By Turner Thompson hasn’t been riding horses all that long, but his results in cowboy mounted shooting events give the impression he has.
Mounted shooting is an event in which a competitor rides a horse and navigates a course, turning around barrels or flags while shooting at 10 balloons attached to those objects. Riders use a revolver, a level-action rifle and a shotgun.
Thompson, who’s from Groton, began competing when he was 12 and at age 14 became the youngest competitor ever to advance to the highest level of the Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association.
“I was the youngest rider to ever reach Men’s Level 6, which is the highest level you can compete in,” he said. “I was 14 years, eight months old when I broke the record, which had been around for about 30 years.”
In addition to setting that record, Thompson set his sights on other marks and has hit those as he’s progressed through his now fifth year of competition. They include being:
- A five-time American Quarter Horse Association world champion.
- A three-time calvary world champion.
- The 2024 Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association reserve overall world champion.
- The 2023 College National Finals Rodeo $10,000 Shootout champion.
- The 2022 Mounted Shooting Association futurity champion.
- And the 2020 reserve rookie of the year.
Groton’s Turner Thompson aims and fires during the Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association United States Championships in Lincoln, Neb. Courtesy photo.
His most recent accomplishment, winning his fifth AQHA world championship, came in October in Las Vegas while riding a horse that was anything but familiar to him.
“I won my fifth title on my sister Taryn’s horse, and I had never ridden her before, so that was kind of cool, actually,” Thompson said.
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He cites his mother June as the first member of the family to begin mounted shooting. That was when he was 8 or so.
It was a rather innocuous beginning.
“She was scrolling through Facebook one night and saw a poster of a guy shooting a gun off a horse and was like, ‘I’m going to start doing that,’ and my dad was like, ‘Yeah, right.’ But sure enough, she got a horse and started it,” Thompson said.
Like mother, like son
Invariably, son followed mother to events. While Turner was into riding, shooting off a horse wasn’t quite his thing yet because he was so young.
“I wasn’t into it. I couldn’t shoot the gun, I could only dry-fire them, so I was just like, ‘This stinks. I’m not gonna do this,'” he said.
That changed when his family purchased a horse named Vintage Nic Nak for him. Thompson then went to Spearfish to compete, but it did not go well.
“I think I hit two barrels, ran over a couple balloons and the horse ran away from me, it was pretty terrible,” he said. “Again, I was just like, ‘Forget this, I’m done.'”
Thanks to some encouragement from his mother, though, Thompson decided to give it a go for a year.
Turner Thompson of Groton fires at his target during the U.S. Western Championship mounted shooting event in Las Vegas. Courtesy photo.
That’s when he met Jason Sattler of Foote Creek Stables and started to learn reining, which is teaching a horse how to maneuver through a precise pattern of circles, spins and stops.
The meeting changed Thompson’s trajectory, and he hasn’t looked back.
“Jason taught me to be the horseman that I am today,” Thompson said. “The reason I’m where I am in the sport of mounted shooting is because of Jason. If I couldn’t ride the way I do and if I didn’t have the confidence he gave me, there’s no way I’d be able to do what I’m doing. I just owe him so much.”
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Knowing what to do in cowboy mounted shooting is critical. Not only are riders concerned about how fast they finish, they have to hit the 10 targets while trying to control and maneuver a large animal with one hand and, in some cases, both.
During the revolver competition, riders have to switch guns and pull back the hammer as they finish their final five shots. That all happens in about 10 seconds.
“I usually stay calm and try to slow everything down before a race, but if you start thinking about it you can be like, ‘Dang, I’m on a 1,000-pound animal that can kill me if it wanted to and it’s letting me shoot a gun on its back,'” Thompson said.
Courses are never the same
Because courses aren’t the same, “Horses should really get all the credit because sometimes you ride them around barrels and others it’s one loop and a straightaway. They never know,” Thompson said.
The skill and speed are what continue to attract him to mounted shooting, and he hopes those elements draw more people to the sport.
“At one point, mounted shooting was the fastest growing equestrian sport in the country,” Thompson said. “Videos on social media, when people post them, they blow up. I have a TikTok video that has over 250,000 likes.”
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Now 18, Thompson has plenty of years of riding ahead of him, but he’s not discounting possible life changes that could alter that. For now, he’s planning to attend Oklahoma State University.
He knows horses will continue to be a fixture in his life whether racing around barrels to hit targets or just trotting through a field.
“I don’t know if it’s realistic for me to do this my whole life, but I would love to. I see horses in my life, that’s for sure. I mean, I have to see how school balances out with shooting, but horses will be in my life for a really long time, and someday, when I have a family of my own, I’d love to see my kids in it,” Thompson said.