_45_30.jpg "A Legacy of Horses")
Girls and Guns
- Written by Sarah Sayles
- Published on November 08, 2011
Cowboy Mounted Shooting has a style of its own. Unlike any other Western equestrian sport, this one combines, fashion, leather and guns. No gender in the sport shows it off better than the girls. Meet some of the Girls of Mounted Shooting.
Photos by Ken Amorosano, Lucinda Wood, James Cook and John Beckett
Growing up, I was frequently told that I could do or be anything. I never heard there was a ceiling beyond which I could not reach. The American Dream was an open door to me, as it was to all Americans. We foster an ideal in this country that each woman is capable of doing anything she sets her mind to.
Equine sports have always been popular with women--and empowerment may play a large role in that. Horses are symbols of power and freedom, and being able to control that, to harness it, direct it, and become friends with that power--it’s a heady idea. Add a gun to the mix, put on the speed, and amazing things are going to happen.
“Handling a gun has changed my whole outlook,” says Jana Morris (SL6) of Cave Creek, AZ. Morris had ridden her entire life, but she was afraid of guns, even though they were her husband’s passion. Learning to harness and direct that power has had an outlook-changing affect on all kinds of women, and today women make up nearly 50% of the competitors in the sport of mounted shooting.
From the beginning, the sport has appealed to women. In the early days most were like Jana Morris, looking for something they could participate in with their husbands. However, there were a few who came to it because of the excitement, the speed, and the challenge. And like Morris, many of these women had a horse background.
Seven years ago when Christina Winnett (L4) first started taking lessons from now World Champion Kenda Lenseigne, she says she was really only interested in barrel racing. Lenseigne decided to show her another alternative.
“The first time I saw her shoot I was hooked,” Winnett says. “What appealed to me was how different it was. Not to be blunt, but it was pretty badass. I got to tell my friends I shot guns off of horses!”
Sabrina Lewallen (L4) of Trinity, NC, says, “It gives you a sense of strength and power--being able to ride and maneuver a 1500-pound animal that has a mind of its own and firing a gun at the same time. I don’t know how else to say it.” Although she watched her family from the sidelines for a few years, Lewallen was challenged to get involved (someone made “the fatal mistake of calling me a groupie”), and now her entire family is a force to be reckoned with.
That force includes 10-year-old Kayla, who has competed for several years as a Wrangler. “Kayla actually wanted to do it from the get-go,” Lewallen says. “Believe it or not, we actually started off leading her through the pattern when she was four and five years old.” Kayla has been the Jr. Wrangler National High Point for the past two years and was leading again going into the Worlds. Lewallen says the family nature of the sport, and the high emphasis on firearms safety, provides kids with a respect for guns.
Some women, like Lewallen, Jessie Kuka, and Julie Burger, grew up around guns. From an avid hunting family, Kuka (L6) says she easily made the transition to mounted shooting.
“We always had horses, so when I put the two together, it just fit,” she says. She thinks more women are coming to the sport because it looks so exciting: “It’s the adrenaline rush they feel when they get the gun in their hand.”
Julie Burger (L4) concurs that the adrenaline rush isn’t just for the guys.
“All the skill and agility it takes to run and twist and shoot, while riding at a high speed, it gives you such an adrenaline rush you’re hooked right away,” she says. “Being a female, and the ‘weaker’ sex, if you’re on a horse and holding a gun, that kind of levels the playing field.”
Burger and her husband spend a lot of time at hunting shows, and she sees more and more women coming to the shows as consumers, handling the guns, booking hunts. She says, “It’s not just a boy’s shop any more.”
Cowboy mounted shooting has been proving that for years. In the past twelve months, women have broken as many world records as men (five as of the last update, August 2011). Among them is 16-year-old Amanda Cook (L5). When she got involved as a little girl, she says the guns scared her--so much that she didn’t want to handle them at all outside of the arena. Today, she carries her guns with her every time she rides any of the horses she works with. “When I’m training horses, I will click the gun by my side. I’m actually exercising my thumbs,” she says. She credits her world records with this increase in comfort with the guns.
That theme of comfort is a thread of the conversation held by all the women involved in the sport--learning the ins and outs of dismantling and cleaning a gun, handling it frequently, taking a safety course or receiving a conceal carry permit. The point of view it creates--that changed outlook Jana Morris describes--fits beautifully into the philosophy that women can do anything, be anything, achieve anything.
Our modern Annie Oakleys will certainly put on a good show for you--a show of skill, determination, and speed that is unparalleled in the equine world. But it really is the spirit, whether to meet a challenge, or to boost adrenaline, or simply to have her own strength of person, that shows that link between today’s mounted shooting woman and her foremothers.
