He’s been shooting firearms since the early age of 10 and competed with pistols since the age of 18. He served as an officer in the British Army before moving to the United States. He placed second in the Trooper class at the 2009 MGM Iron Man 3-Gun competition, but you probably know him best from his appearance on the History Channel’s newest reality TV show “Top Sot”.

Following his incredible win Sunday, we gave Iain Harrison a call to talk about his background with firearms, his immigration to the United States, as well as his experience on Top Shot.

Congratulations on your win. Have you made any decision as to what you will do with the $100,000? Pay the taxes on it. {laughs}

Ah, yes there is that. Uncle Sam always gets his share. Let’s start by talking about your background. You grew up in the United Kingdom? That’s correct, yeah. I moved here to the United States about 12 years ago.

Firearms are heavily restricted in the United Kingdom. Did you have any exposure to firearms prior to joining the military? Yeah, I started out shooting around age 10 when, like so many other people, someone hands you a .22 caliber rifle and you go “Hey! This is fantastic!” Then I got a shotgun around age 14 and air rifles and that sort of thing. I got pistols when I was legally able to at 18 and then started shooting a bunch of IPSC.

Tell us a bit about that, at 18 you were still in the United Kingdom? Yeah.

At that time you were still legally able to own a pistol back then? That’s correct.

Were your parents involved in the shooting sports? No, not at all. It was something I did entirely on my own.

Explain for those of us who grew up in the United States and are unfamiliar with the restrictions placed on firearms in the United Kingdom. What’s the process you had to go through to get a shotgun or a pistol back then? At the time, obviously I’ve been out of the loop for a while so I can’t comment on the current situation, what you had to do was fill out a bunch of forms. The police would then come and interview you and inspect your security arrangements. You had to had have a safe bolted to the wall. Then you would specify exactly what firearm category that you wanted, you could have one .357 Revolver or one .45 ACP handgun, and how much ammunition you could to get for it as well. It’s fairly restrictive in that case.

In order to get anything like what we call a Section 1 firearm, which is a centerfire, you needed to prove good cause which generally entailed having property on which to shoot it or, if you weren’t one of the landed gentry, being a member of a firearms club.

Did you join a firearms club to get a pistol? Yeah, I did.

Was that when you started shooting IPSC? Yeah.

And this must have been before you joined the military then. It was, yeah.

What prompted you to get started with IPSC? Firearm ownership and consequently the shooting sports aren’t very common in the United Kingdom. How did you first find out about action pistol shooting? Let’s see… I’d been shooting clay sports for a while. Then I just decided I wanted to take the next step and do something a bit more difficult. Not that I’m knocking anybody who shoots clay sports, but I think that pistols are much more difficult to master. I figured it was something with a very short sight radius and something that you couldn’t brace against your body, and that it would be the next step up.

So, I did that, decided I was going to shoot handguns and then figured that the new sport of IPSC coming along seemed to have a lot of challenging variety to it. I thought that if I was going to shoot pistols that was what I wanted to do.

Let’s move on to your military experience I was an infantry officer commissioned in 1990. I spent about 8 years serving in that capacity. I started out as Armored Infantry and then did a spell as dismounted Close Recon. Then I did a bunch of other jobs like Second in Command of the Company and Operations.

Now, you’ve got a background in the shooting sports and you’ve served in the British military. Why make the decision to immigrate to the US? I was getting toward the end of the time I wanted to spend in the Army. I wanted to leave for good reasons, you see so many people who are staying on for their pension and become bitter and twisted and disenchanted with the whole situation. I didn’t want to do that, and I didn’t want to be flying a desk either. That was kind of the stage of my career that I was in.

Then the British government decided that the 20,000 of us who actually shot pistols in the country legally were good targets to prove how tough they were on crime. That was kind of the kicker for me.

You actually decided to immigrate based off of the government’s decision to ban handgun ownership? It was one of the reasons. It was certainly a factor.

Did you move straight away to Oregon? No, I moved to New York, and actually didn’t shoot pistols until I moved to Oregon two years ago.

That was quite a lapse in your participation in the shooting sports. Yeah. I shot sporting clays for a bit in New York and started getting into practical rifle competitions toward the end of my stay there. The biggest kicker for me to get back into the shooting sports competitively was moving to Oregon.

What shooting sports are you involved in? You mentioned practical rifle, are you shooting 3-gun or Multigun? Yup. Sure am. Pretty much anything with a trigger, I’ll pull it.

We definitely saw that by your performance on Top Shot, you really had the ability to pick up just about anything and do well with it. Moving on to talk about the show, they put out an open casting call near the beginning of this year. How did you find out about the show and why did you apply? My wife kinda steered me towards it really. I didn’t take the whole thing very seriously at all. I sent in my application kinda tongue in cheek. I got a call the next day. they wanted to see me on video, so I sent in a video and I think I put my casting video together when I was horrendously hung over. I’d been celebrating the day before after moving a client into their house.

I think pretty much every thing you shouldn’t do to get on the show, I did.

Were you shocked that they wanted to have you on the show? I was a little surprised, given the caliber, pun intended, of the people I saw at the casting in LA. There were 50 people down there and I wasn’t even a blip on anybody’s radar. There were some really big names in the shooting community down there, I’m sure you got that information from the other guys you’ve spoken to so far.

Yes, we’ve talked to a lot of them. I know J.J. Racaza and Blake Miguez were somewhat intimidating factors for everybody. When you showed up what were your thoughts when you found yourself surrounded by so many big names? My thoughts were “Great! Let’s go the bar, let’s swap war stories.”

One thing everyone I’ve spoken to about the show mentions is how many good strong friendships were formed. I think part of it was that everyone going into the show was conscious of the fact that this was a first. I don’t know whether it was subconscious or overt, but I think that everybody really wanted to show the shooting sports in a positive light and show that we’re not a bunch of crimson naped rednecks. We’re passionate about what we do, and it takes a lot of discipline to do what we do.

We just wanted to dispel some stereotypes. With that group mentality you kinda define yourself as this small clique of guys who are passionate about what we do and are surrounded by people who don’t know what we do. It really was a sort of “getting to know you” experience, both from our standpoint with what goes on in any reality TV show, and then [from the view of the media] “OK, these bunch of shooters, are they just potential mass murderers?”

Did the producers make a conscious effort to portray the shooting sports in a positive light? Yes, I think they did. I think that once they found out that we are who we are, I think they did an absolutely stellar job of casting the first series. From the reality TV standpoint you have to get conflicting personalities in there, but it wasn’t overboard when you compare it to some of the other reality TV shows.

I think yeah they did. Then when they saw that we really did know what we were talking about, they gave us a bit more free reign.

We did eventually see some of those personalities clash with Kelly and then later with Blake and Adam. Did you have a plan going into the show for how you would handle the social aspect of the show? Yeah, I did. I went into it with a little demon sitting on my shoulder saying “How is this going to play out on national TV to your friends?” Everything that I did, I had that little fellow on my shoulder.

It’s a 42 minute spot that they have to fill and they have about 300 hours of footage going into it. With 42 minutes and 16 people, you’re not going to get very much character development there. Your character is defined fairly early on, and that’s what you’ve got to stick with. If you give them the material to define you as somebody you don’t necessarily want to be defined as, it doesn’t matter. That’s how you’re going to be seen.

By the same token, if you don’t say it, they can’t show it. You’re kinda looking at peoples character through a magnifying glass. That prism that they use to show people’s character is very very intense. You know, if you meet any of these guys for a working day, where you’re only spending 8 hours with them rather than 24 hours with them, then everybody comes off as a stellar guy and someone you want to go have a beer with. If you spend 24/7 for 33 days you’re going to pick up on people’s character traits that you might otherwise overlook.

Again, it’s interesting to note that despite the overexposure you had to each other, there were still deep long lasting friendships formed Absolutely. Pretty much all of the cast is in daily communication with each other. We’re actually planning a reunion right now.

We didn’t see you get voted into any elimination challenges. Would you say that was because of your success navigating the social aspect of the competition? No, because Blue Team kept winning. When we did lose, such as with Adam and Caleb, the pair was self selecting to a great extent. Then the only other time was when I shot against Jim.

Was there any point where you kinda relaxed and forgot the cameras were there? To some extent. The biggest thing for me to get adjusted to was that there was a camera and sound crew there recording your every move. You’re mic’d 24/7, so that even if you’re off camera and you’re not being followed by the guys with the big cameras on their shoulders, you’re still on surveillance camera and everything you say is recorded. When the guys with the big cameras fade into the background you can let things slip that you might otherwise not.

Concerning the actual competitions, a few of the competitors commented on the quality of the equipment that was provided. You know, it was a learning experience for everybody. It was our first time out, and I think that some mistakes were made regarding the quality of the equipment I think. having said that, shooting iron sighted rifles with 4-8 pound triggers on them really puts people outside of their comfort zone if they’re used to shooting an AR-15 with an ACOG and a side mounted red dot and a 1-1/2 pound trigger. It really concentrates the mind and gets you back to the fundamentals of marksmanship, getting those sights aligned and making the trigger squeeze. In that aspect, shooting guns that weren’t race prepared was a real leveler.

