Old West Lives Again in Shoot-Outs

GREAT FALLS, Mont. — Don Drummond, alias Captain D, spots the Molly Be Damned gold mine while galloping his horse across the dusty prairie.

Decked out in the 10-gallon hat and yellow-flowered shirt, he draws his pistol and kills five miners. Sliding off his horse, he scurries to the mine, grabs two sacks of gold and stuffs them in his saddlebags.

Just when he thinks he’s gotten away, eight more miners appear on the crest of a hill. He picks up his rifle and shoots them dead.

Drummond robbed the mine and killed 13 men in less than 104 seconds. But he wasn’t fast enough. Others at the Montana Cowboy Action Shootout did it faster.

The members of the Single Action Shooting Society met recently among the wild daisies and cactuses west of Great Falls. They came dressed in late 1800s-style Western garb and pulled wagons filled with originals and replicas of firearms built before the turn of the century.

“It’s a bunch of guys that have really never grown up,” Drummond said. “We’re still playing cowboys and Indians after all these years.”

Shooters competed at five stations, each complete with props and a different scenario.

Rick Ericksen, a saddle maker from Ennis, rested in his bunkhouse near the gold mine. When the Buckshot Rogers gang showed up, he flipped over his bed and shot the metal bowlegged cowboy cutouts through holes in the bed frame’s springs.

Ericksen calls himself Jess Quick. He often wears buckskin chaps and a top hat, playing the part of a man who trades with Indians.

The rules of the games are simple: Don’t bring modern guns or clothing and don’t go by your real name.

“Some dress as bankers, storekeepers or plain cowboys, depending on their personality,” said Gene Afdahl, president of the Sun River Rangers.

When Afdahl, a.k.a. Montana Lobo, arrives wearing a black derby hat, mule-ear boots and a jacket with a thin lapel, he’s a gambler.

He grew up reading Louis Lamour, watching old Westerns on television and listening to stories about his grandmother, who was born in a sod hut in South Dakota.

He knows the difference between black powder and smokeless powder. He knows that Levi Strauss made the first pair of blue jeans during the California Gold Rush of 1849.

That’s why he can spot an illegal entry from a mile away.

“If someone shows up in a straw hat, I tell them not to do that again,” he said. “Those weren’t available to cowboys.”

If he could, Afdahl would go back in time.

“Life was a lot simpler back then,” he said.

But for now, he’ll just have to settle for the closest thing.

“We’re taking a part of our heritage and starting it up again,” he said. “This is what built this country. Without guns, Montana would still be wild.”

Afdahl said cowboy single-action shooting is the fastest-growing shooting sport in the world, and membership in the SASS proves it. The international society has tripled its membership since he joined seven years ago.

The sport is safer than most people think, Afdahl said. “More people are killed playing golf than they are shooting,” he said. “People need to realize a gun is an inanimate object.”

Harry Merrill, a member of Ennis’ Honorable Road Agent Shooting Society, said participants practice safe shooting and are respectful to each other during the games. And since there’s usually no monetary prize for the winners, no one leaves with a bad attitude, he said.

“Out here it’s all blood and guts, but on the way home we all laugh about it,” he said.

The gunslingers will return for another shootout July 12 and 13 for the first annual Montana Cowboy Action Shoot Championship. Nearly 70 have registered for the event.

They’ll set up camp near the headstone replicas of cattle rustler Ella “Cattle Kate” Watson and bushwhacker John Nichols. The wooden outhouse, horse and homestead cabins will decorate the horizon and the 8-inch-tall metal miners and cowboys will surround them.

The smoke from Drummond’s black powder Remington 10-gauge shotgun and the smell of sulfur will fill the air.

Drummond, who has been shooting since age 14, almost never misses a contest. One of the oldest Sun River Rangers, Drummond said he’s not going to quit until it’s absolutely necessary. He wouldn’t give his age, but other shooters said he is at least 70.

“I’ll shoot till they plant me,” he said. “Or when I get so shaky I can’t see down the end of the barrel.”