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Annie Get Your Gun!

 

 

Annie Get Your Gun

 

SHE WAS SIX YEARS OLD ON A FAMILY TRIP TO  Arizona, gazing in wonder out the car window.  This desert land of saguaro cactus was so beautiful and fascinating, and so different than her home state of Michigan.

 

“There were actually wild mustangs that ran across the road,” recalls Annie Bianco-Ellett about that day long ago in Tucson. “And just the West and the tumbleweeds… and I thought… this is cool!”

 

Little did she know that one day she would become the winningest woman in the history of Cowboy Mounted Shooting; become the best ambassador this exciting sport could ever hope to have; and make her home in Arizona as well.

 

Annie’s story would make a good movie. The cowgirl grew up on horseback, but in an English saddle riding jumpers. Dad was a vice president for the Dayton-Hudson Corporation. By high school, the dark haired beauty was modeling for that department store chain, but she didn’t need anyone’s help to land the work. Summers she taught riding at a camp in northern Michigan.

 

After earning a marketing degree with a minor in mass communications from Notre Dame, Annie considered a career in television news. But small market TV paid less than half of what she could earn in the business world. Taking a marketing management position with a major textile company, the young grad headed for New York City.

 

Annie had kept up her modeling work in college, and once in New York, continued moonlighting on fashion runways and advertising shoots. At the same time, things were going well at the office, and she was promoted to company headquarters in South Carolina. But the corporate career ended and she headed to Las Vegas.

 

But Annie’s love affair with horses had never wavered. In South Carolina, she’d kept up her equestrian skills exercising the mounts that belonged to a company executive. And in Nevada, she obtained her first Quarter Horse, and competed in the show ring when she wasn’t busy modeling.

 

That career was now going full blast, with Neiman Marcus and Daimler Chrysler among the clients keeping her busy. Relocating to Dallas, her modeling career continued to thrive. And she even worked on the TV show “Walker, Texas Ranger”. Texans ride Western, and so did she.  Her modeling was taking a Western turn as well, as Annie worked for major Western retailers and Dodge Trucks, a big time rodeo sponsor. And it was in Texas where Annie landed the job that would change her life forever, when she became the poster model for Colt’s “Revolver Girl” campaign.

 

The legendary manufacturer of the Single Action Army 1873 revolver became a major sponsor of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA). Annie ended up running the three-year rodeo campaign at its marketing director. The contacts she made on the PRCA circuit would come in handy down the road. And in the meantime, a pistol packin’, horse ridin’, cowgirl/covergirl was a sure fire way to get the attention of both the men and women Colt wanted to attract.

 

Colts, of course, are the coveted firearm among the Old West aficionados of the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS), the group that holds competitive shooting matches using single action pistols and other “Old West” style firearms. And it was while representing Colt at the SASS Championship event known as End Of Trail that Annie first saw an exhibition of Cowboy Mounted Shooting. “Of course there was shooting going on everywhere… but then I saw horses,” she recalls. "And I walked over to check it out… and I saw these crazy people shooting off horses.  And I thought…. ‘I can do that!”

 

She was hooked, and so were the executives at Colt. What better way to promote your gun than to have a cowgirl beauty queen blazing away on your six shooter from the back of a galloping horse?  And that’s just what rodeo fans saw, as Bianco-Ellett put on mounted shooting demonstrations at PRCA events across the country.

 

Annie needed a little schooling to get started, so Colt sent her to L.A. and the renowned Phil Spangenberger. The long time board member of the Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association (CMSA) is also well known in Hollywood as the gun trainer to the stars.  “That was pretty cool to get the gun handling down,” Annie recalls. “And then he let me use one of his horses… so I could really learn how to shoot off a horse.”

 

Later, Annie continued her training with the man who founded the sport of mounted shooting.  CMSA Board Chairman Jim Rodgers took Annie under his wing, and her shooting career took off at a gallop. “She came to Arizona… and we shot all winter long,” tells Jim. “She just took to mounted shooting like a duck takes to water.”