Peter mentioned how his background in the military gave him the ability to adapt to whatever equipment was issued, no matter the quality or how familiar it was. Did you experience the same thing? Yeah, it did. Also, because I’m a cheap bastard.

I’ve got a few ARs, I don’t have a Beretta. I’ve got an HK variant, but I don’t have an HK-93. Come to think of it, I don’t own really anything that we shot.

Coming down to the individual eliminations when we saw the teams go away, did that change catch anybody by surprise? It was shocking that it happened so late. We were thinking “OK, we’ve got a week left on the schedule, when’s it going to happen?” When it came down to the final 8, well it would have been final 8 were it not for Tara having to leave, we were like “OK, let’s do it. This is what we’re here for.”

Going into the initial competition, the pistol shot on the burning fuse. What was your strategy for that challenge? I was up first and I though that I would want to shoot as long a fuse as I could to set the bar high for anybody else following me and make sure that somebody crashes and burns behind me.

That was the wrong strategy because the fuse burned a lot faster than I anticipated. So I was playing catchup during the first round.

Later we saw a different strategy emerge in the second round as J.J. and other shooters tried to shoot a tight group at nearly the base of the fuse in an attempt to sever the burning cord. Yeah, J.J. and I both did that. That was definitely the safe way to play it and in the end it worked out to our advantage.

Kelly had the dubious distinction of going first in the next challenge, the hill climb. After seeing his performance, how did you adapt your plan for conquering the course? I think any of the guys who had been shooting 3-Gun or IPSC decided it was time to go balls to the wall and just load one single load in each firearm on the platform. The targets were fairly large, and the fact that Kelly managed to shoot the first target with a pistol with no problems, so I thought “Well, screw it. Let’s just single load and try to smoke the time on it.”

I think it came down to confidence in your abilities. It had the potential of going south, that strategy. A miss and then a reload is going to completely blow your time. I think having the confidence to do it was key to it.

How important was that confidence, that mindset, when you know you have to hit each shot the first time with just one shot or you’re going to be sent home? I approached from the standpoint of “I know I can do this.” If you know you can do it then you’re only shooting your own match, you don’t worry about any body else’s performance. You just go out and do the best you can. I think if you start looking around and looking over your shoulder people are going to catch up with you. It puts too much mental pressure on you and you just crash and burn.

Next of course you had the dueling pistol trees where you went heads up against your rivals. Yeah, and what fun that was. I mean, J.J. put on a stellar performance. It was just an exhibition match for him.

Were you relieved not to have to go up against J.J.? I was, but if I had gone up against J.J. and lost, I would have gone up against Pete for the elimination, and I knew I could beat Pete with a pistol. Ultimately I don’t think the outcome of that one would have changed much.

Moving on we got to see a new style of challenge where each competitor got to choose a shot, kind of like the basketball game of Horse. Why did you choose to shoot shot glasses at 50 feet? I chose that shot because during the trick shooting episode I got to see everybody shoot a DA revolver. I was quite surprised by the fact that I was able to pick up a DA revolver and shoot it pretty well. You know, I hadn’t shot a revolver since leaving the UK.

It was a really really nice Smith, I would say it came in around 12 pounds double action, but really really smooth and before it tripped you could feel it stage. I used to shoot a fair amount of revolver in the UK, so I guess that muscle memory just carried over. That allowed me to see everyone else’s groups as to what they could shoot comfortably with that revolver. I figured if I pick a DA revolver shot and Chris makes it that means that Chris comes into the final with me and I don’t have to shoot against J.J. Racaza.

How shocked were you when J.J. missed his own 50 yard pistol shot? I was, was really surprised to see him because that was a single action trigger on that Scofield and I knew he had sight dope at that 50 yard distance.

And yet, everyone seemed to hit high on that shot. Even your shot hit the very top of the glass. Yeah it was definitely in the top third. I don’t know what happened. When we shot that gun previously at that distance the round was dropping like a rock. Maybe it was just a sight alignment thing, maybe I just didn’t get it right, but nobody else did either.

At the final elimination, you had to have an inkling that you might actually walk away with the $100,000 grand prize. Actually, walking into the last challenge winning it really wasn’t at the forefront of my mind. I know that sounds stupid, but we got to the end of this whole bizarre process and I’m walking up to the final challenge with Chris who is an absolutely stellar stand up guy, real salt of the earth, and I knew if I went out I couldn’t have lost to a better guy. Once you’ve got that kind of mindset, the pressure’s off. We just went out there to show them what we could do and we put on a good show for the 2.6 million people who ended up watching it and had a good time.

There were certain things you could strategize going into it as to how you make up a couple of tenths of a second here or there, like reloading that Winchester 73. I hadn’t done that as part of any of the other challenges, but just figured I’d get it as close to the source of the ammunition as I could get and then slam the gun against the box of ammo.

I think the win was pretty much incidental at that time. We walked into that challenge and saw all the guys sitting on the benches, it was a kind of mini-reunion. Then we just got to show off what we could do.

Well, you did well in that final challenge and took home the $100,000 dollars. I’m curious though, what else did you take away from the experience? The biggest thing I took away from the show was the friendships we established. I held a viewing party here locally for most of the episodes. For the finale episode we packed out the bar with a bunch of local shooters and friends and I talked to Caleb who had moved down to Seattle and he came down for the finale party. That sneaky bastard set it up so that Tara flew in 2,000 miles from Chicago.

You don’t see that from any other reality TV show. It gets back to the personalities of shooters. It was a great bunch of guys going into the show and I don’t think you’ll see that from any other TV situation.

How has being on the show changed your life? Obviously you’ve got a little less worries financially, but others have made significant changes to their life after the show: Caleb has moved to Seattle, Peter is considering a move to Louisiana near Blake Miguez, and Denny has appeared in some television commercials. What has changed for you? I don’t think it’s changed me a whole lot. You know, it’s not a great time to be in the construction industry right now, and we’ll just leave it at that. The only thing that’s really changed for me you know is I was standing in the airport yesterday morning at 4:30, standing in line, and somebody recognized me. They kind of nudged each other and said “Hey, there’s that Top Shot guy” and that has been the biggest change for me so far.

What do you think the success of the show holds for the future? Both the History Channel and Pilgrim both deserve a lot of Kudos for having the balls to do this, a reality TV show with live ammunition. Now that the franchise has been proven, I think it’s got legs. We’re going into season 2 now and I think if we continue to build on the success of it it’s nothing but good for the shooting sports.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us and congratulations once again on your win. Thanks, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you too.

Iain lives in Oregon with his wife where he works as a construction manager. He continues to participate in practical rifle and 3-gun competitions as both a shooter and a range officer.

Peter Palma was easily one of the biggest characters on Top Shot. Between his quirky personality, his colorful clip on ties, and his outrageous clothes, he certainly stood out among the other competitors. But when it came to shooting, Peter let his talent do the talking.

We managed to sneak in an interview with Peter who was training at the US Marine Corps Base Quantico just before he was sitting down to eat. It’s pretty dangerous to get between a Marine and his next meal, but we took the risk and briefly talked to Peter about his background with firearms and his experience on Top Shot. Here’s what he had to say.

Let’s talk about how you first got introduced to firearms. Actually, I was always interested in firearms but I never had anybody who would support me in that. My father didn’t like guns. The first gun I actually shot was when my buddy’s dad took me hunting when I was 12, and I only shot one round. I still have the shell casing, it was a 20 gauge shotgun.

Then I didn’t really fire any firearms until I turned 18 and I bought my first Ruger 10/22. That was the first rifle I ever bought, and the first real gun I’d ever shot more than one round. So, I learned [to shoot] that way, kinda figured it out my own way.

You’d just go out to the range and shoot a little bit and found that you had a knack for shooting rifles? Yeah, I had BB guns and stuff as a kid, but never any real firearms. I’d always hit generally what I was aiming at with the rifle, but I never had any formal training. Nobody ever really taught me anything. I just aimed and worked it out myself. It wasn’t until I started buying a lot of guns and some people would try and help me. I had friends here and there, some of which were police or law enforcement, and they would give me a little bit [of help] here and there.

It wasn’t until I joined the Marines that I really honed my skills. I was actually taught professionally how to shoot. I was already a pretty good shot, and then they showed me the fundamentals, and from there the rest is history.

You still had those fundamentals going into the Marines, you had some time behind the trigger already. Yes, I joined the Marines when I was 24 years old, so by that point I’d already owned firearms for about six years on my own.

You were a bit older than most when you joined the Marines. How did that work out for you? We call it an existential crises. Most people would join the Marines when they’re young and impressionable, or when they’re older and something happens: they get dumped by a girl, or whatever it is and they run to the recruiter to change their life and shoot for the stars. Make something out of themselves. Most of the time it doesn’t workout like that, they suddenly realize “Oh my God, what have I done…” That’s kind of how I felt.

There is obviously a lot of stuff people don’t like about the military, like having to run around and get up super early with people yelling at you. But you also get to shoot all kinds of firearms, some of which I didn’t even know existed until I joined the Marines. So, that’s the plus side. I also met the best people I’ve ever met. Some of my best friends ever are Marines. You don’t really make those connections with normal people. You only make those connections with people you’ve served with. It balances out.

