Western Shooting Horse

Tennessee Traveler

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Multi-region contractor, lifelong horseman, father, husband and competitive mounted shooter.  It takes a particular kind of person to do it all. Enter Gary Vickers.

You might call Gary Vickers the Tennessee Traveler.

He’ll go just about anyplace for construction work. “All over the south and east, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, into Pennsylvania, Ohio, Puerto Rico.”

And when he gets back home to Manchester, TN, what does he do? He gets his gear and his horse and hits the road again—to places like Tunica, Guthrie, Las Vegas. Sure, he’s still looking for money (and buckles and merchandise)—but there’s a different lure to mounted shooting. And this traveler is hooked.

There’s an irony here. You see, Gary Vickers lives about a mile from the homestead where he was raised (and where his brother now lives). This part of the Volunteer State is home and always has been. It’s comfortable; it suits him.

He can trace his love of horses back to his early years in the area. “As kids, we just knocked around and did whatever we could do on horseback,” he explains. “And when we got older, we got to doing some team penning and some sorting. We always did some trail riding, just like kids do.”

The Tennessee hills were also a great place for hunting, so Vickers and his brother grew up with firearms—pistols, rifles, shotguns and the like.

Gary discovered mounted shooting in 2004, and it offered the perfect chance to meld his love of guns and horses. Gary and his wife Candy were watching television one night, and it showed a split second take of Annie Bianco-Ellett riding a pattern. He’d been doing various equine sports in his free time, but Gary admits he was getting burnt out on them. He told Candy, “Hey, that’s cool up there. I like that.” And then promptly forgot it. But a few months later, they saw a longer clip—again featuring Outlaw Annie--on TV.

This time it stuck. Not long after that second view, Gary was at some horse event in Tennessee and spent some time with friends Jason and Krista Smith. “I told them what I’d seen on television. And Jason said, ‘You like that?’ And I said, “Yeah.” And Jason said, ‘Well, we got a practice over at Winchester (TN). Bring your horse and come on over and we’ll let you try it.’”

So Gary and daughter Whitney headed to the practice. Dad rode an old gelding through a pattern about an hour after he got there—without guns. That went okay, so Jason gave Gary (and Whitney) pistols to really give it a shot. The Vickers got hooked.

Within a month, they were competing.

And they made new friends, seasoned shooters like Rock Clark and John Clark (no relation). The Clarks shared some of their wisdom and experience—and Gary took that to the 2005 Nationals at Tunica, MS.

There were a lot of missed balloons that day. “I got excited and I was shooting early,” says Gary. “I thought the horse was outrunning my thumb, and he wasn’t.”

Vickers soon calmed down and got his timing. Maybe the best piece of advice he got was from CMSA founder Jim Rodgers: “The guy that wins the matches is the one who is smooth and clean. You’ve got to have good course management.” He put that lesson to work--and he went from an M1 to an M3 “right quick.”

That was when he ran out of horse. If he was going to keep moving up, he needed a top mount—and his friend Rock had just the ticket. Dragon had taken Mr. Clark to the heights of mounted shooting, and he was pretty sure the same thing would happen for Gary.

Dragon continued to breathe fire when Vickers got him in 2006. Gary captured the Mens 5 championship at Easterns that year. Eventually, he joined the Clarks as an M6.

By 2008, Vickers was looking for another horse. It’s not that Dragon wasn’t up to the task; heck, daughter Whitney rode him to 3rd overall at last year’s Worlds. But Dragon was aging (now 16) and Vickers wanted a mount on the upswing—which is why he got Dunit from Natalie Johnson.

Since then, Gary has continued to be a force in the arena.

But he’s also been a player behind the scenes. He’s the president of Tennessee CMSA, and also serves on the CMSA National Advisory Board: “It was a way I could give back to the sport, and give back to some folks who helped me.”

Vickers will tell you he still gets more out of mounted shooting than he could ever give. He gets to share it with his family (wife Candy also competes). He gets to visit with friends from all over the country.

And at age 52, he revels in the challenge—“It’s special that a guy my age can compete with these younger guys and gals. To me, that’s a big thing.”

So you don’t need to ask why Gary Vickers is the Tennessee Traveler. Whether it’s work or play, Gary is looking for the next hill to conquer.