World Shoot-off Championship® 2001. A Previously Unheralded Shooter Wins his first "Major" with a Stunning Upset over a Field of Fast Guns - STI/American Handgunner®

American Handgunner, Jan-Feb, 2002 by Dave Anderson

Let's wander along the shooting bays at the San Juan range and check out what's happening. There's a group of shooters with all-out race-guns, exotically modified and comped STIs, Para-Ordnances, Caspians. Multiple chamber compensators, C-Mores, Aimpoints and ProPoints, holsters right out of Star Wars. The high-pitched crack of cartridges firing light, fast bullettes. It looks like a detail at an IPSC open-class match.

Hold on, though. In the next bay the shooters are dressed in clothes from the 1800s, authentic in detail right down to the buttons. Stag-handled Colt and Ruger single-actions, real leather holsters and cartridge belts, the deep throated rolling boom of .44s and .45s firing real man's bullets. Okay, we must be at a cowboy match.

Not so fast. Just down the line it's back to the modern world. Well-worn, inside-the-waist holsters from Milt Sparks and Mitch Rosen, behind-the-hip belt scabbards from Wilson, Kramer and Galco. Glocks and Berettas and 1911s, grips and slides worn shiny as though they are carried every day-- which in fact they are. Looks like IDPA country.

We're not done yet. There's still Stock Auto, Stock Revolver, Modified Revolver, Open Revolver, plus the side events: .22 pistol, .22 pump, .22 semiauto and cowboy shotgun and rifle, bolt-action rifle, semiauto, and of course the stake shoots.

By now we've got if figured out. This is no ordinary match. This is the STI/American Handgunner[R] World Shootoff Championship[R], where competitors from every discipline come together for head-to-head competition at one of the finest shooting facilities in the world, in one of the most beautiful places in the world. This is the match where you'll test your nerve under pressure while firing more rounds and having more fun than you ever imagined. This is, simply put, shooter's heaven.

10th Anniversary

This year marked the 10th anniversary of the STI/American Handgunner World Shootoff Championship. It started when Paul and Kerry Miller, owners of Colorado Cast Bullets, undertook the ambitious project of building a world-class shooting facility. They found the ideal property a few miles from Montrose, Colo., over 100 acres backed by BLM land, meaning little risk of encroachment by neighbors. Here they built their house and facilities for the bullet-casting operation and set about building the range facilities.

Today the San Juan Shooting Range has 22 separate pistol bays and a 300-yard rifle range. It hosts a series of popular matches every year for various shooting disciplines from IPSC to cowboy action. The jewel in the crown is the STI/American Handgunner World Shootoff Championship, a match that brings enthusiasts from many places and disciplines together.

American Handgunner founded the match with Paul Miller, sponsoring it from the beginning and according it the same sort of coverage as that given to the Bianchi Cup, IPSC Nationals and other major matches. For 2001 we were joined as match sponsors by STI. It seems fitting that STI, whose pistols have achieved tremendous success and popularity in various practical shooting disciplines, would be involved in a match that brings such disparate disciplines together.

Over the years the match has had great champions: shooting legends such as Jerry "Burner" Barnhart, Jethro "Jet" Dionisio and the amazing Jerry Miculek, who doesn't have a snappy nickname but is universally recognized as the best revolver shooter in the world.

In 2000, Everett Brunelle amazed the competition world when he beat the Grand Masters with their exotic raceguns using his stock autopistol.

The 2001 champion is Angus Hobdell. Hobdell achieved Grand Master status in IPSC competition while living in England. Facing confiscation of his pistols in England, Hobdell and many other competitive shooters established addresses in other European countries where they could travel to practice and compete. Predictably, with a disarmed populace, property crimes and violence have skyrocketed in Britain to levels several times higher than those in the United States. Hobdell wisely chose to avoid these intolerable levels of violence by leaving England and moving to the relative peace and security of Arizona.

Hobdell won the Open Auto shootoff as well as the grand finale. What's his recipe for success? "I don't approach this as a speed match. It's more of a precision match. Some of the targets, such as the one-third scale poppers, are tough shots," the transplanted Limey said.

Achievement at the top level of any sport is as much mental as physical, but Hobdell feels the shootoff format is the toughest of all. "You have to just shut out what your opponent is doing and have the mental control to focus on accuracy, one target at a time," he says. Hobdell shoots an STI pistol, drawing from the very fast and popular Ghost Holster, which he also markets.

D.R. Middlebrooks also won twice, taking the IDPA class and the Stock Auto championship. Middlebrooks and his wife Barbara run the Tactical Shooting AcadEmy in Virginia. His carry and competition gun is an EAA 9mm loaded with Cor-Bon ammunition, worn in a Cen-Dex belt holster. He likes the EAA because it is simple, reliable and inexpensive. About the only change he's made is to add a wide, shallow rear V-sight combined with a red fiberoptic front sight.