What was your motivation to join the Marines? Did you join just so you could play with the big guns? I kinda always wanted to join the Marines, to shoot all the guns and do all the stuff that Marines do and be hard core. That’s really why you join the Marines. You always have stuff going on though. You think about the fact that it’s 6 years and I’ll be 30 now when I’m getting out. I signed a 6 year contract and, when you’re 24, 6 years seems like a million years but it goes by lightning fast. Sometimes.

I joined to shoot guns and get formal training, and to serve my country. They offered my $10,000 to go motor transport or be a combat correspondent, and I turned it down. I wanted to be a machine gunner. I turned down ten grand just to do that. I wanted to be infantry, I wanted to shoot guns. If there were no guns there, I wouldn’t have joined.

How difficult was it as a Marine for you to get the time off to go be on Top Shot? I’m a reservist, so I only have to go one weekend a month and two weeks a year. Unless they activate you. I signed up for one weekend a month and two weeks a year, but they activated me for two years. The first tour of Iraq was a year, and then I went to sniper school for three months. Then I did a second tour which was a whole ‘nother year. I just had to miss two weekends and my command approved.

Even though I’m down here [for my two weeks a year] right now, they still let me sneak off and find a cable television and watch [the episodes] with some of my guys.

What was your motivation to go apply to Top Shot? Somebody sent me a casting call, and the casting call said that they are looking for people with big personalities that have mind blowing shooting skills and who want to win $100,000. Obviously I wanted to win $100,000. I shoot really well, I mean I’m a Marine sniper and machine gunner, and I’m a firearms enthusiast as well so I have a bunch of my own firearms that I enjoy shooting because I’m good at it. If I was bad at it I’d probably like something else. I also have a pretty big personality, I’m a roller derby mascot and I dress a little crazy. I’m quite and individual, I like to go against the grain.

…roller derby mascot? Yes. I kinda fell into that. I wear many hats. I kinda like getting in a little trouble in the Marines every now and then, because I do some crazy stuff. Nothing too big, just something where most people are shaking their head at me and smiling.

I don’t know if you watched my audition tape, but there are a couple of times where I’m doing some crazy stuff in Iraq like throwing grenades to fish and spraying silly string on some kids, ran around in my underwear, you know. I got screamed at for all this stuff, but they just scream at you. It’s not like I’m out doing drugs or getting in fights or anything like that where you’d get in real trouble. I just did some stuff where you’d get yelled at.

Top Shot must have just been another way for you to go out, be crazy, and have some fun then, right? Yeah, I mean they wanted big personalities. It doesn’t get too much bigger than mine. Then there was the chance to shoot all kinds of guns, that seemed awesome, and who doesn’t want to be on television?

Tell me about your plan leading up to the show. Obviously you knew you were going to be firing a bunch of different weapons, but you didn’t know quite what the show was going to be like. Did you do any practice or additional training to try to familiarize yourself with strange or unusual weaponry? The only thing they said in the casting call that they would be doing was the Annie Oakley shot, which seemed pretty easy as long as you’ve got good sight alignment. I went in my bathroom and I tried doing that, but other than that I had no idea what was going to happen so I didn’t practice throwing knives, I didn’t use a slingshot.

I do have a bow, but it’s a compound bow and I did shoot that a little bit, but not at 100 yards. We were shooting a bow without sights and it’s not that strong like a compound bow is. I didn’t practice for anything really, other than what I already knew. I’ve shot pistols here and there. It’s not my forte but I can do it. Then my obviously rifle skills are up there as a sniper.

I didn’t really practice that much because it was impossible to know what there was [on the show]. I did go to the range here and there, I went skeet shooting once just because I’d never done it before. I assumed something like that would be on there, but that was the extent of my practice. I just shot skeet and took by bow out once.

A lot of [the show] was about adapting, which you learn as a Marine, and getting crappier stuff. One of the things on the show is that you’ll see a lot of the competition guys are used to getting top notch, expensive, tricked out equipment, but when you hand them a hundred year old rifle they would hate everything about the rifle. To me if they hand me a gun, that’s the gun they issue me and I can’t do anything about it. I can’t do a trigger job or mess with the gun. I just have to deal with what they give me and make the best of it. I think that helped me there; my being able to roll with the punches.

While Brad and some of the other contestants were complaining about how some of the firearms were less than ideal, you were just going with it? Yeah, you just pick up a gun and that’s the way it is. I own a lot of the firearms you saw, or at least ones very similar to them. I’d shot the M16 before. It’s like an extension of my own body, I’m very at home with that rifle. The Beretta 92 we shoot in the Marines. I have a Peacemaker of my own. I have Mosin Nagants and I’ve shot M14s, so a lot of the modern guns on the show I’d fired already. I didn’t have to familiarize myself with them. I was already used to them. Having my own collection really helped me out there.

In the Marines, you have your own rifle, but sometimes you have to roll with the punches. For example I have an M16 with an M203 [grenade launcher] on it and I go to shoot at the rifle range, obviously I’m not going to be able to take the M16 with the M203, I’ll have to borrow one from the armory or use my buddy’s rifle. Even in sniper schools if your rifle has a problem on the range you can’t just stop for the day. The world doesn’t stop, it keeps rolling. You may have never shot your spotter’s rifle before, but you’re going to be shooting it now. And it’s for score. You just have to roll with it. I think these experiences really helped me.

How did your other teammates complaints about the equipment you used on the show affect your perception of them? You didn’t catch a lot of it on camera, but nearly everybody had the same complaints. It kind of put me off. If it weren’t for Blake and J.J., I would be totally put off by the other competitors because all they were doing was whining. They had to even more so prove themselves to me.

You’ll see that Brad turned around. He stopped whining and he really started putting out as far as performance goes. He’s one of my better friends now. He met me in Louisiana and we hung out with Blake and had a great time. There were no hard feelings there, but he definitely had to prove himself to everybody. He had some thick skin and he did show that he is a competitor.

Did you go into the show with any strategies for how to deal with the drama aspects of the show? We saw a number of competitors literally talk themselves into elimination challenges and eventually off the show. What was your plan for dealing with this? When I went into the show I learned something: The less you say, the better. Unless it was pressing, I would just keep my mouth shut and see how everything played out. Some people would actually say “I’m going to vote for you,” but I just tried to sit there. I wasn’t really comfortable with that.

You’ll see Frank say in one episode “I’m going to vote for you, Bill,” but he ended up voting for Brad and Bill voted for Frank as a way to get back at him. Frank actually sent himself to that elimination challenge by saying who he was going to vote for. I learned very quick after that not to say anything.

When we got there we could see who the teams were. I don’t know if they stacked them against us, but J.J. and Blake were huge competitors for the Blue Team. As I started talking to people, I could see that the Blue Team really had some skill there. The Red Team sat down the first time to discuss who was good at what so that we could kinda plan out the game. I noticed I was one of the more well rounded people on my team. I knew it was going to be a battle and that we would get hosed a lot.

As things were going on however, I ended up consistently coming out on top, so I didn’t need to worry about the drama so much. I knew no one was going to vote for me. Most of the time I did better than them. Sometimes they did better than me; Kelly for example was really good. I never voted for him and he never voted for me.

I talked to Kelly later and he kinda shot himself in the foot because he wanted people to underestimate him. He’s actually won some pistol competitions and archery competitions before, but he never mentioned that to any of use. People thought that we was just a one trick pony, and I think that’s one reason why they kept voting for him. I noticed, especially in that first pistol challenge, that he did very well with it. He shot even better than Brad who was supposed to be our pistol guy. I was left wondering, and even said “What else does this guy have up his sleeve?” I think if he had at least spoke about his skill a bit more he wouldn’t have been voted into so many elimination challenges.

I guess my thing was that if you shoot well enough, you don’t need to play the game as much. They’re not going to put you into an elimination challenge because you’re strong for the team, and because it could be them who has to go up against you in the elimination. Nobody wants to piss off a guy who can shoot better than they can. If you perform well, that’s less drama that you have to worry about.

You say that, and I’ve talked to Brad about this as well, but we’ve seen some challenges where it seemed that some team members like Denny didn’t really rise to the occasion while other performances like Kelly’s really outshone others. Every one seemed genuinely shocked that Denny didn’t get sent to those elimination challenges, even to the point that the Blue Team commented on the situation. What was your logic in not voting for Denny? Denny did very well in all of the challenges going up to that one point. Watching the show with the editing it makes it seem like he did far worse than he really did. He did really bad, don’t get me wrong, but they focused on how bad he did. Which is true, but while every one was talking about how Kelly did so great, he did equally as bad. He only went up once, but I watched him drop 5 rounds and miss, and hit nothing.

The reason I didn’t vote for Denny was that was the first time he had really faltered in a challenge. I thought he was much more well rounded. Three team members really ate it in that challenge: Denny, Kelly, and Andre. I don’t know why the rest of my team voted for Kelly. I voted for Andre, but Denny and everyone else voted for Kelly.

I can’t speak for the rest of my team, but it also baffles me why they voted for Kelly in the trick shot challenge. I don’t understand that. He kept performing, so I never thought to vote for Kelly, even though he was my biggest threat. On my team, I was the most afraid of Kelly. Any given day, and he agrees, he could beat me in long distance rifle shooting or I could beat him. It just depends on the day, a flip of the coin. We both think we’re equally skilled in that. I think if Kelly had played himself up a little bit more, he wouldn’t have been picked for elimination as often, but that’s my only guess. I have no idea why they ever voted for Kelly.

