Darby Rough Regulators 3239 W. Old Lockhart Rd, West Point, TX 78963 www.darbyroughregulators.com 2017 Third Quarter Newsletter July 8, 2017 17 Shooters Overall Match 1. Phantom 2. Big Iron Patnode 3. Whiskey Kid Clean Match Coyote Catcher - Dusty Mines - Lincoln Drifter - The Adobe Kid July 29, 2017 14 Shooters Overall Match 1. Shotgun Jim 2. Scout 3. Dodge City Mike Clean Match Abilene Crusty Coot Phoenix Star August 12, 2017 20 Shooters Overall Match 1. Phantom 2. Two Spurs 3. Shotgun Jim Congratulations to these and all of the Shooters who joined the fun in the hot summer sun! Clean Match Crusty Coot Dusty Mines Lincoln Drifter September 9, 2017 26 Shooters Overall Match 1. Big Iron Patnode 2. Kit Carson 3. Whiskey Kid Clean Match Dodge City Mike Check out www.darbyroughregulators.com for all times and scores! Page 1
And Now a Word from our President. New Shooters All SASS shooters are welcome on the Darby Rough Regulator s range and we certainly like to give an extra warm welcome to new shooters. We have had quite a few new shooters to our range of late and we are enjoying getting to know you. It is our wish that you all feel welcomed here and continue to join our club matches doing something will all love to do shoot guns! Remember, first time shooters do not pay any match fees. Upcoming Events September 2017 30th Match Day October 2017 14th Match Day 21st Work Day 26th Board Meeting Twice as Nice Mark your calendar now to come back and join us for our September fifth Saturday match September 30th. November 2017 11th Match Day 18th Work Day 23rd Board Meeting Hurricane Harvey So many people were adversely affected by our good ol pal Harvey. We do hope that our readers and their family and friends are all safe. The DRR range did not escape damage from the wind and rain. The new roof of our new outhouse blew off. Fortunately, it is all minor damage and certainly reparable. Know that we are keeping all Hurricane Harvey victims in our thoughts and prayers. December 2017 9th Match Day 16th Work Day 28th Board Meeting 30th Match Day Page 2
2018 Texas State Rifle Association State Match It is indeed an honor to have the Darby Rough Regulators approached by the TSRA to host their State Match for Cowboy Action Shooting. We certainly had a great time hosting the Regional Match in December of 2016. Mark your calendars now for the TSRA State Match coming to the DRR range on May 10 13, 2018. We are working hard to add more stages, build a larger outhouse with running water, and make repairs to our existing stages. May 2018 seems like a long way away, but it will be here before we know it. That is why it is so necessary to have helpers on our work days. Please consider spending some extra time with us on the third Saturday of each month. Check out the Upcoming Events section of this newsletter for our work day dates which are held on the third Saturday of each month. We typically start around 8:00AM and work until the job is done or we are all too tired to keep going. Any time that you can spend with us is very much appreciated. Match Hours Beginning in October 9:00AM Registration 10:00AM Match Start Board of Directors President Cherokee Granny Board Meetings A reminder to you all that our Board Meetings are open to all Club members. We not only invite you to join our meetings, we encourage you to join us! The Board s mission is to create a SASS Club that is challenging and fun for all shooters. The best way we can do that is to hear from our members on how we, as the Board of Directors and as a SASS Club, can improve on all aspects of the Darby Rough Regulators Club. Meetings are held at my house on the fourth Thursday of every month and start at 5:30pm. Please let me know if you would like to attend as we do eat dinner during our meeting. Call me at home 979-242-3492 or email me at dschaatt@yahoo.com. I want to make sure that there isn t just a chair at the table for you, but a dinner plate too! See you on the range! Cherokee Granny Vice-President Lincoln Drifter Treasurer The Adobe Kid Secretary Victoria Whiskey Range Officers Black Jack Pershing Dodge City Mike Directors at Large Bunk Stagner Shotgun Jim Page 3
Range Officer Report Hot Range and Cool Temps I don t know about you folks, but these cooler temperatures sure are welcomed. Our Fall Shooting times are starting in October. That means registration will start at 9:00AM and the match will start at 10:00AM. You may have already noticed that the sun is rising later and setting earlier. Hopefully, these cool temperatures will hold out a bit longer for us. So as not to cause confusion, the new start times begin next month. We will remain with our 8:00AM registration and 9:00AM match start for our fifth Saturday shoot in September (30th). Don t forget to adjust your calendar for the start time change because we will be heating up those steel targets with lots of hot lead! To RO or not to RO With the