Top Shot "Quickfire Challenge": Recapping Last Night's Episode

Last night, The History Channel's Top Shot continued to showcase some of the country's best marksmen competing in challenges that would make anyone look like an amateur shooter.

Going into last night's episode, the teams were split evenly, with five members on red and five members on blue. This would not remain to be the case, however, as one of the contestants was forced to leave the competition.

Billy Rogers joined the competition after agreeing with his wife that he would miss the birth of their upcoming child in order to try to win the Top Shot title and the $100,000 grand prize.

Unfortunately, Billy received news that his wife was experiencing some complications with her pregnancy and, being the man he is, Billy chose to put family first and head home to be with his loved ones. Everyone on the show showed him respect and admiration for making the decision to be with his wife.

I am not aware of how things turned out for BIlly in the end, but I, along with many fans of the show, am praying for him and his family's health and well being.

With Billy heading home to be with his wife, the blue team was now down a man, which meant the red team got to choose which member of their team would have to sit out during the next challenge.

The challenge for this week was trick shooting. Jerry Miculek, a world-renowned pistol and trick-shot champion, was brought in to coach the contestants on the ins and outs of trick shooting.

There were four stations to the competition and because the red team had an extra player, they decided Chris would sit out. The first station was holding a revolver upside down and using your pinky to pull the trigger in an attempt to break three bottles in three shots.

Gary, on the red team, went first and took out all three bottles. Jake was up next for the blue team, which I was surprised to see since he had stated earlier in the show that he lost part of a pinky in an accident.

Jake missed his first shot, which meant the red team scored a point. Jake was disappointed he missed, especially since he had just come back from elimination. He continued to support his team throughout the challenge despite recent friction among some members of the blue team.

The next station was trying to shoot three cotton swabs with a .22 rifle. That's right—I said cotton swabs. This is the smallest target I have seen someone shoot at, with the exception of season one, where someone drove a nail with a revolver.

Dustin, for the blue team, managed to hit two out of the three swabs. The red team sent up Phil, who missed all three. Because each swab was worth a point, the red team took the lead.

The third station had shooters using the same .22 rifle as before, but this time they had to shoot a bullet through the hole in a CD without touching the plastic. Michael went up for the red team and hit all three CDs, giving his team zero points.

Alex was up next for the blue team. He hit the first two CDs, but managed to thread the needle on the last one, giving his team another point to add to their lead.

The final challenge may have been the hardest of all. Contestants were blindfolded and then given a revolver with which to hit two jugs on a stand 25 feet in front of them. Each contestant had three tries with two shots each to make the hits.

The challenge pitted Mike, from the blue team, against Cliff, from the red team. Mike went first and missed both shots. Cliff followed with the same result.

Mike went up for his second shots and hit the post below the target, which—even though he missed—gave him an idea of where he was aiming while blindfolded.

Cliff came back and missed both shots as well. Mike went back up for his final attempt. He focused, took aim and broke both of the big jugs with his two bullets.

The blue team was ecstatic over their win. This meant they would not have to lose another member of their team after having to see Billy leave the competition to be with his family.

Jake said to one of the talking heads that he thought the blind shot Mike made was the best shot he had ever seen—and I can't really disagree.

It may seem easy to picture in your head what you just read, but actually applying that memory to aiming a gun is a whole different story.

The red team had to pick two members to go into elimination. Michael admitted that his three misses contributed to the loss and offered his name up for elimination. The team agreed and all four teammates voted for him when it came time to shoot the target of the person they were voting for.

Michael was the last voter and had to choose who he would go into elimination against. He chose Cliff, based on some of Cliff's weaker performances in the competition.

The only thing that seemed to scare Michael about Cliff was if the elimination challenge was with a revolver (which Cliff holds two world championship with).

And, of course, the challenge was with a revolver—but not in the way they expected. This week's challenge was all about shooting from the hip.

Jerry Miculek came back to coach the guys on how to shoot from the hip. He took Michael through the paces and, even though he started out rough, he seemed to get the hang of it towards the end of the practice.

Next it was Cliff's turn to practice. Cliff and Jerry are both World Revolver Champions and have competed with each other for years, so going into this Jerry sort of let Cliff try his own method and then offered help if Cliff asked for it.

Cliff seemed to start out rough as well, but came into a rhythm quickly.

The elimination was set up with each shooter having two revolvers that each held five shots. They had 10 plates to take out and whoever took out the most was safe.

Michael went first and hit two plates out of the 10. The challenge was exceptionally hard, so he had hope that Cliff was not going to beat him.

Cliff went through his first revolver and hit two out of five shots. Michael looked hopeful, until Cliff nailed three out of the next five.

Michael went home and Cliff stayed in the house and got a $2,000 Bass Pro Shop gift card for winning the elimination.

So, this week saw two members of the house go home. Michael was eliminated and Billy went home to be with his family.

Next week's episode will no doubt be very interesting, judging from the preview they showed.

What did you think of this week's Top Shot?