Western Shooting Horse

Shanda Masterson- Into The Sport

What is the distance between a western pleasure class and a mounted shooting stage? Just ask Shanda Masterson. The Ladies level 5 has done both—and more. And she can tell you about those experiences in her quiet way.  But don’t let that soft-spoken image fool you. Shanda Masterson can tear it up in a shooting stage.

At 23, this young woman has already accomplished a lot in the CMSA. She was the 2008 L5 World Champion and has been a top shooter at the national and regional levels. She is also one of the top competitors in Superhorse Championships, where she shoots, runs barrels, and ropes.

“Some people may not know of her abilities to rope and run barrels,” says friend and Ladies level 6 Diane Purcelli. “She isn’t just a mounted shooter. She’s an all around cowgirl.” Purcelli has watched Shanda grow from a teenager to “the accomplished horsewoman and trainer that she is.”    

Shanda Masterson has been around horses her entire life. She grew up in Athol, Idaho, riding the horses in her family’s outfitting business, packing, and leading camp trips. In the summers, she often helps with summer youth camps held on the family’s property. The family raised mules, but got more into horses as they began mounted shooting. 

“My main horse that I used to shoot off of, the black horse (Cody), he was a pack horse first,” Shanda says. He packed for the outfitting company for ten years before becoming a shooting horse, an experience that made him an ideal partner for Shanda.     

She got her competitive start in Junior Rodeo and horse shows. Then around 2000, her dad, S4 rider Bat Masterson, heard that a local shooting club was putting on a demo and went to check it out. To Shanda, mounted shooting was the next logical step in her competitive life.   

“He went to one of the practices and then we just started shooting,” she says.

She started on a little Paint mare, which she rode through her first World Championship in Scottsdale. Over the years, she has had several mounts. Out of the four or five horses she has ridden in mounted shooting, the former pack horse Cody was her mount for the longest period and the one with whom she’s had the most successes.

The mare she rides now was the futurity winner in 2008, ridden by M6 (and long-time boyfriend) Charlie Little. Shanda has been shooting off the registered Quarter Horse, who she calls ZZ, ever since.      

“With this horse [my goal is] just getting consistent,” she says.  

Other Pursuits
Shanda’s life on the shooting circuit sounds like it might be fun and carefree. She travels to many shoots with Chad and Charlie Little, often for several weeks at a time as they cover the country from one end to the other. 

Shanda says that “as far as horses go,” shooting is her number one priority right now, but she plans on going back to college, taking a few summer classes and then starting full time in the fall.

When she first started to college, right in Coeur d’Alene, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do and didn’t want to waste her time with classes that might not have value to her later. In the interim, she went to real estate school and holds a real estate license today. But things have changed, and now Shanda knows exactly what she wants to study.    

“I’m going back to school to study something along the lines of a vet tech or vet assistant,” she says. “We’re always on the road, and I think a lot of it would be beneficial for my own horses.” She likes the idea of being available to help people at shoots with hurt or colicky horses. Her friend Diane Purcelli says she will be a natural.

“The mare [Shanda rides now] had gotten loose one night in Arizona and had gone through the cactuses,” Purcelli recalls. Shanda picked each sticker out by hand with tweezers. The people who know her will tell you, she gives that level of care to her horses behind the scenes all the time. Her care for the people and horses of the sport will probably mean she will be much in demand once her college days are over.

Into The Future
Shanda Masterson will find a way to balance her new college life with her shooting and the friendships it affords.     “I like it and I like the people,” Shanda says, “so yes, it is something I want to do long term.” But she knows that finishing her education is going to be the step toward a career that will help her continue “shooting for a long time.”

Shanda’s Horses

Cody, the registered Quarter Horse gelding who Shanda accomplished so much on over the years, just sold to a shooter in Washington.

Shanda’s mare, ZZ, goes back to Zan Par Bar.

“When I ran her in the CMSA Quarter Horse Championship last year, people asked why I was riding her,” Shanda says. The sorrel mare has a bald face, four white socks that come up past her knees and hocks, and belly spots. An AQHA ruling a few years ago opened the color question up to allow purebred Quarter Horses with “too much white” to be registered and ZZ is one that has benefitted from the ruling.

The mare is the 2008 SIP Futurity Champion. Shanda’s boyfriend Charlie Little rode her to that title.

“Shanda and I bought her together, we own her together,” he says. “We broke the mare as a two-year-old, and we did everything with her.” He describes the mare as “awesome” and thinks she is destined to be a great shooting horse.