I mentioned that Top Shot season 3 competitor Cliff Walsh, the revolver expert, was discussing the show on Brian Enos’s Forums. Now Mike Hughes, inventor of the SIRT training pistol, has joined him:
Hi Friends. Just found this lead in this forum. Sorry for not participating sooner.
Next Show
This next week things heat up regarding the team dynamics, but more importantly, we get trained up by the great one, Jerry M. Even though this week is “trick shooting”, trick shooting taxes the fundamentals, usually isolating certain fundamentals.As for myself (as shown in the previews!! no spoilers) I get taxed on natural point of aim which is premised on GRIP and STANCE…. blind fold shooting. Fun Stuff.
There will be some severe social dynamics (sic. drama) and in defense of Pilgrim, I finally get it, without human dynamics the show would fall flat. I noted some comments that the drama is induced or promoted, but honestly it is real. In some ways it is worse then they show on tv. Its like this, cock fighting is real, but contrived. The male roosters have their heads rubbed together, razor blades on their feet, female hens in the room….. the environment dictates behavior patterns. Well, I humbly say that we are no smarter than the roosters. Throw us away from our families, no phones, no laptop, no books?!, no external stimulus, no extensive training (more on that later)… just socializing day after day after day. It accelerates the “social dynamics”. Now add on that we throw each under under the bus (send to elimination) and things go volatile (or very ugly).
Cliff!
I see Cliff is active on here and I have to say I have the utmost respect for Cliff. He was a great addition to the house and I wish we were team mates.Benefits of Top Shot to our Community
In closing, I love this show because it promotes firearms in a positive light. Its a competition, yes, not like USPSA, IDPA, Bulls Eye or what we are used to… we have to perform with limited training. In the big picture the viewers are grandpa and grandson, girlfriends, recreational shooters, even anti-gun folk watch this show and see firearms utilized in a positive manner, thats why I signed up. It touches a much larger audience. I truly believe Top Shot adds tremendous value to our shooting community (or at least thats what got me through the filming!! ). My objective was to positively represent the competitive shooting community.Thanks all!
Mike Hughes
He continues:
Regarding competing in Elimination
Actually after 5 episodes and riding the pine on the revolver dice challenge, I am not kidding, I think I was kind of hitting a depression. Sounds wussy-ish but seriously, I felt clinically unproductive. After a week of doing very little ok, kind of like a vacation. After another week…not used to being that unproductive. So volunteering to elimination made the most sense. There is only one winner in the end anyway so lets figure it out early. I didn’t want to go home, but if Jarrett smoked me, so be it. It really could have gone either way.Canon Insights
I don’t know if the behind the scenes details are interesting or not, but when I was practicing with the canon, that lanard took a lot of force to break the sear to send a round. So after 5 shots (of 7) I had some time so I was dry firing and when I yanked the lanyard once I noticed the whole canon moving like a 1/2 inch or so! Oh Crap…. You see part of the practice was sighting in the canon so I was chasing rounds that were flying everywhere possibly because I was not executing proper form on the lanyard (cord). The expert was a great guy, but he mentioned, ” I was a afraid of that” and instructed me to put more pretension on the lanyard before I wacked it with that wooden member. It was good advice, but honestly I was thinking, ‘ I could have really used that info 20 min ago!’. Anyhow, so I did some calculating for the last two rounds and figured my 9:00 adjustments may have been flawed and did the best corrections for the last two shots… I did NOT go into that challenge confident. Than goodneess I say my first round go 12:00 and demolish the hillside over that tower or I would have been totally screwed. I was aiming 6:00 in the competition. Fine line between success and failure. Jarrett is a great guy and great competitor. Tremendous athlete and shooter.I recall the expert saying the shells were about $120 per. So 12 shots… Chalk up $1440 to Pilgrim Films!
Personally I think the technical details of the equipment, training, gear, what we saw during the competition with these crazy weapons are more entertaining then some of interview crap they put on the show. If you all want I can totally provide some of these details. TS3 was a very surreal experience. Lot of social dynamics down the pipe but some fantastic challenges and shooting ahead!
A bit more:
Remember every episode has 3 days of living of 10+ people that is crammed into 44 min. The editors do a good job of grabbing relevant content to paint a picture. I did not know Marreli had such propensity to let his mouth write checks his body couldn’t cash until I watched the show and seen his interviews.
One on one I got along with Jake and when we were having meetings and such, he did add value. I don’t have an ego where I have to lead, Jarrett and I didn’t care. I did have some producer interview questions thrown at me like, “Mike you started a company, NextLevelTraining.com, bla bla, how do you feel if Jake drives a meeting?” I generally answered, “…look if he is taking the initiative and adding value, I am supportive. It is not easy to drive a meeting and put some agenda together. Jake is a college coach so he has skill sets in that arena.” However, the key element is add value. I said it in interviews, straight to Jake and will say it here, Jake simply needs a coping mechanism to deal with criticism. Without that, things go to DEFCON 2.
By the way, the Pilgrim Films he mentions puts together a number of popular reality shows, including The Ultimate Fighter and Dirty Jobs.