The fastest guns in the west willl be aiming for prizes at Aldergrove Athletic Park this weekend.
The Thunderbird Fast Draw Club is hosting the ninth annual World Fast Draw Championships, sanctioned by the WFDA and sponsored by the Township of Langley.
During the competition, part of the 104th annual Aldergrove Fair Days, there will be a celebrity shootout event with prizes for VIPS including sports figures, medial people, city reps and politicians, and entertainers.
For more on Aldergrove Fair Days, click here. The Tbird website can be found by clicking here.
Arkansas sweltering
The heat was on for local fast draw aficionados in Arkansas June 18 and 19.
With temperatures hitting 32ºC-plus, large fans kept the indoor shooting range feeling like an ice rink.
For the benefit of tourism, many turned out to watch ‘gunfights’ by some of the fast draw contestants and some trick shooting by American Jon ‘Trickshot’ Wilson, all of which took place on the Town Hall Doorstep on Friday.
The next day, the contestants all arrived to shoot in the indoor arena at 8 a.m.
“As usual, we had fun and are happy to say that, although one of our four Thunderbird Fast Draw Club members who attended the contest won either the women’s or men’s titles, all four placed in the top 10 in their respective categories,” reported WFDA B.C. vice chairman Den Robinson.
Aldergrove Agricultural Fair and Festival Society secretary Karen Robinson came third overall in the women’s division while Langley’s Paual Murphy placed fifth overall.
In the men’s division, Shawn Murphy, also from Langley, took third overall while Robinson placed ninth overall.
Women’s top gun at the Arkansas event was Diana Rosen of Minnesota, and she’s no stranger to championship titles in that category, Robinson said.
The men’s top gun at this event was Howard Darby, a former Thunderbird member who now lives in Alberta.
Robinson stressed that fast draw practitioners do not use live ammo – only wax bullets and blank ammo were used at this WFDA-sanctioned event, and shooters were required to wear western attire while using old-fashioned six guns, drawn from open style buscadero holsters.
Fast draw speeds are timed by modern electronic timers, however, no world speed records were recorded at this contest, with the exception of one in the double target event, which was not eventually backed up.
