Terry Vaughan's Blog

Hello mates!

Terry Vaughan & Gregory Littlejohn during the team challenge for episode 3 of Top Shot

I wish you all could have been a fly on the wall inside my head the day we arrived at the practice range for the 3rd episode of Top Shots’ season 4, “Shotgun Showdown”.  Well, actually, it’s probably best that some of you weren’t inside my head – the language would have made a sailor blush, hahaha.

Of all the challenges in the world, I thought ‘they have to throw clays at me???’.  In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you I’ve only shot clays four times.  No joke, and two of those times was to practice before competing on Top Shot!  I can hear your mouths gaping in shock from here…  Watching it all again last night definitely makes me wish I’d made time for more clay practice before heading out for the competition.  Oh well, hindsight is always 20/20 and I wanted to be sure I could throw an ax, a tomahawk, a hammer, marbles, or hell… snowballs if it came to that, but there are only so many hours in a day. LOL!

Everything I typically practice is for semi-auto pistols and revolves around fast target acquisition,  front site, trigger press and follow through.  And as the old adage proclaims, what you practice in training is what you will do under stress, nothing more, nothing less.  It is why training and practice is so important for those that carry firearms for their profession and/or self-protection.

Chris Reed, our expert for the practice (& the most likeable guy in the world, by-the-way) repeatedly told me to avoid looking at the front site post on the shotgun when bringing the rifle up to fire -  he did his part!  Apparently this old dog wasn’t learning new tricks while under the pressure of competition…

You can imagine my sheer pleasure (sarcasm, obviously!) at seeing the elimination challenge was going to be yet another shotgun competition!  I swear, if they had brought out more clays I’d have been sobbing and probably shooting the side of the mountain again.  But alas, thankfully it was a much more traditional shooting competition – if one can use that to describe a challenge on Top Shot.  I actually felt hope at this point which meant the only tears we got to witness last night were Greg’s…LOL! Sorry Greg…couldn’t resist!

Taran Butler did a great job of coaching me during my practice and managed to help me settle my nerves.  It’s always hard after I’ve performed poorly to bring back the old swagger of thinking I can still do well.  In the end it came down to this line of thinking for me:  If I perform as well as I can and I win, I’ll earn a $2000 Bass Pro Gift Card and remain in the competition.  But if I do as well as I can and I lose, then at least I would have the reward of reuniting with my wife and kids a little earlier than expected!

Season 4 Top Shot Shotgun Showdown practice for Terry Vaughan

Realizing I’d win either way settled me down enough to think the challenge through.  I could tell it was going to take perfect timing to keep the wheel rolling and that fast reloads would be paramount.  After practice I took the time to meditate and pictured reloading and dealing with potential problems for more than an hour.  This helped me tremendously.

During my first reload, I glanced across at Michelle Viscusi’s target but quickly chastised myself for caring about how far her wheel had traveled.  I couldn’t do a darn thing about her performance – I could only control how fast, smooth and efficiently I moved.  I didn’t look across at her target again for the duration of the competition.

You know what  kept saying to myself…?  I kept repeating in my mind ‘acquire the target…  wait for the rocking motion…  front site…  trigger press…  follow through…  reload’.  At this point I felt positive that my mental state and good training would get me through this elimination challenge.  I can appreciate the irony that it was the same ingrained training, front site, trigger press etc that got me into this elimination, and the same training was going to get me out of it!

Needless to say I will certainly be headed to the skeet/clay range more regularly from now on.  In fact, after all of the offers to help me practice my clay skills came in via Facebook.com/tvspeaks & Twitter.com/terry_empowers last night, I don’t think I’ll be short of great people wanting to help me improve my clay skills.  But in a life or death situation, given the choice between my current training in CQC (Close Quarters Combat)  pistol/rifle shooting and bringing down flying pots – I’m going to embrace my fast front post and target acquisition skills and work on forgiving myself for not hitting anything but the mountain during the last team challenge on Top Shot!

Cheers,

Terry

Hello again mates!

Blue Team getting ready for practice with the BAR

It would seem that I am going to have to resign myself to the fact that I will be watching the new season of Top Shot wearing two hats: the first hat as a huge fan of the show (something I’ve been since Season 1!) and the second as a competitor experiencing the competitions first hand.   Since this is my Blog I only speak for myself, so remember it’s my opinion only…and the only one that counts here, haha!

During episode 2 ‘Down in the Trenches’ a few things went right and a few things went wrong, but we managed to come through with a Blue Team win.