One thing I’ve noticed, having talked to many of the participants of the show, is how many strong friendships were formed by everyone on the show… Absolutely. Blake and I got along so well, after this annual training I’m trying to find my way down there, find some employment and a place to live. I’m trying to move to Louisiana. I had such a great time with him, we hit it off so well on the show, Blake was by far my favorite, and J.J. was right up there.

It was very similar to what you find in the Marines, except that you’re in a mansion and you get free food. You have nothing to do. There were no books to read. We were not allowed to have books, radio, no electronics, no television, no telephones, no computer, nothing. So you’re in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do. In the Marines you may be sitting on the tarmac waiting with a bunch of your guys for two days, waiting for an airplane to come. We all shared a common interest and there’s nothing else to do except talk to the guy next to you, or stare into space.

Obviously then you’re going to start up conversations. We’re all characters, in the casting process, it’s a science how they choose us. Add in that we all shared a common interest in firearms, we all like to shoot. It’s the perfect recipe for forming long lasting friendships. It’s the same thing in the Marine Corps. You’re going to meet people that you will know forever. Plus, when the show comes out, you cannot confide in anybody else because of the non-disclosure agreement. It’s also a shared experience. I called J.J. up to talk to him about something on the show, but I can’t talk to anyone else about that. It’s the same thing in the Marines.

One thing everyone has been dying to know: what is up with the clip-on tie and your crazy outfits at the end of the show? The tie is just something you can use on a normal shirt, it’s something you can do that’s so little and it just sets off the outfit. You can be wearing just regular clothes and you throw on a clip on tie and “BAM!” and it goes from being just a shirt somebody has on to something crazy.

I just like to dress funny. I’m not going to lie, I like attention. I like to mix things up a little bit. I like to stand out and do whatever it takes. How do I say this without sounding a little crazy… I don’t like dressing like a normal person. I like to have a bit of pizazz. People will go out and want to dress up nice, but if I go out and I’m not dressed in something a bit crazy I feel the same as people who can’t go out without makeup. That’s kinda how I feel. If I’m dressed like a normal person, I can’t go out and have a good time.

Some people might say you’ve just been in uniform in the Marines too long… I think that’s part of it. When you’re in uniform, you have to look like everybody else, and I’m just dying inside to show myself as an individual. There’s no place for that in the Marines, but I’ve always been like that, even as a small child.

Talk to me about the end. We saw the teams dissolve and the competition came down to individual challenges… I never thought I’d make it that far, so the fact that I made it that far, I didn’t mind getting eliminated. Especially with the gun and those guys. I’m pretty proud that I was able to stand with some of the best shooters I’d ever seen and last so long.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us about yourself and your experience on Top Shot. Awesome. Thank you so much, I’m gonna go eat some chow now.

After his stunning elimination from the History Channel’s new reality show “Top Shot” we managed to track down Blake Miguez to talk a bit about his background in the shooting sports and his appearance on Top Shot. To say that Blake is a busy guy would be an understatement: in addition to competing regularly across the nation and around the world, Blake works as a corporate attorney and helps to run his father’s businesses. Still, he managed to find time to talk to us over the phone about his experience.

Cheaper Than Dirt: Tell us about how you got started shooting. Did you grow up around firearms? Blake: Yeah. I’ve been shooting since I was a kid and my dad used to bring me out to the local shooting range, just recreational shooting, not competition shooting. I remember the gun I shot the most when I was young was a Smith & Wesson Model 41, which is a .22 semiautomatic pistol. He and my uncle had a store called “Howard Brothers” going out of business in town and they’d bought up all the .22 ammunition they had left in stock, which was a quarter million rounds, and they split it down the middle. By the time I was a teenager we only had eighteen thousand rounds left, so I probably fired over a hundred thousand rounds as a kid with a .22. That was just shooting at sticks and shootin at bottles I’d like to throw in the water, or just homemade targets like plates, anything I could shoot. I wasn’t in competition at that point until I turned about twelve and a half.

Cheaper Than Dirt: Wow, that’s really young to get started in competition for a lot of people. Blake: Yeah, I started USPSA/IPSC shooting when I was twelve, right before my thirteenth birthday. I started with a Beretta 92F similar to what was in the TV show, but mine had a compensator on it and it had the double action removed. It was a single action. It was the gun my dad had kinda configured as a starter gun.

I see… Then after that I started shooting, about a year into it, he passed on an STI Open gun and I shot that until I was probably twenty or twenty one, and I switched to the Limited category in .40 and I’ve been shooting that for probably ten years or so.

Did your father already compete in USPSA and get you started? One day he went to a range in Baton Rouge, which is about an hour away from us, to buy some reloading equipment and a Lee Press and some single stage loading equipment. When he walked in he heard some rapid gunfire going off at the indoor range. It was an indoor range/bullet manufacturer. He went to find out what was going on and he met some guys that let him use their gun. It was a Wednesday night practice match that he still competes in today, he goes every Wednesday. He’s been doing that for the last fifteen or twenty years. That’s how he got into it. He shot it for about a year and then he got his twelve year old son, me, into it. He passed on his gun and got him an Open gun and then passed that one down to me and that’s how we got going.

I got really good at it. I made Grand Master at age 17-

Wow- I think I won the Louisiana State match at age 17 and shortly after I think I won Area 4. I’ve been in the top 16 at the Nationals for ten plus years. I’m ranked second in the world right now in IPSC shooting in the Standard Division. I’ve been doing pretty good. I’ve been shooting all my life. I’m a really quick shooter.

What does a regular week of training look like for you? Well, I’m kind of different from all the other guys out there. I’m not sure how much you know about my background, but a lot of the guys I compete with on a Grand Master level, they’re all professional shooters, and shooting is basically a hobby for me. On the show I call it semi-professional shooting because I went to college after high school and I went to law school and now I’m an attorney and also run my father’s two oil field service companies. So I stay busy in my real life with my career and everything.

Shooting-wise, practice and training haven’t been up to par with many other people. I’ve had a year when I shot a whole lot, I took a semester off from college one year when I was about twenty or twenty one and I shot really hard that year and hung out with people like Matt Burkett who helped me do some training. He was also one of the experts on the show which was quite a coincidence. That year I fired forty thousand rounds, but I’ve had other years like when I started law school, and that was three years long, where I’ve only fired a few thousand rounds. But I’ve always managed to compete in the big tournaments, whether it was my Area match, the State Match, or Nationals. Even without a lot of practice I’ve got a lot of natural talent and speed, but just the major match experience that I’ve had for the last sixteen years definitely helps.

I wish I could practice more, but I’ve got a lot of things going on in my real life. What it boils down to is when a match comes up two weeks out I’ll do a few practice sessions and then show up at the match and do the best I can.

You don’t go home every night and do some dry fire practice or anything like that? No, I’ve never dry fired. I should. Recently I tried doing it, I did it for a week or two straight. That was good for me. I’m just starting incorporating all that into my program now that I’m done with school. At least I always say I am. but I never was one of the guys that went and dry fired or any of that stuff. I’ve just always had a knack for shooting. I’ve been shooting so long I’m just good at it.

I never fired Airsoft. When I was a kid it was .22s, .357 revolvers, .38 Special, and a few .44 Magnum but my dad tried to keep me away from the large calibers. I grew up shooting, dove hunting, and duck hunting, so I have some shotgun experience. I’m pretty good with sporting clays, just being a hunter. Then I got into pistol shooting heavy so I could shoot 9mm and .40 pretty well. I practice what I could, but like I said I have a solid resume and a career in my every day life that doesn’t involve shooting, which kinda keeps me off of the practice range.

Now that I’m getting settled down over here back in my home town, because I lived away from my home town for almost ten years being in college and law school, my dad has his own range and I’m going to try to get back into training once things get settled down in my career and the house is completely renovated. I’ve got a project with that. I’m going to try and train more, but I’m still attending the matches and I’m still trying to train as hard as I can but with real life it’s hard to get the time to do that stuff.

Moving on to Top Shot, let’s talk about the show for a little bit. What was your motivation, what were your reasons for applying to be on the show? It’s kinda a funny story. Reality shows, Top Shot, and TV in general were really the last thing on my mind back in January of this year. I was on my way back in from work which is always a hectic day because I’m in the process of picking up my father’s corporation so I’m doing a lot of learning. I’m pretty much involved in the business 24/7.

My mother called me one day and she’d saw that they had an ad on the USPSA they had put an advertisement for a new reality show. It sounded like me when she described it to me, they were looking for someone who was young, over the age of 21, good physical abilty, had a good personality that looked good on TV and had mastered a firearm. That was the perfect description of me. She told me that, and told me it was the History Channel so I knew with them it would be legit.

I thought about it and I think the midnight before the deadline I made a video from my iPhone, didn’t do anything special. I talked to one of the guys on the phone and and asked what kind of video they wanted and they said “Just be yourself” so what I did was I came off the practice range, straight off the practice range, took my hat off, sat down in a chair, had someone hold my iPhone and just, no script, no practice, just talked for about five to six minutes. It’s on Youtube now. What caught their eye was I did a deep Cajun accent for the first 15 seconds. Sounded like a goof-ball Cajun. I did a really deep accent, “I thought ah wuz good wit’ a Fahr-arm ’cause I could shoot dux from a movin’ peerogue” and then I just stopped, smiled really big and in the clearest voice I could manage, because I already have a Cajun accent as it goes, who I was and started talking about myself and the whole story.

