Top Shot Reload: Recapping Last Night's Episode 10/4/2011

Last night's Top Shot featured this season's most powerful rifle yet, the MAC-50 Sniper rifle. The weapon was certainly impressive as Colby revealed it to the contestants, to which a clearly excited Mike Hughes could be heard saying "It's a .50" with a big smile on his face.

"Shooting a 50 Caliber is on everyone's bucket list." according to Dustin, the man who would take home the winning time in the challenge.

This week's competition was simple: Each contestant had one target to hit. The kicker was the target was 500 yards away and moving. The day chosen for the contest had high winds, which would make for interesting shooting. The other change was that the top four shooters of the day would all be safe from elimination, which meant only three would be eligible to go.

Alex went first, and even though he said in his interview he was nervous, he nailed it on his first shot in just about twelve seconds.

Chris was up next, and it took him three shots and 51 seconds to complete the challenge. The next two competitors were Jake and Phil, who each hit in one shot. Chris looked worried, as he was the only guy to take more than one shot so far.

Gary was next. This guy has been solid the whole competition, but this challenge would be his weak spot, as it took him 14 shots and over five minutes to complete. He became visibly upset during the challenge, but never gave up and got the target eventually.

Dustin came up and nailed it in one shot in just above eight seconds. Mike Hughes used three bullets in 44 seconds to hit his target. So this meant Mike, Gary and Chris were the three lowest performers, and thus eligible for elimination.

After some discussion in the house, Gary offered up his head to the chopping block based on his poor performance, as did Chris and Mike. It ended up coming down to Gary and Mike in elimination.

Mike has been called Grand Master Flash by some of the other guys on the show due to his status in the pistol shooting world, and when Gary found out the elimination challenge was with a pistol, he became nervous.

The elimination challenge was using a P-38 pistol to shoot out 36 Plexiglas targets. The difficulty was added when Colby announced that each contestant would only get 30 pre-loaded rounds to use, which meant they would have to manually reload the magazines once their ammo was spent.

Mike took off to a good lead by hitting six for six on the first row of targets. Gary caught up, and at a few points, it was an evenly tied contest.

Mike experienced some difficulty, as a few of his targets only chipped when he shot them, and for the point to count, they had to break in half.

In the end, Gary sent Mike home after a very heated battle. Now the show is down to just six competitors, and with only a few weeks left, we will soon find out who the next Top Shot will be.

What did you like about last night's show?