Born to shoot - Entertainment, TV, Television - Navy Times

Born to shoot

When a Parris Island drill instructor asked the formation of fresh-faced recruits who among them already knew how to shoot a rifle, Marine Pvt. Chris Reed didn’t think twice about raising his hand.

Growing up in the backwoods of the Mississippi Delta, Reed had been shooting for as long has he could remember.

The snarly DI, however, disagreed. “All of you are going to go UNQ on my range,” he snapped at Reed and the others who’d raised their hands. The fresh slates would do fine, the DI declared, but the ones who had already learned bad habits outside the Corps were doomed.

“I took personal offense to that,” Reed says. “I said, ‘They just don’t know me, man.’ ”

When other kids his age were playing with toy guns and rubber-band bows, Reed was out hunting birds with the real deal. By the time he was 8, he owned his first shotgun. “It was awesome — a $50 .410 single-shot, and the ejector didn’t work.”

By the time he graduated from Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., Reed had proved the old DI wrong, clinching the coveted honor graduate award and title of company high shooter.

More than 15 years later, Reed — now a real estate agent and stay-at-home dad — once again has denied the naysayers who were quick to dismiss his soft-spoken, aw-shucks style when he arrived on History Channel’s second-season reload of its reality-show shootout “Top Shot.”

Beating out 15 competitors, many of them current or former military, Reed claimed the title in the show’s recent finale.

With production finished months ago, Reed has had to keep his victory a closely guarded secret, even allowing two of his most enthusiastic supporters — his two kids — to believe that he came in third.

Military Times OFFduty, however, scored an exclusive interview with Reed just before he sat down to watch the final episode and kicked off “about the biggest party of my life.”

Q. From the sound of it, you were practically born with a weapon in your hand. Name your favorite.

A. My bow and arrow. It’s been with me through thick and thin, and it’s probably what saved my life. I grew up in a time where, I wouldn’t say I was affected by peer pressure, but I was certainly around things and people that could have swayed me in different directions. In lieu of getting in trouble and following the wrong crowd, I had one friend, and we would literally shoot before school, during lunch and then after school and work. It was to the point where when we would need light after dark, we would park our vehicles and shine their lights on the target until the battery ran dead. I was just so intent on mastering it, I almost had tunnel vision.

Q. Aside from the show, what’s the best shot you’ve ever taken?

A. I killed a deer at 100 yards with a 1911 (.45-caliber pistol). She was standing there looking at me. Hit her right dead between the eyes; looked like I hit her in the head with a hammer. It was awesome. My farthest kill was with a rifle, a Browning .300 Winchester WSM, at 630 yards.

Q. When did you decide to apply for “Top Shot”?

A. It was before the first season even aired. I had been scanning the Internet looking for shooting competitions because I had been involved in this Total Outdoorsman deal through Field & Stream and Pro Bass. The last two years, I’d come in second place, but the fishing was keeping me out of the winner’s circle. So I come across this competition that said it paid $100,000, but I had just missed the casting call by a week. When the show finally aired, I didn’t miss an episode, and the entire time I’m just kicking myself. Then, of course, right at the end they announced the casting call for the next season.

Q. Did you do anything to get ready for the show?

A. I was up here running up and down the street, exercising and trying to get in shape and looking good. I was a nervous wreck. But how do you practice for something like this? What guns do you go get? So I basically didn’t. I figured at this point, you can’t fake it. There was no way I could go borrow a .50-cal. or all of these off-the-wall weapons they use.

Q. What was it like walking cold into all that?

A. From the time we left the airport until we got to our hotel rooms, we were all isolated. We all had monitors at all times to keep us from getting to know each other. We didn’t get to speak with each other until the first day we shot and got into the house. Before we even left the hotel, the first thing they did was confiscate everything. Once the new wore off and the competition progressed, we were inventing things. I was making homemade weapons. I took the curtain rods down and made a blowgun. I built a fort out of the picnic tables. Our biggest game was sitting around in a circle tossing little itty bitty pebbles into a cup all day for hours and hours. It got to where when we had all mastered the cup, we went to a 20-ounce water bottle.

Q. How much of real life there do you think translated into the show?

A. We filmed for six weeks, and every three days we made an episode and they condensed that down to 45 minutes. So there is so much that you miss. The conversations we were having may have taken a day and a half to lead up to what it did, and then you get the pinnacle of it for one brief comment. But for the most part I think they’ve done an outstanding job. There’s probably a few of us that would disagree, but speaking for myself, I think they made me look like a fricking rock-star hero dude. I’m lovin’ it, man. It’s pretty surreal knowing everything you say, someone can hear. No matter how much you whisper and think you can get away with it, they can hear a cricket fart.

Q. Any regrets about things you did?

A. I had no inkling how big a deal this was going to be after I got home. But my fan base, for the most part, is little kids. These kids have put me up on a pedestal. So I’m getting preachers’ kids coming over to the house wanting me to autograph rifles and shotguns and their bows and arrows. Kids by the hundreds are recognizing me in restaurants and airports. But when the show started airing and I slip up and they bleep me where I said a cuss word, that gets to me. So in hindsight, the only thing I would have done differently is cleaned up my mouth a little bit.

Q. How hard was it to switch among so many different guns?

A. I think the people who are the experts in their field and shoot these high-dollar precision weapons, they were at more of a disadvantage than I was because I’m shooting $50 .410 shotguns and $100 .22 rifles or the 10/22 Ruger that I’ve done a homemade trigger job on because it had a rough spot. So, yeah, all the triggers were different, but the same principles apply: Once you start the squeeze, you keep the squeeze until it goes bang, and you don’t let anything interrupt the shot, whether it was a 12-pound trigger on a revolver or the crappiest trigger we had out there on that FN FAL. Of course, the Benelli shotgun was sweet.

Q. Was the competition side of things what you expected? It seems like this season turned more toward being a “Survivor”-type reality show with politics coming into play.

A. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Though it’s coming out like that and being portrayed like that, we were solid in our vote casting and who was getting called out. There were really no back-door deals — hardly — made. Now, I’m not going to say toward the end there wasn’t a few.

Q. Some might point to the whole ganging up on Jamie Franks, the Navy rescue swimmer, as part of that.

A. OK, you’re opening up a can of worms now! I’m not taking anything away from Jamie. He turned out to have impeccable character. I wish him the best, but he kind of got started on a bad foot. Our original plan was no big secret. We just wanted the most consistent shooters to make it to the finals. We didn’t think that if you went two or three challenges in a row and did not hit a target and cost your team a teammate that you should be entitled to make it to the end. There was no making up for that. He went 0-for-3 on the bottles, 0-for-3 on the pool-ball challenge, and he wasn’t very good with the bow target.

Q. You said you’ll put the $100,000 prize toward your kids’ education, but there’s got to be some new toy in there for you.

A. I did just get a new bow — a PSE Supra, a competition target 3D bow. And I’ll probably end up getting a gun or two. I’m working on getting a rifle with a suppressor, either a .308 or .22 long rifle for varmint hunting.

Q. If the zombie apocalypse starts tomorrow, what’s your weapon of choice?

A. .22 long rifle, man. I can tote 5,000 rounds, no problem, and kill anything I want to. Of course, some people are going to go with the ARs and black guns and high-caliber rifles, but when it hits the fan, dude, you give me a duffle bag full of .22 long rifle cartridges and a good semiautomatic. A good Ruger .22 is hard to beat for your typical zombie killing. And maybe a .338 Lapau — that’s bad to the bone.