TSRA State Match approaching quickly, we are making the range ready. Just as important as a range in good order is to have plenty of qualified Range Officers. The TSRA State Match includes Wild-Bunch shooting and multiple side matches. Because we do not have many WB trained ROs, we are in the process of scheduling a Wild-Bunch RO training and certification class. The date is yet to be determined, but we would be happy to include you on the student list. Contact me at 512-801-8424 or cuttersedge@austin.twcbc.com so that I can make sure you are on the list and informed of the training date, time and location. Once trained, we sure would appreciate you joining us on the range for the TSRA State Match and putting your newly acquired WB RO skills to practice. Let s Hear a Booyah!! Dodge City Mike Page 4
EXTRA!! EXTRA!! September 30, 2017 8:00AM Registration 9:00AM Match Start October 14, 2017 9:00AM Registration 10:00AM Match Start Meals There will be no lunch following the September 30th match. The Club provides lunch for all on the range following all second Saturday Matches. Match Fees First Time Shooter FREE!!! Members $15.00 Non-members $20.00 Dress Code Always try to wear your Old West best. Just use that head of yours for more than a hat rack when choosing your duds on shoot day and dress for the weather. Page 5
10 Things You Didn t Know About the Old West By Elizabeth Hanes on History.com Since even before the first cowboy rode onto the silver screen, the world s love affair with the American West has burned bright. Check out this roundup of true Wild West stories some of them stranger than fiction. -1- Failed bandit Elmer McCurdy s corpse had a more interesting life than the man did. In 1911, Elmer McCurdy mistakenly robbed a passenger train he thought contained thousands of dollars. The disappointed outlaw made off with just $46 and was shot by lawmen shortly thereafter. McCurdy s unclaimed corpse was then embalmed with an arsenic preparation, sold by the undertaker to a traveling carnival and exhibited as a sideshow curiosity. For about 60 years, McCurdy s body was bought and sold by various haunted houses and was museums for use as a prop or attraction. His corpse finally wound up in a Long Beach, California amusement park funhouse. During filming there in the 1976 for the television show The Six Million Dollar Man, the prop s finger (or arm, depending on the account) broke off, revealing human tissue. Subsequent testing by the Los Angeles coroner s office revealed the prop was actually McCurdy. He was buried at the famous Boot Hill cemetery in Dodge City, Kansas, 66 years after his death. - 2 - Feral camels once roamed the plains of Texas. One of the wackier ideas in American history, the U.S. Camel Corps was established in 1856 at Camp Verde, Texas. Reasoning that the arid southwest was a lot like the deserts of Egypt, the Army imported 66 camels from the Middle East. Despite the animals more objectionable qualities they spat, regurgitated and defied orders the experiment was generally deemed a success. As the Civil War broke out, exploration of the frontier was curtailed and Confederates captured Camp Verde. After the war, most of the camels were sold (some to Ringling Brothers' circus) and others escaped into the wild. The last reported sighting of a feral camel came out of Texas in 1941. Presumably, no lingering descendants of the Camel Corps members remain alive today. Page 6
-3- Thanks to a Winchester rifle, we know Billy the Kid wasn t left-handed. A famous tintype photograph of Billy the Kid shows him with a gun belt on his left side. For years, the portrait fueled assumptions that the outlaw, born William Bonney, was left handed. However, most tintype cameras produced a negative image that appeared positive once it was developed, meaning the end result was the reverse of reality. There s another reason we know the picture was a mirror image and the Billy the Kid was thus a righty: he poses with his Winchester Model 1873 lever-action rifle. The weapon appears to feature a loading gate on the left side, but Winchester only made 1873s that load on the right. -4- The California Gold Rush of 1849 wasn t America s first gold rush. It wasn t even second. When young Conrad Reed found a large yellow rock in his father s field in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, in1799, he had no idea what it was. Neither did his father, John Reed. The family reportedly used it as a doorstop for several years, until a visiting jeweler recognized it as a 17-pound gold nugget. The rush was on. Eventually, Congress built the Charlotte Mint to cope with the sheer volume of gold dug up in North Carolina. In 1828 gold was discovered in Georgia, leading to the nation s second gold rush. Finally, in 1848, James Marshall struck it rich at Sutter s Mill in California, and thousands of Forty-Niners moved west to seek their fortunes. -5- The famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral wasn t much of a shootout and didn t take place at the O.K. Corral One of the most famous gunfights in history the shootout between the three Earp brothers (Morgan, Virgil and Wyatt), Doc Holliday, Billy Claireborne, the two Clanton brothers (Billy and Ike) and the two McLaury bothers (Frank and Tom) - didn t amount to much. Despite the involvement of eight people, the gunfight only lasted about 30 seconds. Furthermore, the shootout didn t take place within the O.K. Corral at all. Instead, all the shooting occurred near the current intersection of Third Street and Fremont Street in Tombstone, Arizona, which is behind the corral itself. Bloodshed made up for the brevity, thought: three of the lawmen were injured and three of the cowboys killed. Page 7
-6- The Long Branch Saloon of Gunsmoke fame really did exist in Dodge City and still does. Sort of. Anyone who watched the television show Gunsmoke growing up is well acquainted with Miss Kitty s Long Branch Saloon of Dodge City, Kansas. What viewers may not have realized is that the Long Branch really did exist. No one knows exactly what year it was established, but the original saloon burned down in the great Front Street fire of 1885. The saloon was later resurrected and now serves as a tourist attraction featuring a reproduction bar with live entertainment. According to the Boot Hill Museum, the original Long Branch Saloon served milk, tea, lemonade, sarsaparilla, alcohol and beer. Marshal Matt Dillon and Festus sporting milk mustaches? Now there s a storyline. -7- One pivotal Civil War battle was fought in an unlikely place: New Mexico. In a bold move designed to fill rebel coffers with Cripple Creek gold, Confederate General Henry Hopkins Sibley invaded New Mexico Territory from the south in early 1862, believing he could march right up the Rio Grande and take Colorado. Unbeknownst to Sibley, however, the First Regiment of Volunteers in Colorado caught wind of the scheme and marched 400 miles south in just 13 days to join the Yankees at Fort Union, near Santa Fe. Instead of a cakewalk, Sibley s forces wound up fighting what many historians call the Gettysburg of the West. After just two days of skirmishing, Union troops probably relying on local ranchers as guides outflanked the Confederates and burned their supply train. After that, it was a long, slow march back to Texas for the rebels, who never returned. -8- Forget Jamestown. The oldest settlement in the United States is Acoma Pueblo. It s no revelation that Native American settlements predate European ones, but it may surprise some people that Acoma Pueblo, west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, has been continuously occupied since the 12th century. The Acoma still inhabit their Sky City, a settlement of about 4,800 people that sits atop a 365-foot high mesa. Traditionally hunters and traders, the Acoma people now make their income from a cultural center and casino complex. Coincidentally, the oldest state capital in the United States is Santa Fe, which recently celebrated its 400th anniversary. Page 8
-9- The first film cowboy wasn t a cowboy at all. Widely credited with inventing the Western film genre, Broncho Billy Anderson, star of 1903 s The Great Train Robbery, was born Maxwell Henry Aronson 1880, the son of traveling Arkansas salesman. As soon as Aronson was old enough, he hightailed it to New York City, where he produced or acted in literally hundreds of films. Cast somewhat by chance in The Great Train Robbery, Aronson decided to capitalize on its success by creating the Broncho Billy persona. Aronson ended up writing and starring in dozens of short Western films, becoming the first cowboy matinee idol. -10- Jesse James was larger than life so much that his body required two graves. Few outlaws were as notorious during their own lifetimes as Jesse James. Though he lived a quiet existence in Kearney, Missouri, after his bank robbing days were over, old friends and enemies never forgot him. After Jesse was murdered, he was buried in the front yard of his farm to thwart grave robbers. As the years passed and his enemies died off, he was reinterred in a Kearney cemetery by his family. So who s that lying in the Jesse James grave in Granbury, Texas? A man named J. Frank Dalton who came forward around 1948, at age 101, claiming he was the real Jesse James. A court even allowed him to legally adopt the bandit s name. No one knows why Dalton made this claim or if he ever had any link to Jesse James, although there is a very small chance he was the youngest member of the Dalton gang James rode with in the bank raid of Northfield, Minnesota. Regardless, mitochondrial DNA showed decades later that James is indeed buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Kearney but his legend also lives on in Granbury. Page 9
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