer range in northwestern Washington.

So, yeah, while my hat is off to the guy for a job well done, and the actual marksmanship is certainly laudable, it's certainly nothing extraordinary. Any of the hundreds of competitors we saw at those matches over the years would have had no trouble hitting a man sized target at that range each and every time with an open sighted revolver.