Sweet Home resident Joe Cullison just returned home with his eighth “Ironman” World Championship title from the International Handgun Metallic Silhouette Association (IHMSA) event held July 20-26.
The long range pistol competition overall includes metallic silhouette cutouts of chicken, pig, turkey and ram targets placed between 25 and 500 meters.
Half of the Ironman competition consists of four open sighted .22 guns at 25, 50, 75 and 100 meters with the guns being standing, production, revolver and unlimited. The other half of competition is big bore where the four guns are centerfire, standing, production, revolver and unlimited at 50, 100, 150 and 200 meters.
“For that, you have four different guns in .22s and four different guns in centerfire, the larger calibers,” he said. “So the larger calibers are used for the farther distances and the .22s are out to a hundred meters.”
For perspective, the average indoor shooting range provides a distance of about 25 yards, making the 100 meter competition about four times the distance, and the 200 meter competition about eight times the distance of an indoor shooting range.
For about 60% of his entries, Cullison uses the “extremely accurate” Thompson Contender. He also uses Freedom Arms revolvers – “the most accurate revolvers in the world” – as well as a Remington XP 100 bolt action and an Anschutz bolt action .22.
Cullison first took up shooting in 1996 after he took a job at the Nosler bullet company in Bend.
“My boss was really big into the shooting range out there,” he said. “They were trying to build a new shooting range and I thought as a way to impress him I would get involved in the range also. So I went out and I started shooting, and I tried the action pistol stuff where they run through and shoot around barrels and underneath tables and all kinds of stuff, and it just wasn’t my thing.”
What suited Cullison’s style, however, was the handgun silhouette shooting that allowed him to take his time to aim carefully and make every shot count.
“My goal was to become a better shot with a handgun and I was successful in a fairly short time, but it took me about six years to be any good,” he said. “It’s not an easy sport. Those targets are really hard to hit.”
Cullison contributes his success in part to his wife – who has helped spot targets, sight in his guns and provide overall support, to a Texas shooter at the most recent competition – who helped spot targets and provide feedback, and to a good breakfast.
“I thought that I was doing okay but nothing fantastic for about six years, and then one day I up and shot the highest scores in the world for the whole year,” he explained.
He found himself asking, “Where did that come from?”
What Cullison later realized was that on that day, instead of his usual bowl of cereal, he ate bacon, eggs and hash browns, a protein-carbohydrate meal that stabilized his blood sugar throughout the day.
He had never shot 30 or more out of 40 prior to that day. On that day, Cullison shot a 36 and then, repeating the protein breakfast the following week, he shot a 34.
“I shattered some mental barriers there,” he said. “Thirty had been a mental barrier, and now that was gone. I could shoot better than 30.”
And then he started shooting the highest scores in the world, which compelled him to attend his first IHMSA championships in 2006. Three years in, he won his first Ironman title (2008) and has since taken home eight championship trophies and more than 70 individual titles.
The outdoor event this year was held in Kentucky, which proved to be a bit more challenging for the competitors, according to Cullison. Despite temperatures in the 80s with an overcast sky and no wind – conditions which are quite favorable for shooters – the range itself was a tough one due to the chicken and pig targets being placed on more of a downhill slope while the turkeys and rams were more level.
“It was a very difficult range and everybody had trouble,” he said. “There were very few perfect scores.”
Cullison’s best lifetime score on rams is a 16 of 20 shots made at 200 meters from standing open sight.
He believes practicing handgun silhouette is one of the best possible ways to improve shooting skills. In a standard match, he explained, competitors take 40 shots, providing plenty of shooting experience.
“On every single shot, you’re working on the three most important things there are in shooting, which is side alignment, trigger control and follow through,” he said. “So you practice those three things over and over and over again on every shot.”
It’s a skill that is rooted in something his martial arts sensei once told him, that when a person practices perfecting something, then being able to do it quickly will eventually come.
“Don’t worry about going fast,” Cullison said. “Do it right. And that’s what handgun silhouette does, is you do it right.”