Brown wins Ladies 2 at CMSA world championships

Lori Brown won the Ladies 2 division at the Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association world championships November 25-28.

Brown, who shot all 60 of her balloons and had a cumulative time of 1:41.925 for the six stages, defeated the other 29 Ladies 2 contestants. She also placed seventh in Ladies Overall and 47th among the 257 overall riders.

“The top people in the country came out to shoot, so being in the top ten of the Ladies I was really happy,” Brown said.

The event was held at West World in Scottsdale, Arizona. “It was cold,” Brown noted. “It was snowing when we left here, but it finally warmed up.”

Brown’s obstacles weren’t limited to 29 other competitors and 60 balloons. On November 20, two days before the family left Rainbow for their trip to Arizona, Brown’s horse was injured. “He somehow pinched himself on the fence,” she explained.

Bud had entangled his head in a wire which stuck out about one-quarter of an inch. Brown noticed the injury when she went to the corral to exercise him. A call to the veterinarian was placed. “They came out and stitched him up right away,” Brown noted.

The puncture wound was kept clean, and since the wound didn’t interfere with Bud’s motion he was able to compete. “It was just a little cut on his neck,” Brown said.

Bud is a seven-year-old thoroughbred/quarter horse mix acquired by the Browns in March from AJ Horses in Minnesota. In 2003 he guided his rider to the rifle world championship at the CMSA world competition, and the return of the AJ Horses partners to Scottsdale allowed a reunion between Bud and several current AJ Horses stock. “Bud was really happy because his brother and his other horse friend pal came out from Minnesota,” Brown noted.

The Ladies 2 shooting began November 26 and consisted of one indoor stage and one outdoor stage on each of three days. Brown used that first day to get a feel for the arena. “The next day I stepped it up a notch, and the next day I gave it all I had,” she said.

Brown was in third place, half a second off the leader, after the first day’s two stages. She took the lead after the second day when both contestants ahead of her missed at least one balloon.

Brown herself required a cross-body shot to hit her final balloon on the fourth round. The configuration of the ten balloons fooled Bud who didn’t realize that a final balloon on the other side needed to be shot.

“He thought it was the rundown, so he was going to go as fast as he could go down that side,” Brown explained.

That gave Brown an awkward angle to make her shot. “I knew I was way off center,” she noted.

Brown waited until she was at a 45 degree angle before she shot. “I waited until the last bit I thought I could wait so it was as close as I could get,” she explained. “I lined up my shot and I really didn’t expect it to hit.”

The cross-body shot was successful, giving her hits on all ten balloons in that round as well as the previous 30. “That was, I think, one of the main stages that helped me get my lead, because a lot of people missed balloons on that run,” Brown remarked.

Brown had to hold the lead for two more stages. “I knew I had to be clean and I had to have Bud go as fast as I could get him to go to hold my lead,” she said.

She was perfect on her fifth-stage shots, and Bud helped Brown to a 1 1/4-second lead entering the final run. In the final stage Brown completed her perfect aim while gaining 3/10 of a second on the second-place shooter. “I had to really work to win my division,” Brown said.

Brown used a Cimarron Thunder .45, an imitation of an older Colt, during the competition.

Brown was pleased with Bud’s performance. “We just worked really well together as a team and I didn’t miss any of my targets and he was flawless,” she remarked.

Brown was also pleased that the six perfect runs gave her 160 shots without a miss over three competitions. Brown had won Ladies 2 and Ladies Overall in the six-stage Single Action Shooting Society western regionals and had won her division and Ladies Overall at the CMSA’s four-run Shootout Behind the Jersey Lily competition in Norco.

The win was the first at the world championships for Brown, who fell off her previous horse at the 2003 championships following a sudden stop by the horse. “It was a lot of fun,” she said of the championships. “It was a really exciting experience.”