I'm occasionally asked if the Top Shot experience did anything for me, besides the ability to buy a bit more ammo. Well, today's thrilling installment of my Season 2 review is brought to you from sunny downtown Prescott, Ariz., rather than my usual watering hole in Oregon, as this week I'm attending an industry shoot at Gunsite with the likes of Bryce Towsley and Ed Head. So yeah, there's been an entire career change in the course of a few months and to be honest, my head's still spinning. I hope that the Season 2 competitors manage to turn their appearance on the show to their advantage as like their predecessors, they're all pretty much just regular guys with a passion for the shooting sports.

Planning for Season 3 is already well underway (casting interviews are next week in LA) and one has to wonder what the producers will come up with for non-firearm projectile weapons next time around. Lets see; stick bow, check. Compound bow, check. Anyone want to put money on the appearance of a recurve later this year?

In last night's competition it seemed the blue team had a marked disadvantage from the outset. When Colby asked for a show of hands with regards to prior experience with the compound bow, it looked as if almost the entire red team had shot one, versus only a couple for blue, and when Chris Reed saw that Bowtech on the table, he was grinning like a Cheshire cat. The blues did fairly well in practice despite their lack of experience but their cohesiveness in competition was not as great as the guys wearing the red shirts, possibly due to tensions between team members. I'm not sure I agree with a couple of comments from the red team regarding the blue team's ignorance in regards to Maggie Reese's form during the competition. Maggie wasn't using the peep sight during the team challenge, and that would have been obvious from red's perspective as they were off to the side; not so much from blues' vantage point behind her.

I love the setting of the nomination range this year. It's burned-over, post-apocalyptic look is the perfect backdrop for the decisions that are made there. In this case, blue team showed that their strict, performance-based strategy has its limitations when it comes to planning for the long game. Next week the 1911 returns with race guns and plate racks. You think an Open division 3-gunner might prove to be an asset in those conditions? I realize that Maggie had a shaky start, but I have a feeling she'll be sorely missed when Blake Miguez and JJ Racaza return to show off the skills for which they're rightly famous.