 

That was more than eleven years ago. Riding her celebrated stallion El Costa Prom, Outlaw Annie has not only become the winningest woman in the sport’s history, but has also become its most important advocate outside the arena. “She has probably contributed as much to the sport of Cowboy Mounted Shooting as any person alive,” declares Rodgers.

 

First, her marketing skills and experience working with Colt, the PRCA, Dodge, and other big league players in the Western world have been instrumental in landing major sponsorships for CMSA. Wrangler is a great example.

 

Annie was long time friends with Wrangler Sports Marketing Director Karl Stressman, but he wasn’t interested in sponsoring a sport whose rules forbid competitors from wearing anything but “Old West” style garments. Annie said she’d work to get the rule changed.  “And he said, ‘If you can get that done, consider me a major sponsor.’ We got it done and Wrangler came in three years ago as a national sponsor.”

 

Annie says the change has turned mounted shooting into a “mainstream cowboy” sport, opening the doors to all kinds of equestrians. The visibility of Wrangler has also helped put mounted shooting on the map. Both Bianco-Ellett and renowned CMSA Champion Chad Little are now Wrangler endorsees, a prestigious list that includes people like George Strait and rodeo star Joe Beaver.  “Which is huge!” exclaims Annie. “It’s pretty exciting that Wrangler would recognize cowboy mounted shooting.”

 

In a sport where you’re only as good as the horse you ride, Outlaw Annie is also leading the way in the CMSA Futurity program. She’s breeding quality mounts from her AQHA stallion Costa, who has sired dozens of horses. Those include top animals like World Champion Tony Jardine’s stallion. And with the help of trainer Dan Byrd, Annie’s horses have won the CMSA Futurity competition three years in a row.

 

Not only is she providing quality mounts for the sport, but Ellett is also sharing her secrets of success in the shooting arena.  She’s produced training videos, and conducts clinics at her home outside Phoenix. “She’s just brought multitudes of people into the sport,” says Jim Rodgers, who also appears in Annie’s videos. “She’s mentored just a lot of people.”

 

Coaching literally hundreds of people over the years, one of Annie’s most celebrated students is Melissa Dragoo. Annie started working with Melissa when she was just eight years old. And last year, at the ripe old age of 13, Melissa became the youngest CMSA Overall World Champion Cowgirl in the history of the sport.  Annie’s also been an important mentor to Chad Little, the 20-year old she calls “Our Tiger Woods.”

 

“[She’s] always trying to help me,” says the grateful Little, a Minnesotan who gives Annie credit for arranging his sponsorship with both Wrangler and Classic Equine. “This winter she offered to let me come down and stay at her place there and bring a bunch of horses.”

 

Even when she has no idea who you are, Annie is always warm and gracious and friendly. I can clearly remember those qualities the first time we said hello years ago at a shoot. You simply could not draw up a better ambassador for CMSA, for which she serves as its Official Spokesperson. “She works very closely with our sponsors,” says Jim Rodgers. “We do a lot a stuff on television….”

 

Annie’s TV work has included regular appearances on CMT’s “America’s Top Cowboy” and “Cowboy U”, where she served as the shooting coach. And for the last two years, she’s spearheaded a breast cancer benefit in Nashville known as Outlaw Annie’s Shoot for the Cure. It’s raised nearly $20,000. And her recent induction into the CMSA Hall of Fame was a slam-dunk. “The Board unanimously agreed,” tells Phil Spangenberger. “There was not even a discussion… Gotta be done!”

 

As important as her work with CMSA has been, Annie has another job that always takes priority. “I’m a mom. My daughter Sierra is 10 now,” she reveals. “As much as I love mounted shooting, family comes first in my life.”

 

Family includes her husband Dave Ellett, a former National Hockey League All Star. And while he prefers the ice arena to the horse arena, he’s always been very supportive of Annie’s shooting career.  In fact it was Dave who bought Annie her champion horse Costa.

 

Despite some recent injuries, and transitioning to a new horse, Outlaw Annie is still a Top 10 competitor. And she still has the enthusiasm of the little girl who first saw the West out the car window all those years ago. “I still get excited to go out and shoot and I still get excited to go out and find new sponsors, and new students,” she beams. “I still love it!”

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