These few days were pretty difficult!  As it starts off – yes, we did have practice sessions in the backyard, too bad they didn’t show me with my sling I made out of 550 paracord and duct tape, that thing was fun!  You lock 16 guys in a house for a week we need to do something!  The most boring day so far was when Red Team was at elimination, nothing to do all day long…  I’m a very efficient and productive person so the down time killed me.  No TV, books, internet, phone, watches – heck they even confiscated my flashlight!  I had never played so many chess, card or dice games my life.

The challenge was, well, challenging!  The worst part about it was the weather –40 degrees with a 30 mph wind.  You can see everybody bundled up and jumping around at the starting line, and then of course we were supposed to go through water as well.  I was pleased to get the first station, longer target, and stay dry.  I totally ran through that tunnel and as soon as Billy made it to the pit with me, we loaded our AK’s.  For safety reasons we were to run with unloaded marked magazines to the stations, and then put in live rounds in each bunker.  As soon as Billy shot the 50 yard target, I let mine rip on the 75 yard and BOOM.  End of our station.  We had our AK’s numbered from practice session and I had written the hold-over on my arm. I had to hold 4 inches right, and my hole was dead center on the further target.  That makes 2/2 on team challenges for my performance.  If you watch closely though you can see my other team members at other stations struggling with the weapon to get it to fire, I won’t get into that, but needless to say, Red Team finished off their targets before we did.

That first nomination meeting was extremely difficult, everyone did great, but we just didn’t fire fast enough.  If you look closely at the first scene in our meeting I’m playing paper, rock, scissors.  But Jake wouldn’t back off of from voting for Sarah so that didn’t leave us too much of a choice.  I tried to get them to back off by telling them it was her birthday on elimination day, but Jake has no heart.  We should have stood with her in hind sight, but team unity was my main concern at this point.  Mike pointed at me in our meeting and stated that I “Didn’t fit the mold for a shooter without any competitive or law enforcement experience” like the rest of the team – so I threw my hat in with Sarah, letting her know I had no problem losing to her if it were to give her a good birthday.  The team agreed of course because that meant they were safe (cowards) and on we went!  I voted for Billy because I had to throw a vote somewhere, and we just agreed to “trade licks” with each other with no hard feelings.

Sarah and I were then in elimination, I didn’t know the pressure I was signing up for, but somebody had to do it.  I really thought she was going to smoke me in this challenge after we learned it was to be with S&W M&P pistols.  She is a great person and a believer, so I hung with her a lot.  She is also an armourer, SWAT team member, firearms instructor, and owns the pistol we were to use.   I was feeling pretty intimidated, but I just figured I would shoot my best and trust God with the rest.  My main purpose of competing was to be able to shoot cool guns and have some fun so I might as well make the best of it!  It would be a lot better if you knew the weapons and challenges before nomination, but no – one can only speculate.  Practice goes well but the challenge goes great!  Once I knew what we were doing I was pumped!  One of the producers came to take a picture of us before we started, and he made me stop smiling and put my “thumbs up” away. When we started I had no idea how well I’m doing or how she is doing.  All I know is target – shoot!  Target – shoot!  I was having a blast.  Turns out I shocked the mess out of my teammates.  As you can see when I heard the score I had shocked myself!  When Colby told me I had hit one friendly I thought the score was going to be close, but yeah, almost perfect.  There were only 26 targets and I killed 24 of them.  If I had another chance I know I’d get them all.  My main advantage is I was just having fun with guns!  I hated sending Sarah home, but that is the nature of the beast at Top Shot.  Planning to head to Bass Pro this weekend and load up on guns and ammo (after I let my wife and kids buy something first).  Looks like I earned the respect of my team, hopefully we can pull together and stay in this thing.  Keep watching, it’s going to be a wild ride!

Shoot Straight,
Follow His Way,
Dustin