Welcome to SoCal CMSA, Southern California’s newest Cowboy Mounted Shooting Club. Mounted Shooting is currently the fastest growing equine sport in the country! Cowboy Mounted Shooting began with a small group of folks in Arizona back in 1992. It is a little like barrel racing with two .45 pistols. All the competitors are required to dress “cowboy style”. We do NOT shoot live ammunition, we only use black powder blanks (we have found this to be easier on the spectators). Each rider will engage a course that contains ten targets (balloons), five light and five dark, shooting the light targets with one gun, and the dark with the other.
The pistols we use are .45 Long Colt single action pistols. These are the old six-shooters you see in movies. Fastest time wins. If you miss a balloon, five seconds is added to the time. Typically, the first five targets are set so the rider must maneuver their horse fairly hard. The last five targets are usually in a straight line. This does require a gun change, shooting with one gun in one hand and controlling the horse with the other. Ride as fast as you can shoot, but keeping your horse in control and getting all your targets is the key to a good overall time!!
There are over 60 different patterns that are used for Cowboy Mounted Shooting. At a normal match, four different patterns are drawn at random, and those are the ones used for the match. Each shooter rides and shoots each of the four patterns, and the one with the best combined time wins! You start at a level one and work up to a level six, this make this sport fun for the beginner to advanced rider and is fun for the whole family! SoCal CMSA was started so that we could compete locally and earn the necessary points to help us move up in levels and qualify for world points.
For more information, please email President, Lisa Kay at SoCalCMSA@hotmail.com

Links
	Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association CMSA Rulebook George Ingalls Equestrian Event Center Western Shooting Horse Magazine