BLACKFORK: The Blog

Robert Langham's venture into the blogosphere began like many others. "I was a commenter on blogs for a long time," he says. Langham, 56, a photographer based out of Tyler, Texas, started the Blackfork blog in July of this year.

He credits much of his blog's success to the relationships he had with bloggers: "There's a little community of gun bloggers -- actually, I wouldn't say it's little. There's a bunch of them, and some knew me from comments. It wasn't like they hadn't heard of me before. Since they knew me they were very generous with links and contacts."

After being linked by popular gun blogs Say Uncle and Sharp As A Marble, Blackfork started averaging between 100 and 300 hits a day.

An award-winning competitive shooter himself, Langham credits a friend with peaking his interest in the sport. "This friend of mine kept saying, 'If you like shooting, you need to shoot the NRA Highpower Match at the Panola County Gun Club.' Those guys can really shoot, and that's the eye opener."

After his exposure to that NRA Match, Langham was hooked. "I just decided right then and there I was going to learn how to do it," he said. And learn he did -- with the help of his new friends. "I had never shot my rifle at anything 600 yards away, much less without a scope," he said. "These guys were competent and helpful ... The people at the club were just the most generous, welcoming folks to someone who hardly knew one end of the sling from the other."

Langham has since won several matches in Texas through the Texas State Rifle Association. He is pictured with the Ike Lee Trophy, awarded for winning the Texas High Power championship. "All of us have things we are proud to have done in life," Langham says. "I'm really happy to be able to say that one time I won the Texas championship."

Using his knowledge of photographic and video recording technology, Langham also launched a YouTube channel, which he says was fueled primarily by frustration with the type of shooting vidoes portrayed on the Internet.

"Most (videos) seemed to be folks just blasting away with no explanation," Langham said. His YouTube channel takes an educational slant, offering a series of videos called Improving Your Shooting which starts with the four basic rules of firearms and also elaborates on issues like trigger and benchrest technique. "The (YouTube video) that really tore it for me was a very popular one of a very cute woman in camo pants and a bikini top shooting a Desert Eagle .50 cal pistol ... on the first shot it recoils and hits her between the eyes. I vowed right then and there that I wasn't going to let shooting sports be represented by videos like that."

A Perry competitior since 2001, Langham blogged live from the competition this year when he was at Perry with the Texas State Rifle team, pictured below. "I sat at a Springfield Armory computer on Commercial Row after the day's match," Langham said, "poured myself a cup of gatorade, asked whatever kid was playing a video game on the computer to hit 'pause,' and logged onto my blog."



Langham has caught the Perry fever. He enjoys seeing the juniors in his group first experience Perry and, as he puts it, he "collects old stories from the old guys." The camaraderie he sees at the National Matches -- "On one side of your firing point you'll have Joe Schmoe Shooter and on the other, David Tubb" -- is something he's eager to recreate online for the good of the shooting community nationwide.

In his own words: Langham's goal with his foray into new media is showing competitive shooting "for what it is, an all-American sport. Not someone knocking themselves between the eyes."