The Old West lives on

Published 10:14 am Thursday, September 24, 2009

Rodney Freidrich made it very clear from the start.

“I don’t golf,” he said in a gravelly voice that fits his Wild West persona of Sam Pickett.

In fact, what Freidrich does is a far cry from golfing. Freidrich competes in a form of competitive shooting that lends itself back to the days of Billy the Kid, Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp.

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It’s called Cowboy Action Shooting and last weekend Freidrich competed in the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS) Minnesota State Championship in Morristown, Minn. at the Cedar Valley Vigilantes gun club.

The shooting tournament is everything Old West — from the personas and guns used to the range the contestants shoot on, a mock-up of a Wild West town.

The shoot itself revolves around a timing system complete with storylines and even dialogue. The entire event is immersing throughout the entirety of the tournament.

This is the seventh year Freidrich has been involved in the actual tournament, though he has been shooting since 2001. That within itself has sprung from a life-long interest in one of the last true adventures of America.

“Ever since I was a kid, playing cowboys,” Freidrich said. “It was a great period where you could be a landowner, have your freedom … people back east would go out there to do whatever they wanted to do.”

It was a period of time populated by men and women of a towering stature, that have been romanticized to this day in books and Hollywood. This was a time where the law enforcers could be just as much criminal as hero, but you loved them for it anyway.

That is what draws Freidrich into the Old West, its stories and the competitive shoot he takes part in.

The shoots he takes part of are held in the spring, summer and fall months in a number of different places and rarely is there a need for numbers. There were 200 competitors at this year’s shoot coming from all over, including far-reaching states like Arizona, Texas, Washington and Wyoming.

Even at the smaller shoots held regularly throughout the year, the numbers range in the 70 and 80s.

The rules are simple, but challenging in their execution. Hit the targets in as little time as possible always being aware of the specifics of each shoot.

“Rules tell you which targets to hit and how many times,” Freidrich said. “You have to think about what you’re doing and how you’re going to shoot it.”

Time can be shaved for hitting targets in the wrong order, not putting the correct amount of shots on certain targets or even spilling beans from a pan in one of the scenarios. Not so easy when one is trying to work out the specifics of each scenario while trying to complete it in as little time possible.

“You’re in the Marshall’s office and locked up in jail,” Freidrich explains, pantomiming the actions in his living room. “You have a pan of beans and you’re given a line to say. Then you shove open the door, put the pan of beans down and go for your guns, but if a bean falls out it’s 10 seconds against, so you don’t just throw the pan.”

The rules of the shoot fall to the weapons used. Nothing more modern than 1890. Freidrich uses a .45 Long Colt, similar to the gun Wild Bill Hickok wielded, an 1866 Winchester lever-action rifle, Stagecoach Stoger shotgun and two other pistols. All of them replicas of the day when problems were often solved with the muzzle of the gun.

One by one Freidrich took each gun out and demonstrated its actions, its mechanics and its story, usually involving some larger than life figure from that time period. While showing off the .45 Long Colt, Freidrich expertly narrated the legendary gunfight between Hickok and Davis Tutt in 1865 — one of the few recorded instances of an actual street duel, which runs contrary to any Western involving John Wayne.

While the shooting end of all this is the meat of what Freidrich does, it’s actually a year-round hobby.

“I reload my own brass,” Freidrich said. “I load about 3,800 to 4,000 shells in the winter. That would be my winter hobby.”

Freidrich, like the other competitors, dresses the part and finding a persona isn’t easy. It took several phone calls to SASS to avoid doubling up on a name.

“Seventy-thousand people belong to the SASS and nobody has the same alias,” Freidrich explains. “I think I made seven or eight phone calls.”

Eventually it fell to Sam Pickett, a solid name from the time, or at least that’s what his wife Sandy remembers.

“I think you just thought it would be a good Western-sounding name,” she said when he asks her.

“What I like is they’re doctors that shoot, lawyers that shoot, but you really don’t know who anybody is,” he said.

Like all contests, it’s not all about the actual competition. It’s more than that.

“I’ve gotten to know several of the other shooters,” Freidrich said. “They’re all happy and they’re all glad you’re here.”

Now, here at story’s end, there is one final question. How did Freidrich do?

Freidrich smiles a little before answering, “Better than I thought I was going to. Out of 310 targets, I missed three, but my time was a little slow.

“I came in above the middle of the group,” he said.

Freidrich finished 97th, finishing in front of Sheriff Chubby Johnson.

“I was happy with my performance,” he said.