That’s kinda how it went down for me. I went to the SHOT show for the first time and took my buddy Max who’s a pro shooter and I got a call from the History Channel telling me that they’d got my application and I was one of the top picks and they wanted me to come down for some final cuts. They picked 50 people to come down for a week and I went through that. Then, I was at the Houston Livestock show with some customers at a BBQ tent when I got the call that I was picked for the show. They offered, and I told them I’d do it.

A lot of people were concerned with how they would look on TV and if it would ruin their reputation and so forth. I never had those doubts in my mind. I knew it didn’t matter whether I lost the first episode or won the whole thing, I was going to show everybody my personality and do the best I could. I was more worried about the life experience that it brought me. It was a good experience for me. Even though I didn’t win it, I handled myself well. I was satisfied with the way I looked on TV.

Now, tons of people know who I am. No matter how many championships Rob Leatham or Todd Jarret have won in the last twenty or thirty years, me being on one reality show because shooting’s been my life since I was twelve years old, more people know who I am than these guys who have been around the sport forever. That’s just kind of a cool deal. I go in the airports and restaurants in the middle of nowhere and people come up to me and they already know my name. It’s kind of a cool feeling.

It doesn’t bother you that millions of viewers saw you pull that bullseye shot low? No, no, I just said it on TV “I just looked like a jackass on TV” but you know, my whole phrase with that is “You’ve got to know what it’s like to lose before you can ever become a winner.” I have a lot of confidence when I go out on the range, and I’ve lost tons of matches. But for every match that I lost I won two. You can’t win every one, you just try your best.

The Beretta is obviously hard to shoot in double action, that’s why I pulled the shot. I anticipated and I jerked the shot. Will that be the last shot I’ll ever jerk? No. I’ll jerk many more for years to come. But for every jerked shot I’ll have five hundred perfect shots. Those are going to win me championships, and I’ll never stop. Win or lose, I just keep driving for my goals and you eventually get what you achieve, what you’re trying for. That’s what I’ve been doing my whole life.

Did you do any particular training in preparation for the show? They didn’t give us a lot of information when we signed up, when we got picked for the show. First of all like I told you before it’s hard for me to train. What I did was, I put down my pistol training for my normal matches because I knew I wasn’t going to be shooting any for a few months.

I went to my dad’s safe, he has probably eighty different types of guns. I grabbed a few of the cowboy guns, which I’m already good at shooting cowboy guns. I shot an M1 Garand. I shot an M1 carbine. I shot a few historical guns. I shot a .308 rifle, just touching in a few areas to make sure I’m comfortable. I shot one compound bow one day, you know, just to get the basics real quick.

Then I went on the show. I was relying more on just the experience I already had under pressure, and the experience I had with pistol shooting. I already knew how to shoot a shotgun… My impression was that they were going to give us more time to practice going out there, but the practices were very short. They told us when we signed up for this deal, “You guys are going to have to adapt to new weapons very quickly, and this is our show. This is our competition, we’re going to do what we want.” That’s why I never complained. Whatever they threw at us, I just went for it and did the best I could in the time I had. Just like life, you don’t know what’s going to be around the next turn. You don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring. You just try your hardest and hope for the best.

In the beginning episodes, the show revolved around more than just shooting. They tended to play up the drama and interpersonal conflict such as with Caleb and the conspiracy against you and J.J. Did you go into the show with any sort of plan as to how you would negotiate the social aspect of the competition? No, I didn’t go into the show with a particular plan per se. I felt that when we first all got there, everybody was sizing everyone else up, looking at each other. I noticed a lot of egos came out, people were trying to say “Well, I’m this,” or “I’m that,” or “I’m good at this,” and I kinda just shut my mouth and just listened, because you know you really don’t want to go out there and put yourself out on a limb and insult somebody or offend anybody unintentionally.

I don’t really watch Survivor but I know that it comes down to a voting kind of a deal, and sometimes people don’t vote based on performance, they vote based on who they don’t like or they don’t get along with. So I kinda stayed neutral. Basically what I was doing was being myself. I’m nice to everybody, I respect everyone until they don’t respect me. To say they played the drama up, I would disagree. I just think they showed everything exactly how it went down. That wasn’t scripted, they didn’t add to anything. I was really upset with those guys, they really tried to backstab me and J.J. on the show. They were treating the small guy unfairly, trying to intimidate him. I just stood up for him, I stood up for us.

When the Blue Team first walked in there we had made a handshake deal that we were going to vote based on performance. The Red Team seemed to be voting on whatever they though was good that day. They voted on performance one day, the next day they voted on the person they didn’t like. They had so much going on, and as a result of that you could see they failed. They weren’t much of a team for most of the challenges. Pretty much the blue team decimated them for the most part. I know we didn’t win every time, but the Blue Team was trying to act more like a team. That’s how we started off. Everything was good until we lost and then some of the guys on the show started thinking, getting into the Survivor mode. They picked me and J.J. out obviously, they voted us as being world class competitors. We are good shooters, but we also understood the nature of the competition, that anybody could win this competition. It really wasn’t about being the best shot. You had to be a good shot to win it, but the challenges were set up where anybody could go.

Nobody was a sure bet. We valued everybody equally, and when we started out we didn’t think that anybody was better than another person, but some of the guys kinda started getting intimidated. Then we had that whole falling out deal. I told them what I was thinking, I was just honest with the guys. After that I guess it set well with he team. We got into that argument, but after that the Blue Team came together, got over their differences and from that point on we decimated the Red Team until the teams went away.

Speaking of your reputations, you and J.J. seemed to be singled out as the ringers on the Blue Team, and you got picked very often to sit out of particular team challenges. Do you feel that you were treated unfairly? Do you feel that you missed out on the chance to prove yourself and participate more? Yes. Me and J.J., we’re probably of equal talent when it comes to shooting handguns and weapons of that sort. We really have a lot of talent that the world didn’t get to see because of the nature of the competition. I know those guys were still learning, it being the first season. They did a very good job. It’s very entertaining.

The challenges were mostly based on accuracy and not a lot of speed or movement or manipulation of the gun, you know reloads and such. That’s a lot of stuff that we can do amazingly quick. If you go on Youtube and if you look at any of our competitions you’ll see me and J.J. can do some amazing things. We’re able to show a little bit of that with the pistol. It really came out with the AR practice where you saw us mow through these plates at incredible speeds. I think that once word got around that we could do that, a lot of the guys didn’t know what the next challenge was going to be so they figure, “Well, if they throw something that’s got multiple target engagements and quick shooting, we don’t have a chance so let’s get these guys out.”

Also, if you look at J.J. he’s an animal. He looks like an all American athlete, he’s real ripped up and in good physical shape, so they sat us out for a lot of the deals. I thought it was unfair. I really wish that Colby would have told us that the Blue Team got to pick who they would sit out, but each time they let the Red Team pick. The only rule they had in our favor was that they couldn’t sit us out two weeks in a row. But the way the competition went one week they’d have a pistol and the next they’d have a knife or a bow and arrow and then they’d swap back to something we were good at. It just so happened that I got picked on the week that all of the good weapons were, the guns that shot quickly or that I could shoot well. The only ones I got to compete with were the Kentucky long rifle and the bow which I’d fired once in my life.

So yeah, that part was unfair, but that’s the show and you’ve got to go with it. I knew that in the end eventually I’d get to shoot. I got to shoot, but like I said I would have liked to compete more. But you don’t always get what you want.

Tell us about the end. The final challenge you got to was the fuse. When you saw what the challenge was, what was going through your head? We get out there and it’s a fuse, and I’m looking and we’re shooting a 9mm at this little tiny fuse. These were round nose 9mm, and I’m thinking “Wow, this is going to be something else. This is going to take the perfect shot to hit this thing.”

I actually hit the fuse a few times shooting at it, but it was just a nudge. I edged it and the fuse just kind of goes around the bullet if you don’t hit it directly on. You saw some of the other guys hit it a few times and it didn’t fall and the flame went right through and they had to re-shoot the deal. Like I said in my interview on TV I was hoping that we’d have like a .45 caliber or .44 wad cutter or something along those lines so that when you got a decent hit it would just cut that thing and tear it apart. But that wasn’t the case, and I’m thinking in my brain when I walked up “How in the hell am I going to do this? I mean I’m a great shot and all, but just because I’m a great shot doesn’t mean I’m going to cut this deal. There’s a lot of luck involved.”

Some people got lucky and some people actually shot well. If you look at J.J.s group on the second go round his group was like a silver dollar and just ripped away at that fuse. Some other guys hit it with one shot and the entire fuse just falls down to the ground so that there’s no way that it can burn through. There was a lot of luck involved. Some of the guys got through it, but then it was just me an Kelly left and we had to shoot just one shot. The part that I wasn’t happy with, but it was a part of the competition, was that they told us “It’s one shot, but you have to start with the hammer down. It’s got to be a double action shot.”