Arriving on set the day of competition was mind boggling – the sets and challenges are even more amazing in person!  The amount of people and work that goes into setting up the Top Shot competitions is staggering.  When we walked up and got our first look at what the challenge was going to be, it was one of those moments where I thought “Wow!!  All of this for us?”.  Of course it wasn’t just for us, it’s ultimately for the viewers, but I allowed myself the moment of it feeling like Disney World for shooters!  Just knowing we had exploding targets was enough to make me want to dance.  Let’s face it, you probably wouldn’t need to add anything else besides exploding targets for most practitioners of shooting to get excited.

Picture of Former Navy SEAL Craig "Sawman" Sawyer sharing advise with former British Commando Terry Vaughan

Then I noticed the World War I props, including trenches, the BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle), fire, mortars, barbed wire, HD cameras….okay, so the cameras brought me back to this century…but you get the idea.  Both teams were pumped!  I knew the competition was really on when Colby put his hands on his hips and explained to us what was going to happen.

Augie went first for a reason.  During practice he was solid with shot placement and as he never seems to get rattled, we figured he could handle shooting the first target minus a spotter and still get it done.  After a few magazine changes he did it.  Hey, when you aim where you know you need to aim with a particular rifle and the hits don’t happen, it can get VERY lonely VERY quickly and he held it together!  Check out Augie’s humorous side of the story on History’s Anatomy of a Shot http://www.history.com/shows/top-shot/videos/anatomy-of-a-shot-in-the-trenches#anatomy-of-a-shot-in-the-trenches.

Okay, next competitor please…  Greg whizzed under the barbed wire and entered the trench.  He had Augie spotting, and even amongst the background noise of exploding targets, both teams yelling instructions and mortar rounds going off, you can still hear Augie – he is anything but the shy retiring type…in fact, when he wants to be, he’s downright obnoxiously loud…but in a good way! Hahaha.

Instead of listing off everyone individually I’m going to scoot through to me (selfish, I know, but it’s my Blog, so there).  Sufficed to say everyone hit their target.  A few more quickly than others, but most after a few mag changes.  But they got it done!  Enter moi…

During practice I was solid, even at the furthest targets, which was why I was anchoring the team challenge for this event.  As a Royal Marine, I once held the job of a door gunner in a Lynx helicopter and that experience payed dividends during practice.  It hadn’t escaped me that we were supposed to be shooting what is essentially a spray and pray machine gun for accuracy…but hey, it’s not called Top Shot for nothing!  Accurate fire is achievable if the bursts are short and you practice good trigger control.  That’s what I did when firing from the Lynx, otherwise I would’ve had rounds all over the English countryside.

I wasn’t concerned until after my second 3 round burst at the furthest target yielded zero booming explosion.  I placed the front site exactly where I had the previous day – it was a very Zen moment as I squeezed the trigger and let loose a short burst of fire.  Nothing.  Up until this moment I wasn’t really stressed about all of the instructions being generously shared by my Blue teammates but the Zen in me started quickly leaving.  I’m used to the constant chatter of having 3 kids so all the shouting was purely background noise to me.  No big deal… until it became apparent that where I was aiming and where the rounds were going differed and then – I must admit – some anxiety crept in.  Just a little…LOL.

Terry Vaughan talking about not panicking during a competition...

So then I began listening to everyone.  In a team competition the adrenaline begins to flow, excitement is high and I knew Blue Team needed a win.  We had suffered through a hard time with the revolver during our loss in the 1st challenge.  I was determined not to be the cause of another Blue Team debacle, but I let panic begin to nip at my heels.  On any other day, in any other competition, I don’t panic!  EVER.  But I wanted this win so badly I ignored my own Golden Rule to Life — never panic.

Instead, I tried to listen to the advice of the entire team all at once.  It wasn’t their fault, it was mine.  Will had found where my rounds were hitting and was yelling to me their placement.  I told him I needed  him to stop telling me where they were landing and to tell me where I needed to aim.  That combined with Greg and Augie yelling for everyone else to be quiet ultimately helped me out.    This was a very simple shift in communication, during a highly stressful situation, and exactly what I needed in order to get the hit.  Then BOOM!

After the initial high of blowing up my target, an emotion that lasted all of about 2 seconds, all I wanted to do was lay down.  I was completely knackered!

I’m not a big one for man hugs, but after the challenge ended I gladly accepted support from Greg and Augie to keep me on my feet…and sometimes a good old bro’ hug is needed!

Thanks for watching the show, supporting the Blue Team and helping make this season of Top Shot the best yet!

Don’t forget to go LIKE my Fan Page www.facebook.com/tvspeaks & follow me on www.twitter.com/terry_empowers for updates throughout each episode of the show!

Cheers,

Terry