Ohio’s Bullwhip Fast Draw: Thoughts while listening to the ‘Lone Ranger’ soundtrack
While I was in Greeneville, Ohio participating in the annual Annie Oakley Western Showcase events a FedEx package arrived at my home two counties to the south. The Lone Ranger soundtrack featuring Hans Zimmer’s new music for the 2013 Disney film came out on July 23rd prompting me to run all over town trying to find it. I went to Best Buy, Barnes and Nobel, Target, any store that carried actual CD’s. The soundtrack was actually released on July 2nd as MP3 downloads but I wanted an actual disk to call my own, and Disney had timed the release of the soundtrack to come out between the American and London release of the film. I was hoping to have the music to listen to on the long drive up to the Darke County Fairgrounds so I went to Amazon.com and ordered The Lone Ranger soundtrack hoping it would be delivered by Friday. Unfortunately when I checked on the shipping information before leaving for the bullwhip competitions, my treasured music was at the Hamilton hub and wouldn’t be delivered until later that day while I was gone. But I had been listening to clips of the soundtrack all month online, and was thinking of them as I participated in the yearly Ohio Bullwhip Fast Draw Championships which can be seen below.
The Bullwhip Fast Draw was invented by Gery Deer and Paul Nolan at Gerry’s studio in Jamestown, Ohio near Ceaser’s Creek. There is nothing like it anywhere in the world. The competition was literally born in Ohio out of a desire to display how fast bullwhips can be drawn from a coiled position and thrust out to hit a target. At our annual Annie Oakley Western Showcase competitions the SASS (Single Action Shooting Society) is set up in the next building performing their pistol quick draw events so it only made sense for the benefit of the crowd and fun for participants to do something similar with bullwhips.
At the Annie Oakley Western Showcase expert whip handlers from all over the continental United States have come to participate over the last decade and try their hand at Ohio’s very challenging competition. When the Bullwhip Fast Draw was first conceived by Gery the Wild West Arts Club had their big yearly meeting in Las Vegas led by Mark Allen and Alex Green so the smaller gathering in Ohio needed something to solidify its uniqueness. That is how and why Gery invented The Bullwhip Fast Draw. Over the years as older Western Arts acts with their aging participants left the field Ohio became the center of attention under Gery’s diligent work and enterprise. Every year when the Annie Oakley Days hit Greenville, Ohio in Darke County the Bullwhip Fast Draw has become increasingly a crowd favorite. It’s a very fast event that has plenty of drama and is the perfect kind of bullwhip activity to perform in front of an audience.
I won the event this year and several times in the past, but there have been many winners. My son-in-law is particularly good at it as he and I used to practice in the back yard against each other when he lived at our house during the early days of his marriage to my daughter. One year Richard Best’s 10-year-old granddaughter won the whole event beating everyone. Kirk Bass has done very well at it over the years which is why our stand-offs against each other are always exciting. As a knife thrower he has the proper movement ingrained in his head so he gets to the target quickly. Sometimes, like the instance in the video above the quick draw is so fast that the eye cannot see the result in real-time. Only slow motion can reveal the winner. The camera in that footage captures images at 30 frames per second, which is faster than a motion picture camera producing 24 frames per second. By watching the Bull Whip Fast Draw in slow motion it is clearly seen that only a few images of the whips in motion can be seen from the coiled position. As the entire Bull Whip Fast Draw takes place in a fraction of a second there are only a few images that are captured of the actual whip in flight. When the end of the whip strikes the cup it is traveling at well over 750 MPH because the crack is a sonic boom. The whip handler must calculate in their mind within a fraction of a moment the exact location in space and time where the end of their whip will strike the target.
Within the entire world there are only handfuls of people who are very good at the finesse aspects of whip handling. This means performing some of the complicated cracks using two-handed maneuvers. But when it comes to focusing those efforts on a directed point in space and applying the timing necessary to hit that point of space with all the calculations it takes to make a bullwhip arrive there is a whole different set of circumstances that has an even narrower range of experts. This is why even very technical bullwhip performers can have difficulty when they are put up against a clock or worse yet, another human being standing across from them. In the early days of the Bullwhip Fast Draw I always had the speed to hit targets quickly, but often found that if I tried to push out too much speed I would tend to crack the target off to the right—often missing. A bullwhip to work right is a matter of timing, the end of the whip has to be known within fractions of a second and projected to a directed spot in three-dimensional space. To win the Bull Whip Fast Draw a piece of the cup must be cut off, so the end of the whip needs to crack precisely on the target. It is not enough to just run the whip through the target using downward momentum to knock the target from the holder. To win the 750 MPH needed to obtain a crack of the whip needs to be focused in order to hit the target before the other opponent as fast as possible and that speed must be directed at the target. Kirk Bass is so good at the Bullwhip Fast Draw because he’s not only strong, but is accustomed to directing focused energy complete with timing because he is a professional knife thrower. Whip artists who are good at the Bullwhip Fast Draw are able to make all those calculations in fractions of a second using power, finesse, and impeccable timing to hit their target under the pressure of time. Not at all easy, but really fun to watch and try.
Unlike traditional firearm quick draw, such as what the SASS Society engages in, the calculation is in the hand/eye coordination but with the added pressure of creating the force needed to generate a sonic boom to destroy the target. The gun does most of the physical force work in traditional quick draw. With the whip the force is done by the same hands that make all the calculations in time and space which is why it is such a unique event.
Like all games of skill the benefits often carry over into other aspects of life. I find that the skills that allow me to be good at the Bullwhip Fast Draw help me in all aspects of my existence and that is the real reason for working hard to accomplish the needed skills. Every year I enjoy the opportunity to re-calibrate myself with the wonderful people who meet me at the Annie Oakley Festival and compete against me in Ohio’s very own Bullwhip Fast Draw. The crowd watching has a great time, but the competition for me is even better as a useful tool in measuring what works and what doesn’t. The ability to discover how fast is too fast, and how fast is just right is useful in making virtually all decisions about all things and this is what I like most about The Bullwhip Fast Draw.
After a good day of working with some of the best whip artists there are anywhere it felt good to return home at the end of a long weekend to find The Lone Ranger soundtrack waiting for me on my front porch. I had been humming the music in my head all during the whip competitions, especially the Bullwhip Fast Draw and my mind was in a good mood from the experience. It is one thing to enjoy music like Hans Zimmer’s latest soundtrack to a western film which is highly unusual, especially the song, “Red’s Theater of the Absurd.” Listen to it at the clip below. I LOVE THAT SONG!
But it’s quite another to be able to actually participate in events that celebrate western arts, which are the foundations of American culture while listening to it. It was late at night but I opened the soundtrack anyway and quickly downloaded it onto my iPod. As I drifted off to sleep thinking of my day participating in Ohio’s very own Bullwhip Fast Draw I listened to the music of The Lone Ranger. Because Gery and Paul invented the Bullwhip Fast Draw, a unique event that has brought to my life a way of thinking that is highly unusual, and much appreciated, my life has been improved. The musical notes of The Lone Ranger are just a little bit sweeter when it is known that all the work done in the Bullwhip Fast Draw were invented in Ohio, and seen only at the Annie Oakley Festival every year at the end of July. It puts you in the kind of company that can be counted on only two hands as far as skill level. It’s all about speed, calculation, and force, skills that are often needed when life deals hard problems which are not quite as literal as the relationship between a target and a bullwhip.
Rich Hoffman
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