Well, I did all these cool shots on TV, but I had the gun cocked in single action. If anybody knows the Beretta 92F it probably has the most horrible double action in the industry. It seems like when you pull that thing that it’s about to go off and then it doesn’t go off, and then is does go off. That’s the experience I had. I’m not really a slow fire guy, but I pulled it up and said “I’m going to try to shoot this thing like a rifle, just line the sights up, keep pulling pulling pulling and let the thing surprise me.” On TV, when I thought it was going to go off it didn’t, and then I pulled a little bit more and I felt it. I felt myself jerk the shot. That sucker released and before it hit the target I knew, “Well, it’s over for me.”

One bad shot and I’m gone, but that’s Top Shot you know. A lot of other guys had their bad breaks, some guys got lucky but that’s part of the show. It’s just entertainment. You can get a bad shot. Sometimes you can get by, but if you have a bad shot when you could be gone then that’s it.

You know, I’ve talked to a number of other competitors on Top Shot, and one thing that sticks out is the long lasting friendships that were formed by all of the participants in the competition. On other Survivor style elimination shows, many of the participants walk away with what seems like hatred for the other people. What makes the Top Shot experience so different? Well, if you know shooters, if you’ve been around the shooting world, then you know we’re pretty cordial and nice to each other. Every shooter is. That’s how my dad got started [in competitive shooting]. If those guys at that range that he went to buy the reloading equipment from hadn’t been so welcoming and let him shoot their own gun, I mean he shot their ammo just to get him introduced [to the sport]. That’s a perfect example. They’re just very friendly people.

We’re a tight knit community. We’re real people and we treat each other with respect. We made a lot of good friends on the show. Even a guy I couldn’t stand for one whole episode, Adam, we talked it out after. I wouldn’t call him my best friend like I would Peter, but by no means is he my enemy. We’re friends, we’re acquaintances, just like everybody else on the show was. I guess it’s just that shooters in general are nice people.

What did you take away from the Top Shot, what’s one thing that you learned? Besides the need to focus on Bullseye shooting that is…. {laughs} No, I don’t think I’m switching from USPSA and going into Bullseye shooting.

The best thing about the show was that I made some new friends, people I never would have met. The one thing that I got out of the show is that I’ve got a lot more respect for all the different firearms now. I’ve always been a shooter, meaning that I was always good with a gun, I could shoot very well, but I never was a gun enthusiast where I had to have each different firearm. Now, I have a lot of respect for all the different firearms that were used in the show. It used to be that I’d walk by a gun show and if it wasn’t something I shot like a pistol, I wouldn’t look twice at a Mosin Nagant. Now I have respect for the Mosin Nagant, the Springfield 1903, all the firearms that wrote the history of our country and all the battles fought for it. I have respect for all different firearms now and I have a better understanding of them.

I bought a Mosin Nagant, I picked one up. I have one of those now, and I’ll slowly start acquiring each one as I find a good deal at a gun show or at a gun shop. I also have an increased respect for each person’s discipline. Knife throwing and bows, I’d never messed with that before. Now, I’ll probably order a set of knives because I can throw that in my backyard at a home made target. I’d love to pick up a compound bow and I may get a recurve after that. It’s just got me wanting to be a better shooter all around with different disciplines.

I used to really be just focused on pistol shooting, and I’d shoot shotguns when hunting and just for fun because, in our business, sporting clays and shotgun shooting is kinda like the new golf. Now I’m wanting to just excel at all the different disciplines whether it be bow and arrow, knife throwing, pistol shooting, rifle shooting, I just like to have one of each and get pretty good with all the guns.

Should we look for you on the Cowboy Action Shooting circuit or at an NRA High Power competition? You can’t shoot everything, because there are so many different types of shooting that you kinda have to pick what you want to do. It takes so much time to travel around the country and do all of this. I will be branching out though. The first way I’ll be branching out is by going into 3-gun next, which carries over from USPSA shooting. All I have to do is add a rifle and shotgun into the mix. I’ll probably be doing some small sporting clay competitions, I don’t know how involved I’ll get though. It’s a new goal and a good way to have a good time with some of my customers and clients.

Well, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. I want to thank you guys too, I saw that ya’ll sponsored the Area 3 competition, so thank ya’ll for supporting the USPSA and the shooting sports.

Blake lives in Lafayette Louisiana where he helps his father run the family business. He enjoys getting outdoors as much as possible to go hunting and rock crawling with his Jeep or ATV.

She was the only woman on the History Channel’s reality TV show “Top Shot” but she showed that she could easily keep up with the boys. In the most recent episode that aired Sunday night we watched as Tara Poremba unfortunately had to leave the show early to attend to a family emergency.

Tara was gracious enough to take the time to answer a few questions about her background in the US Marine Corps and as a police officer, as well as her experience on Top Shot.

First off, let me extend my best wishes to you and your family with regards to your father. I’m sure that had to be a difficult time, but it does lead me to my first question. You and your father seemed to be very close. How much did he influence your decision to join the Marines and later become a police officer? Thank you so much for the kind words. My Father and I were very close, he was my number one supporter. He was a big influence on my decisions for both the Military and the Police Department.

Did you have any firearms experience before joining the Marines? No, I didn’t have any experience with firearms growing up. The first time I fired a gun was in the Marine Corps boot camp.

Had you ever done any form of competitive shooting before your appearance on Top Shot? I had tried some PPC (Police Pistol Combat) shooting during my first few years on the department, then after I was assigned to the firearms training unit, I got interested in Bullseye (conventional pistol).

That’s been my main shooting discipline for the last few years. I’m looking forward to trying new disciplines.

Tell me about the Top Gun competition when you were a recruit. You were the first woman to win that, correct? Yes, when I started the Police Academy they told me about a competition called TOP GUN. It was the high shooter of your graduating class. When I started the academy I was told that a woman had never won it, I was determined, I wanted to be the first to win it.

Do you train regularly with firearms? I don’t get to train as much as I would like to. I really miss working at the range when I had access to shoot every day! Now, if I get to the range a couple times a month, or to at least a competition a month, than I’m doing good.

What prompted you to apply to go on to Top Shot? A friend forwarded me the e-mail that they were looking for contestants, so we filled it out. I couldn’t believe it when they told me I made the show.

Did you do any special training, whether it be physical training or firearms/weapons training, before you went on the show? I did go to an archery range, and tried a little bow and arrow. Unfortunately I practiced on a compound bow, which was a lot of fun, but I wish I would have known to try a long bow. I worked out more than usual, just in case the show was going to be physically demanding, I wanted to be prepared.

Were there any other women at the “Top 50” when you first went to California for casting? There were, and they were amazing women!

When did you realize, and what was going through your mind when you realized that you were the only woman on the show? I will admit, at first I was nervous, I didn’t know how the men would take to having a woman in their house, but my fears were subsided after a few days, and I got to know these guys, they were an amazing bunch of guys.

This show was two parts: one part shooting, and one part interpersonal. Did you go into the show with any particular strategy for dealing with the drama and interpersonal conflicts that played so heavily into decisions made on the Nomination Range? Going into the show, we really didn’t know what to expect. We knew we were going to be firing different weapons from history, but we didn’t know we were going to be divided into teams or have to “vote” for our teammates to go to elimination. We learned that the first day, just like everyone watching.

So, no I didn’t have a strategy planned, I just wanted to do my best.

Obviously you took some good natured ribbing from your male competitors. We had so much fun in that house, not a day went by that I didn’t laugh myself to tears with these guys. It was non stop pranks and jokes.

One night Adam and I woke some sleeping teammates with water guns, then someone made a booby trap out of duct tape and hid it next to someone’s bed, so when they woke up they would get all entwined in the tape. Someone had brought in some fishing line and balloons to set water balloon traps when someone opened a door.

There is so much more, but it was just silly things, mostly out of boredom.

So you took part in some of the antics? I admit I did, but I wasn’t the mastermind behind them. I was so nervous that I would be victim of a prank, I rigged the door to my bedroom with a water bottle so that if anyone touched my door knob, my water bottle would fall and it would wake me up. None of the doors had locks.

Throughout the show, you had a flawless performance. You were never even nominated for a single elimination challenge, but you participated in almost all of the team challenges. As the only woman on your team, what was the team dynamic like? My team was amazing, aside from that one “incident” we all got along great. We didn’t have an order of how we were going to vote for the elimination. I loved the way we talked it out and there were no surprises during the nomination range.

Do you feel that you missed out on some of the competition by not being voted into any elimination challenges? Do you feel you got the chance to really demonstrate what you’re capable of? I was able to compete in 7 out of 8 challenges. The Blue Team only lost twice before I left. So, there was only 2 chances of me going to elimination, I’m not upset that I wasn’t voted for elimination, although I would have enjoyed to shoot either of those elimination challenges. They looked fun to shoot!

If you knew what the show was going to be like before you applied, would you still have applied? I think I would. This was an amazing experience, definitely a once in a life time opportunity.

This last episode, you had to deal with some very personal family things that were made very public on national TV. If you care to talk about it, can you give us some insights into how that situation unfolded and how the producers handled it? The producers were very sensitive to my situation, and I appreciated it. They were also very understanding when I told them I needed to go home.

Given your unfortunate early departure from the show, would you consider participating in next season’s Top Shot? Not sure about that one, haven’t really given it much thought. Why… Do you know something?

