By Iain Harrison

This week's show opened with Terry Vaughan employing the skills he uses in his everyday life to try and instill a little unity to the dysfunctional blue team (he's a motivational speaker, amongst other things, in case you missed his bio), which seemed to have a positive effect, at least in the short term. At the practice range, I have to fault the editing as neither of the teams appeared to hone in on the critical aspect of the challenge to come—that of cocking and loading the crossbow quickly and smoothly. The shooting aspect would have been familiar to everyone (stock, trigger, sights), but no one apart from Tim Trefren was used to getting the crossbow into action. Unfortunately for him, his acknowledgement of this fact meant he sat out the challenge.

During the team challenge, the red team made the wise decision to put Gabby in the hot seat first—with only one target to engage, her small stature was less of a disadvantage as she would only need to cock the 150-pound bow one time. Unfortunately, she fumbled the load, giving William and the blue team an early lead. Gabby did not however fumble as badly as Greg Littlejohn, whose difficulty in getting the bow into action and subsequent flustered shots allowed Chee Kwan to put red back on top. I was impressed by Chee's mental toughness; despite going into the round with a mountain to climb, he calmly shot his own match and allowed his opponent to beat himself. It appeared that just about everyone who missed a target overestimated its speed, with the majority of the bolts passing in front. Note to self; modern crossbows are pretty fast.

Team Smith & Wesson sent along Julie Golob for coaching duties for the elimination challenge. On a side note, it was good to see neither Colin nor Greg had any ego issues with getting shooting tips from a woman. This was just as well, as Julie could have slapped them down, hard. The art department again outdid themselves with a target array that required mental gymnastics from the shooters—shoot the large, static plate to release a swinging target that had progressively smaller and faster-moving hit zones. The lead required to score a hit increased as the challenge progressed, while the target exposure decreased, and the stress this placed on the shooters was evident. In the final analysis, neither displayed exceptional skill or lightning fast reloads, though, as my friend J.J. Racaza wryly observed, Greg did seem very in touch with his emotions.