This is a copy of an article on what CAS had become:
What has CAS become.
CAS has evolved a long way from what it was when I started the Motherlode Shootist Society in 1994! Evolution can be a good thing, but it can also be NOT SO GOOD! I know we all long for the "good old days," but I am afraid they are gone forever, just like my hair!
Back in 1994 (and even later), We shot the mayor's chickens, rode barrel chested hosses (55-gal drum type<g>), tossing dynamite, saying cute lines, going through batwing doors of a saloon front, dealing cards, etc. Scenarios had a story to be acted out which was read before... "You are sleeping on the range when you are awakened by rustlers..." We ALL worried more about spirit of the game than how fast we shot. People showed up early and helped set up and stayed to help take down.
Now we are very close to being IPSC or action three-gun match in cowboy boots. We are over-run with mouse fart loads, 4th gen short stroke kits, lightning rod firing pins, huge close targets, and a holster either side of the belt buckle, just barely! Top shooters sound like an M16 with a 66 in 38 with short strokes. If the target is 2 ft by 3 ft at 10 yards, that's OK but what if the targets were half-head sized at 35-40 yards, peeking around a tree? The Henry Big Boy looks like nothing ever used in the old west, unless maybe you took four different guns and made one, but you can't use a Spencer-Bannerman shotgun.
Even the guns we use now. Gosh, I started with a used Rossi 92 (65) in 44-40, a used Rossi coach gun, a Dakota, and a used 1875 Remington. I had about $750-800 in the lot. Hard to do that now. I wish I still had the 44-40 Rossi, too!
At a match last year, I had a posse member pissed because I was so slow shooting a 56-50 Spencer as a main match rifle and using a hammer double, both with BP loads. He wasn't the only one to tell me to hurry up. Yeah, you could time me with a sundial, so what? That was October of last year. Coincidently, that was the last match I went to! I remember when a Sunday Match took mostly of the day for 4 or 5 stages. Now you can finish 5 or 6 in two to three hours!
Tex opined a while back, "have we become what we hate?" I reserved judgment back then, but I think we have. The fun I had at the match used to be more than worth the aggravation of a 1 1/2-to-2-hour drive to shoot and the three hours cleaning up my BP guns. Now it is mostly strange faces all concerned with being gamers. Even the old-time gamers are gone.
I first started CAS back in around 1997 after having seen an article in Gums and Ammo about End of Trail. I went out and got a .45 Colt SAA and thought I was ready! Luckily my handspring broke in the SAA, my mother came from Wisconsin to California to see me for a week, so I got to realize how unprepared I really was! I used the year to get my act together and get my gear together and made my first EOT in 1990 at Coto De Caza. I found out about the Spirit of The Game, and the friendships you develop at matches.
I met and made a long-time friend of a mine know as Southpaw (SASS #57) who taught me a lot about the whole Spirit of The Game and kept me from many oops’s at my first EOT. (By the way I’m RussT. Chambers SASS #262).
I moved from Southern California to Reno NV and helped start a club here based on the same principles of “Be Safe and Have Fun” we did the scenarios with the story lines, extra actions (throwing a lasso, tossing an axe, shooting a bow and arrow, etc.) Then a new regime to over and now it’s “Stand and Deliver”! No or little movement and shoot as fast as you can!!
Haven’t been to a match since 2012. Too bad, I really enjoyed the 22 plus years I had in the sport, but as they say “Things change, and not always for the best!”