I’m really enjoying the show, and I can’t wait to watch the next 2 episodes, to see how this all plays out!

Go Blue Team!

What did you learn and what did you take away from the Top Shot experience? I learned so much through this experience, not only about the weapons and history of the weapons, but also I learned a lot about myself. I had a lot on my plate, and I’m proud that I was able to fight through it and still be able to focus on the challenges. I feel very fortunate to have had this opportunity. I also will never regret my decision to leave and be with my family.

This was an amazing experience, unlike anything I could have ever imagined. I can’t tell you how wonderful the other contestants were, I definitelymade some friendships that will last a lifetime.

I know every one was looking forward to seeing you win the Top Shot competition. We were all sad to see you go. Thank you for taking the time to chat with us. Thank you so much!

Tara makes her home in the greater Chicago area where she works as a police officer and K9 handler.

If you’ve been following the reality TV shot “Top Shot” on the History channel, you probably saw that Caleb Giddings was eliminated after going head to head against Adam Benson following a drama filled episode. Caleb was gracious enough to take a few minutes and talk to us about his experience and give us some insights into the show.

Cheaper Than Dirt: So, it’s come to this. I was really hoping to interview you again and congratulate you on your win, but it appears that was not to be.

Caleb Giddings: Ya know, these things happen. That’s the nature of the game I suppose.

Cheaper Than Dirt: It is a game after all. Obviously there was some game playing in between episodes between you and Adam. Adam had to know that you were good friends with Blake and JJ. What was he thinking?

Caleb Giddings: I don’ think that Adam realized just how close Blake and I actually were, despite the amount of time that we spent hanging out together. I think that he thought that I was just in it to play the game.

During the show, Adam said that he intended to “manipulate” you. Did you feel that Adam intentionally set you up, knowing that you might tell Blake and JJ of the conspiracy? I don’t think that he set it up for me to come across like a rat. I think that Adam’s plan was to see where I fit in with the voting bloc and when I told my friend that someone was conspiring against him he was surprised that he got his hand caught in the cookie jar and reacted… well, you saw how he reacted

I think every one watching the show knows how he reacted. Let’s talk about the Flintlock rifles for a bit. You’ve got some experience with these types of firearms, is that correct? I do. I shot a lot of muzzleloading rifles when I was much younger, back in high school. A friend of mine who was very much a into the muzzle loading community and I would shoot a lot of caplocks and flintlocks and that sort of thing. I have a very great passion for muzzleloaders, it’s just not something that I shoot very often anymore because most of my time is consumed with action pistol shooting.

Do you still own a flintlock? Or muzzleloader? You know, I used to but I sold it when I finished up college. I haven’t actually had one for quite some time.

So you went into this event a bit rusty. Yeah, I would definitely say I had let the flintlock and muzzleloading skills atrophy, and there is a huge difference between shooting a modern firearm and shooting a muzzleloding flintlock or a caplock. With a flintlock as you saw in the episode there is that long ignition time. It doesn’t feel that long when you’re actually shooting the gun, but there’s a huge difference in lock time between a flintlock and, say, a modern 9mm pistol.

And you don’t see that lag on a modern muzzleloading firearms? No, modern muzzleloading inline firearms use a much more efficient ignition system. They use higher volume caps, modern blackpowder substitute powders, so you will have a longer ignition time with a modern muzzleloader, but it won’t be anything like what you saw with a flintlock using traditional blackpowder.

You obviously felt pretty confident going into the team challenge, even going so far as to volunteer to take the most accurate shot. Do you regret that decision? Not one bit. I knew that with the rifle we had practiced with that I knew exactly where I needed to hold for a 125 yard shot and it would have just been of putting the sights on target and pressing the trigger. I would have been pretty confident with the results I would have gotten.

Now, they switched out rifles because the first flintlock was having some pretty serious problems with misfires, and you didn’t have a chance to practice with the replacement, right? That’s correct. The replacement was the expert’s rifle, Gary James. Everyone in the shooting community knows him, he’s an editor for Guns and Ammo, and just a really all around great guy.

I have to talk for a minute about the rifle he brought with him. That was, that rifle was a work of art. According to Gary I believe it was about a $15,000 handmade rifle, and it exemplifies the artistry and the attention to detail that goes into a truly custom weapon. I still just cannot thank him enough for letting us shoot that beautiful rifle. It was phenomenal.

Now that you’ve talked it up a bit, do you think that shooting that rifle affected how your shot went off? It absolutely did. Just because, I didn’t have the opportunity to practice with the rifle. The big difference when you’re shooting a muzzleloading rifle, or any rifle with fixed sights, is that you don’t know how much the bullet is going to drop at a given distance based on the sight picture.

So, using that rifle and using some of the information I’d gathered from my teammates, I just estimated the elevation and took the shot. Obviously I didn’t estimate well enough because I missed low on the target apparently.

Was it at least the same caliber as the initial rifle? Yes, the caliber was the same. The thing about a muzzleloading rifle is that there are so many variables that go into the flight of the bullet. Everything from bullet is placed on the patch, to the way it’s inserted into the bore, how much powder is inserted in, and the length of the barrel also affects the rifle. Generally muzzleloaders had such long barrels back in the day to make more efficient use of the powder. The barrel on Gary’s rifle was much longer than the barrel on the rifle we’d originally been using. So, it stood to reason that it would have a higher muzzle velocity as it would burn more powder as the bullet traveled down that barrel.

So you’ve got a different rifle, with a different personality, with sights that you’re not sure of, and a longer barrel which will give you a higher muzzle velocity. Can you say that if you shot the rifle you practiced with that the shot might have been on target? I believe that if I had been able to take the shot with the rifle that I practiced with that I would have definitely put it on the target. That being said, there’s no way to know that for sure, which is kind of the fun thing about all of this because it’s a lot of speculation.

I had felt very confident with my practice shots, with how the rifle had performed and with where I needed to aim to get the hit, so I do believe given the same rifle I would have made the shot. Now, I’m not trying to blame my equipment because even with that rifle it’s still a makable shot. It just made it more difficult-

Well, the purpose of the show is to feature marksmen who are able to pick up anything and be proficient with it. Absolutely. One of the things that was missed in my exit interview was that a truly great all around marksman can pick up any rifle and make difficult shots with it. I didn’t do that on the day that I missed that 125 shot. It’s unfortunate. I’ve got to tell you I would love to have another crack at that.

Do you think that, assuming you had the chance to do it all over again, if you had performed better on the team challenge, even if your team still lost, that it would have resulted in somebody else going to the elimination challenge against Adam? It’s hard to tell, there are so many variables that went into that elimination challenge vote that you don’t see in the episode. The episode did a great job of encapsulating the personality conflict between Adam and myself and that was a huge factor in who went in to the elimination challenge. I also said, and this was not in the episode, that “I missed the 125 yard shot, I had an opportunity to tie things up for my team and I let them down, so I should be in the elimination challenge.” And I welcomed that opportunity to take that shot at redeeming myself.

You felt that, based solely on your performance, that you should go to the elimination challenge. Absolutely. When you watch the episode you saw Chris talking about how I was the ringer on the muzzleloader. I had the expectation that I was going to be able to make that shot, and when it came down to it I didn’t. And you’re only as good as the last shot you fired.

Presumably you had to nominate yourself to be the ringer, so you kinda put yourself in the position of having the whole team ride on your shot. I did, absolutely. And again, I have no regrets about that. I believed at the time that I could have made the shot and unfortunately I wasn’t able to do it so I earned my spot in that elimination challenge.

You mentioned on the show that your head wasn’t exactly in the game. You know, it’s honestly hard to look back at that, because it was 3 or 4 months ago now, and tell you how much that mental aspect affected me. I can tell you it obviously did, because the whole team did not perform up to our usual standards. I think that had we not had all that team drama going on we would have done much better in the challenge, been more focused and get better hits.

Talk to me a bit about the distances you were shooting at. The TV makes it very difficult for viewers to see how far away from the targets you are during the various challenges. Some of them are obvious, like the flint lock challenge we’re shown the various targets and told that the farthest one, the one you shot at, was 125 yards away. But in other challenges like the lever action challenge I don’t recall being told how far away the rope actually was. It looked like you were reasonably able to get shots on the target, so it couldn’t have been too far.

Looking back on it I would say that that rope was no more than 7 yards away-

So it was actually very close… I want to say 7 yards sounds right, but that’s just me guesstimating through memory about how far away it was.

But that really shows how difficult the shot was, to have it that close and still run through that many rounds. It is a tremendously difficult shot. That piece of rope we were shooting at was maybe an inch wide, and you’re trying to hit it with a bullet that is less than a half an inch wide. When you add up those two variables it definitely is not an easy shot to make.

Looking back on it now, what I wish I would have done is slowed down. I ran the 73 winchester like it was a cowboy action match, loading fast and slamming bullets fast. With 20-20 hindsight, if I had slowed down and taken much more precise shots I probably could have severed that rope a lot quicker.

