9/17/2010

Top Shot champion Iain Harrison sat down with NRA E-media to answer questions from American Rifleman's Facebook and Twitter pages.

Q: How did you prepare for the competition? (Jeff Love via Facebook)
A: I had two weeks [to prepare]. So I called up a friend of the gun club I shoot in, a guy named Adam Schmidt, who shoots SASS and western 3-gun, and I asked him if he could teach me how to run a [Colt] Single Action Army, because that was a huge gap. You have to go into your weaknesses, obvious gaps in your knowledge base, and I spent a few hours of his time and his own ammunition (it’s always good to run with somebody else’s ammo). [And he] taught me how to run a Single Action Army reasonably competently. And it came up. It’s one of the quintessential American guns, so I figured going into the show, it’s probably going to show up.

Most other things I was fairly confident in. I was going to try to get ahold of a stick-bow to shoot because all my archery experience in the past was shooting something with pins and wheels on it, and I shoot a release, so it’s more akin to shooting a rifle than shooting a bow. I wasn’t able to pull that together and it came back to bite me.

Q: What do you think of the differences between the United Kingdom’s gun laws vs. the United States? (Christopher Lambert via Facebook)
A: One of the reasons I left the U.K. was the change to the U.K. gun laws in 1997 that meant that I had to surrender all my handguns. There were only 20,000 pistol shooters in the U.K. at the time, so a very small minority in country of 60 million. It was an election year, when the government decided it needed to look tough on crime, there had been a school shooting and hanging out legitimate firearms owners seemed to them the obvious way to go. So they knew exactly how many [guns] they had and where to find them, so they said turn them in or you get 10 years. They changed the laws in 1997, they took effect in 1998, and I moved in October of 1998.

Q: Are there any physical exercises you do specifically to improve your shooting? (Michael Prato via Facebook)
A: I run, I lift weights occasionally. In fact, I just did a race.

Q: What’s your favorite food? (Peter Sviatko via Facebook)
A: Well, I’m British, so obviously the national dish is curry. I’m a big fan of Indian food.

Q: How would you compare the trick shots on Top Shot to more traditional shooting disciplines like bullseye pistol, action pistol or small-bore shooting? (John D. Rickards via Facebook)
A: The trick shots kind of put everybody outside of their comfort zone. It’s not something you can do on a regular range. Practice was slim to none. It was pretty much a level that everyone got into. If you could pick things up then it was an advantage in the contest.

Q: Do you think your level of physical fitness played a part in your success? (“Yessir Thatsafact” via Facebook)
A: I’m nowhere near as fit as I used to be, but I think being able to steady your gun and line up the sights when you’ve done something that’s physically exerting to start with and having that baseline level is an advantage for anybody. If you look at most of the top-level shooters in the action disciplines, they aren’t fat.

Q: Was it as much fun as it looked? (Kevin Webster via Facebook)
A: There was a lot of time in between shots and in between challenges where you were waiting around. For the majority of shooters who are pretty driven people to get to that competitive level, the likes of J.J. Racaza and Blake Miguez, once you get to that level, in the sports, it’s always doing something next, training for the next event—it’s going through dry-fire practice, working out. I don’t put myself in that bracket by any stretch of the imagination. But the downtime was significant, that was the biggest downside to the whole event.

The reason it appeared like we knew each other that well was because we spent 24 hours a day together in a very close proximity. Either eight people crammed in a room while we were bunking or there were eight people crammed in a van while we were waiting for things to happen. So the amount of fart jokes…

Q: Of all the guns you handled over the course of the show, which was your favorite? (Rachel E. Tassi via Facebook)
A: My favorite had to be the SVT-40, the Russian 7.62x54 mm rimmed semi-auto. [It was] the first time I shot one, and saw the level of technology the Russians brought to the battlefield in World War II in comparison to what everyone else was fielding, like the Germans. I felt the SVT was very interesting from that standpoint. Full-power, rimmed battle-rifle cartridge in a semi-auto with a detachable boxed magazine and a muzzle break. It had a reasonably good trigger and decent sights.

Q: If you could design a trick shot/challenge, what would it be? (SierraLima1 via Twitter)
A: A two-mile run with a 50-pound backpack followed by shooting five different firearms on a zip-line. I’m really big into Trooper Class 3-gun. Everything you need for the competition, you carry. The ammunition, the guns, you’ve got to carry it on your back. There’s a physical challenge to it. It’s fun.

Q: Other than lots of practice, what helps you stay focused and make that shot? (Jerry Riggins via Facebook)
A: Visualization. That is by far the biggest advantage that you can bestow upon yourself. Having the ability to visualize what you’re going to be doing next. Having that run through, having that mental movie with your eyes closed—you can visualize how the sight is going to look on that target, what the sight’s going to do when you break the shot, how the shot’s going to feel. If you’ve done that, you’ve made the shot already.

If you took all that ammo that we shot over the course of that 33 days, it would make up only about a stage and a half of the Iron Man. Part of the challenge of the show, I think the concept of the show, was that you had limited practice. You had to run what you brought, and because you have very limited practice, the ability to pick up new skills was critical to it. When you had a practice run, you maybe got 10 rounds, that’s it. Whereas you probably burn between three and five hundred in a normal practice session.

Q: What is your favorite rifle/pistol? (Sawyer Nichols via Facebook)
A: My favorite rifle at the moment is, well, it’s a hard choice, because they’re both British rifles. One is the Lee-Enfield Mk. 4, built in 1941. My other current favorite is my Accuracy International AW.

Q: What caliber are you most accurate with? (Bill Mutch via Facebook)
A: [Laughing] Accuracy is relative. I was just ringing steel plates at 1,200 yards with my AI, so I guess .308.