I don't know about many of you, but one of my favorite shows is the History Channel's Top Shot. The shooting competition is a lot of fun to watch with competitors working to out gun one another in various contests to determine the "Top Shot" for the season.
I really have to say that one of the parts of the show that I dislike is the elimination type format that takes place on the show. It parallels CBS' Survivor, in that people are nominated for elimination for some sort of reason and often, it's not due to shooting ability. During the elimination nomination discussions, drama is often the center of attention as there are always a couple of people who appear to be very conceited and do not believe that they posses any deficiencies, despite the fact that they often lack character. These people are often the main villains for the show and thankfully, none of the them have made it to the final competition.
This season's problem maker is William. He is a former Virginia State Trooper Officer and I am ashamed to say that he is one of my brethren in that he is a former Marine. There is no disputing the man's talent, he is obviously very skilled which shows when he is practicing for a competition. When there was the trick shooting challenge, William was reluctant to shoot the .22 rifle for some reason only he could know. Once his teammates finally convinced him, William effectively chided them by calling them scared. The funny thing was that William was amazing with the .22, shooting quite possibly better than all of the competitors. Of course, during the trick shooting competition, William failed to completely deliver the goods and his team lost. During the discussion for elimination he also made excuses for his shooting by blaming the wind. He ended up winning the Elimination challenge in a convincing demonstration of pistol marksmanship, beating his opponent in a landslide.
Today, William was eliminated in one of the best ways imaginable and he shouldn't have even been there. William was always very conceited, basically talking about how others were afraid and bragging about his accomplishments all the time. However, during the discussion before the elimination voting, William stated something to the effect that he would aim for middle of the pack in the upcoming matches. Chris, taking exception to the comment changed his voting approach and shot William's target to help him go to elimination. Gregg Littlejohn provided the other vote for William, which he admintted was driven by revenge for William throwing him under the bus the last nomination.This ended up placing William up against Chris in this week's elimination challenge.
Like most of the elimination challenges, Top Shot did not disappoint in the set up. It was a head to head competition, shooting five sets of three targets that appeared to be two rings surrounding a bulls eye which the competitors had to knock down using a lever action rifle. The action started out with William taking a commanding lead of approximately five targets. It appeared that Chris was going to lose in a landslide, but then something amazing happened; Chris started catching up in swift action and William choked. After about target seven for him, Chris started hitting target after target, rarely missing with more than a shot per target. Meanwhile, at about target twelve, William started shooting too fast without getting his natural point of aim. In fact, he actually managed to pull the trigger several times without even getting the rifle on target. If he had been shooting on a controlled range it would have been likely that William would have found himself in violation of range safety rules. It ended up that while William was reloading with just two targets remaining, Chris hit target after target and rare missed. As Chris knocked down target fourteen and appearing to have all of the momentum, he took aim on the last target and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened because he had run out of ammunition in the rifle.
As Chris brought down the rifle to commence loading the rifle, William had completed his reloading and took aim at his last two targets and knock target fourteen down. The challenge then came down to the last target and William had about two shots into the last target as Chris shouldered his rifle with less than a full magazine. Both competitors made another shot on their final target and then Chris pulled the trigger and sealed William's fate. William was then sent packing without really any love loss from any of the remaining contestants. Happy trails William, your send off brought a smile to my face.
