Alamo Fast Draw

Interview with Howard Darby:
LLedslinger: Howard Darby is a 16 time world champ also holds six titles in world gun spinning, currently holds the World Fast Draw Associations Fastest Gun Alive title.
Howard Darby: On how he started the Gunfighter Zone. The way I started the Gunfighter Zone I was on a bus heading to Vancouver about a 700 mile drive I was taking a Greyhound that trip instead of driving myself it was in the middle of winter I didn't want to drive through the Rockies like that. I read a magazine on the Internet they were telling how you could get your own domain names instead of being hosted on the free sites on your Internet provider like most of the people were doing back then in the mid nineties. I thought well cool I can get my own domain name and set up a website. When I got to the contest Bob Mernickle was there, Bobs a good friend of mine. We use to shoot a lot together when I lived in Vancouver and he was living around that area at the time. I said to Bob I am going to create a web site about fast draw and western shooting and stuff but I need somebody to be on their like a manufacturer of stuff to help add more content do you want me to put a website up for you. He didn't know anything about the Internet had never seen it but he thought well promotion, if you're going to do it well go ahead and do it for me and I will give you some pictures and some text of my holsters and descriptions so he sent me that and I registered gunfighter.com and that was the beginning of 1996 when I did that right after I got back from the contest. It was a good time to do it because it was the first western shooting site on the Internet and I did Bob's website and Bob was the first holster manufacture on the Internet too and that really help Bob because he had been just going around to trade shows around the northwest and he started getting orders from all over the world and people would start linking to him. That's what helped him get going and together we grew into pretty decent place on the Internet to find information. A couple years later I did Fast Draw. org to help promote the sport of fast draw and then a few other people like Greg Custodio came along and did his historical site ( gunfightergulch.com ). There's been quite a few people that have helped get a lot of the fast draw information out on the Internet especially my discussion group. A lot of people have like Bob Argenbright, Wes and a number of other people started posting information on fast draw when people asked.
LLedslinger: What got you started in fast draw?
Howard Darby: Well I've always been interested in the old west reading the novel's Zane Gray, Louis l'amour since I was about 12 or 13 years old. When I was about 17 I bought a replica gun, known firing you know the pot metal type that had pretty decent weight and I bought a cheap holster to go with. I couldn't shoot it so I started spinning it and did that for a couple of years. Then when I was in college finishing up my last year in college when I was about 19 the local paper did a weeklong series on the shooting sports one of which was an article on the Thunderbird Fast Draw Club. This was when I was living in Vancouver I thought that was pretty cool that's exactly what I was interested in. If I could find a group that was doing real shooting in the old west style that was just what I want to do. I put that aside and went for a couple more months to finish college, got a job right away and after a few weeks of getting settled I figured OK now to start getting into this fast draw thing so I drove out to the Langley Rod and Gun Club which is about an hour from my house in Vancouver were I was living and met Dennis Robinson who was running that club at the time and pretty much still does.

If any of you Gunfighters would like to hear more of this interveiw you can listen to episode 15 on the audio player(red) on the right side of this page. If you would like to join in the show live or listen live to the Alamo Fast Draw show or call 1-724-444-7444 show#16056. Whether you are a gunfighter or not its a fun show.

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