Welcome to the Illowa Irregulars Cowboy Action Shooting web site. The Illowa Irregulars is the only SASS-sanctioned Cowboy Action Shooting club in the Quad Cities area, and one of the longest running clubs in Illinois, having been founded in the mid 1990’s. The Irregulars hosts monthly competitions from April through August, and October-November, while September is reserved for our critically-acclaimed 3-day annual, Fall Round-Up.
Brief Club History: In the spring of 1993, the Bartels family organized the area’s first cowboy shoot at Saukenuk. This initial shoot was so well received and the interest so great that the Bartells approached the Milan Rifle Club (MRC) and asked if future shoots could be held at their range. MRC approved the request, and remains the club’s home to this day. The Bartels selected the aliases of Paul Bearer, Pushes Up Daisies, Mort Tician, and Pearl E Gates.
There are many other significant contributors to our success, some of which are memorialized on our building facades including Filmore (Stage 1 – Filmore’s Farm, Feed & Seed), Preemption Judge (Stage 2 – The Courthouse), T.A. Spurs & Shamrock Sis (Stage 4 – The Saloon), Sassparilla Ken (Stage 5 – The Gun Shop), Trader Dave (the Trading Post), and our most recent honoree Digger Sam (Stage 10 – Peterson & Sons Excavating). Many thanks to them as well as to the other early Cowboy Action Shooting pioneers – Illowa Irregulars wouldn’t be here today without their interest and efforts to establish Cowboy Action Shooting in the area.
While we are SASS affiliated, and follow SASS rules, it is not necessary to be a member of SASS to shoot in any of our regular monthly matches or Fall Round-Up. In addition, since we do not collect membership dues for our organization, all shooters are welcome to participate in our monthly matches for the same price of $10.00 per shooter. Registration for monthly matches opens at 8:00 AM in Camden Mills, across the road from the Trading Post. We conduct a shooters’ meeting at 9:15. Shooting starts as close to 9:30 as possible. Generally, we initially allow for 4 posses, which are self-assigned – that is; at registration, each shooter places his/her name on a card and gives that card to one of the available posse leaders. The club reserves the right to make adjustments in cases of over or under-subscription.
Our monthly shoots consist of 6 stages, with an expected round count of 60 pistol, 60 rifle, and 25-30+ shotgun shells. We use a majority of the usual CAS targets, including squares, rectangles, rounds, cowboys of various sizes, buffalo, bear and cougar. We also have at our disposal a number of variety targets, including a Texas Star, dueling tree, swingers, and plate rack. We use a variety of shotgun knock downs, and on occasion use vertical clay bird throwers, snakes-on-posts, a shotgun star, and a Medusa.
We are somewhat unique in that each of our monthly matches is written by a different guest Match Director. Each volunteer MD brings his/her own style to stage writing, which gives us a great variety in targets used, placement, scenarios, movement, and shooting sequences. As a general expectation, no two of our monthly shoots will be quite the same.
Here is a link to our Match Schedule.
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