Wild West Show shoots it up in Sisters

The Old West came to Sisters last weekend in the sixth annual Wild West Show on Cascade Avenue (between Oak and Pine streets).

With 140 feet of Western town façade, folks did a double take Saturday and Sunday around high noon as they watched the Deschutes Desperados re-enactors come to life back in a time when the "Old West" was alive. People of all ages sat for a spell to watch the wild age of gunslingers, saloons, lawmen and cowboys, like a scene out of an old classic Western.

The Deschutes Desperados re-enactment player Mick Howard, aka Mojave Mick, was back again as the town's sheriff ready to incarcerate the worst of them. Howard has been in re-enactment for eight years and with the Cowboy Action Shooting Club for over 20 years.

"This year we have some original players back," Howard said. "We all began as re-enactment players when Richard Esterman invited us to try it out for his show. Since we already had the costumes and the guns, from our Cowboy Action Shooting clubs, it made sense. Plus, it's a lot of fun and I get to write some of the scripts for the skits."

Cowboy Action Shooting is the fastest growing shooting sport in the world, and is embraced by men, women and youngsters from all parts of the globe where folks have the freedom to engage in the safe use of firearms.

James Hawkins, a.k.a. Tetherow Tex LaRue, has been with the re-enactment players from the beginning and loves the humor that's added to each script.

"I play a rustler, a bad guy and sometimes the town clown," Hawkins said. "I love being a ham and find it fun to be able to pretend that I'm John Wayne for a day."

Nick and Kathy Bowman from Bend brought their whole family to watch a couple of the shootout skits.

"We've been here once before and the kids love it, even though they hold their ears during the shootout," Kathy Bowman said. "The Wild West Show really fits in Sisters."

Before each show, event organizer Richard Esterman talked about safety and explained that the guns used are real, but there would be no real bullets, only black powder blanks.

"Once a year, the third week of August, we build a Western town that comes to life for everyone to enjoy." Esterman told The Nugget. "Our Wild West Show offers Wild West shootouts through well-acted skits that are free to the locals and visitors of Sisters."

Besides the nine shootout performances and skits beginning at high noon, the show also featured a beer garden and vendors with a variety of Native American and Western-themed arts and crafts for folks to meander through looking for that special Old-West-style treasure to purchase.

New vendors Janel Maurer and Kris Hakkila were offering wine tasting from their Eqwine Mobile Wine Cart.

"We just got our license to offer wine last fall," Maurer said. "We were getting horses and started looking for horse trailers and found this 1976 horse trailer. And since we both love going wine tasting, it seemed like the right combination and we slowly derived our plan to create a mobile cart for sharing wines. Our goal is to focus on the wines of the Pacific Northwest."

"We travel the Northwest in search of great wines," Hakkila added. "And we specialize in all events, like weddings, office parties, banquets, birthdays and shows."