Now, on to the challenge itself. You got your first three shots down range and reloaded before Adam. Did you change your strategy or point of aim to help get a shot that would connect? Actually, I didn’t. What I had done during the practice, and I know this sounds crazy. During the practice I saw that we were shooting ladder rungs, I just had this crazy suspicion in my head that we were going to do the rope shot. We had Winchesters and we were shooting at these inch wide ladder rungs. I just had this sneaking suspicion in my gut that we were going to end up doing the rope shot.

In the practice I actually shot the sides of the ladder, the vertical rungs, to establish the windage of the gun. It was actually dead on right over the front sight. So, when we got to the challenge and we were shooting a vertical rope I just held right in the middle of the rope and tried not to mash on the trigger. Obviously with the speed that I was trying to run the gun at was not conducive to the accuracy that I needed.

Had you ever shot that style of lever action before? Like a ‘94 Winchester or something like that? Yeah, I have shot some lever guns a little bit.

So it wasn’t something completely new to you. No, it’s a familiar platform. I believe those were Navy Arms replicas that we were shooting, which are pretty top of the line. On that gun, the lever was silk, the gun was extremely accurate, and just very easy to shoot. They’re generally extremely forgiving and easy to shoot weapons.

What did you do to keep the elevation the same? How did you make sure that your point of aim was the same from shot to shot to make each round hit the rope in the same spot? Once I actually got a hit on the rope, I knew that the rifle was a 6 o’clock hold, so I just held the front sight right under that first cut in the rope and put the rest of the bullets on target there. Though obviously I didn’t get the out quite as effectively as I needed to.

Did you get any indication who the rest of the team was rooting for at the elimination challenge? Not really, I honestly couldn’t tell. It’s funny, when I was actually up there shooting I couldn’t hear the rest of the team cheering. I was only peripherally aware of Adam’s shots. I would occasionally hear Colby yell “someone got a hit,” I wasn’t honestly paying too much attention to it. It was just me and the rifle and my sights and the rope. I wasn’t aware of the cheering and clapping that was going on in the background until I actually saw the episode and saw how close it was between the two of us.

So, you weren’t aware at all of how Adam was doing? After he got the first hit on the rope, did you realize that? When Adam got his first hit on the rope I heard Colby say that he had hit his rope and then I hit my rope within a couple of shots after that. After that it was a blur until I saw the guillotine start to slide down.

Tell me what was going through your mind when Adam severed his rope and the weight dropped, blocking any further shots. “Crap, I lost!” {laughs} That was the extent of it. The next thing that went through my mind was “Wow, he really shot well.” I never at any juncture in any of this had an axe to grind with Adam. Obviously I didn’t think that the personal attacks and name calling was cool, but I wasn’t upset at him or just out to get him or anything like that.

I was really impressed with how well he shot and the accuracy of the fire that he put out. He definitely put out much more accurate fire than I did. I definitely proved the old adage “You can’t miss fast enough to catch up.”

The drama definitely put an interesting spin on things, with previous elimination challenges it was mostly just a head to head match up over who was the better shooter. I know you’ve talked about wanting to go up against the best and see how you fared. Do you feel like you got that opportunity, or do you feel cheated at all that so much drama played a role in this? I don’t feel cheated by the drama. Obviously I wish that the drama hadn’t happened because I would have loved to make it to the eventual point where we are one team and we’re all competing as individuals.

I would have loved to see how I would have stacked up against J.J. or Blake, not necessarily with a pistol but with whatever the producers would throw at us. And while I would have loved to have gotten that opportunity when it comes down to it I did go to Top Shot to shoot, I got the opportunity to shoot, and when it came down to it I lost fair and square. I’m extremely happy with my experience.

One thing that strikes me about the show is how they focus on a marksman being a person who can pick up virtually any projectile weapon, go into a situation they have no knowledge about, and be reasonably proficient with it. That’s an enormously difficult task, and the difficulty that some of the contestants had with the challenges really reflects that. What did you learn about having the ability to pick up any firearm and being able to be effective with it? One of the big lessons I learned is that when it comes to firearms, we’ll leave out bows and arrows, knife throwing or any of the other stuff, but when you’re shooting guns ultimately the fundamentals of shooting apply no matter what you’re doing. Sight alignment and trigger control are always going to be important. It’s just a matter of, sometimes you’re trying to do it fast, sometimes you’re trying to do it slow, and sometimes you’re trying to get a good balance of the two. It was very illuminating to me to have that opportunity.

One of the things I really liked about it is that there is never any better opportunity to compare yourself to shooters who are better than you are. Lots of guys will say, “Oh, you know, I’ll compare myself to shooters in my class,” but if you do that you’ll only end up being a big fish in a little pond. The only way to really know how good you are is to try to shoot against guys who are bigger than you. That’s why I go to Bianchi cup, and that’s I go to Top Shot, I want to see where I stack up next to the guys who are better than me. On Top Shot, I had that opportunity and I learned that there are some areas I need to improve in.

Now that you’ve been on the show, are you implementing any changes in your training based off of what you learned from being a contestant? Right now I am trying to focus a little bit more on accuracy in my training and in my practice. When I started my shooting career at the Coast Guard academy I was a tremendously accurate shooter, I was a bullseye shooter, and I did very well in the ‘01 Sectionals and some other matches. Since then I’ve let that foundation of accuracy slack off a little bit in favor of speed, and I’m looking to try to get some of that back. I focus a lot more on accuracy in my practice lately.

What did you take away from the experience with regards to competitive shooting? I think what I took away with regards to competitive shooting in general is that the most important thing you can do to be successful as a competitive shooter is mindset. It’s got nothing to do with your trigger control, nothing to do with your sight picture, it’s having the right mindset and the right frame of mind when you’re going into a competition. If you’re rattled, if you’re not focused, if you’re not thinking clearly when you’re getting ready to shoot that shot, it will have an effect on that shot and it will have an effect on your ability to win that competition.

The other thing that I learned is, don’t go into a competition expecting to win. This is something that is a kinda zen thing I picked up from the Brian Enos guys is that, don’t ever go into a competition expecting to win, but go in expecting only to perform as well as you can. When you go in expecting to win, you’ve probably already failed. That was kind of a good thing for me to learn, and it really took the Top Shot experience to really drive that home for me.

I guess, being surrounded by so many top level shooters, you’re kinda forced into the mindset of “You can only do what you can do.” Absolutely. It teaches you the very concept of going out to do your best, and when your best isn’t enough, you learn to do better. And that’s the expectation that you should have going into these competitions.

That’s something that I’m trying to carry with me now into the regular competitive shooting of IDPA and Steel Challenge, is I want to shoot to the best of my ability with no expectation of victory or anything like that. That will help keep the mental butterflies away as well.

I think that’s a great idea for a way to identify areas for improvement. If you come out of a match going “Well, I’m just not as fast as Dave Sevigny,” you’re not going to learn anything from that. If you go into there, shoot your best, and then identify where you fell short and where there’s room for improvement, then you’ve got a starting point. I agree with that 100%. The best way to diagnose yourself is to shoot against people who are better than you and not have any expectations of your performance going into the match. Then you can be honest and you can be clinical with yourself your breakdown of your performance.

Thanks for taking the time to follow up with us regarding your experience on Top Shot, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up the HAVA auction. You just successfully auctioned off a Sig Sauer 1911 with the Crimson Trace Laser Grips That’s correct, yeah the Sig 1911 went first and that was $1,200 right there, and currently up for auction is the Mossberg M590A1 at Gunbroker and that’s currently going for $400, although I haven’t checked it since this morning so that may have changed.

But for people who thought the Sig was a little too pricey, the Mossberg is much more cost effective, and you can never have too many 12 gauge shotguns.

That’s true, you know I own a Remington 870 and I just picked up a Mossberg M590A1 There you go.

There’s no reason not to have both. Absolutely, and the nice thing about that is the Mossberg and the Remington are basically the best examples of the 12 gauge pump in the world. You can compare and contrast them, put all kinds of crazy aftermarket parts on it and see what you like best.

And of course it doesn’t hurt to be familiar with the differences in the safeties on those shotguns, with the tang versus the crossbolt safety. That’s very true.

So, what else can we look forward to seeing in upcoming HAVA auctions? Coming up next we’re going to have an accessory package, it’s going to have some Crimson Trace lasers, and it’s going to have some other goodies for people’s various concealed carry needs. Then the very last week we’re going to have a very special item from DPMS that will also include more goodies from Crimson Trace and a really high quality scope from Leupold.

That sounds great. I might actually have to put in a bid on that myself. Well, thanks again for taking the time to talk to us, it’s a shame to see that you got eliminated. Do you think there’s any chance you might go back for season two? I would love to go back for season two, but not as a contestant. If I were to go back I’d want to go back as one of the experts.

It’s been great talking to you and we hope to talk to you again soon.

About our Guest Caleb makes his home with his wife in Indiana where he is a competitive shooter. Caleb is an active blogger as well as the host of Gun Nuts Radio.

Are you interested in becoming a Top Shot contestant? Now is your chance. The producers of Top Shot are holding an open casting call for individuals skilled with a pistol, rifle or any other firearm. If you’re interested in auditioning for the next Top Shot, email TopShotCasting@gmail.com with your name, city/state, phone number, a recent photo of yourself and a brief explanation of why you should be on the show. Deadline to apply is August 12, 2010. For more information, visit www.pilgrimfilms.tv and click on “CASTING” or call 818-478-4570 for more information.