Tennessee’s Chris Reed Wins the History Channel’s Top Shot Competition
Day 4: The History Channel’s Top Shot Winner Chris Reed Considers Archery the Foundation for All Shooting Sports
Editor’s Note: Thirty-seven-year-old Chris Reed of Franklin, Tennessee, recently won the History Channel’s Top Shot competition, beating out some of the best competition shooters and taking home the $100,000 prize. A realtor by day, Reed’s a tough competitive shooter, winning countless state and national championships in both archery and long rifle.
 Question: Chris, what did you do in the military?
Reed: I was a heavy-equipment operator.
Question: If you were a heavy-equipment operator, how did you qualify as the best in your U.S. Marine Corps’ Company with a rifle?
Reed: There were 200 men in my Company. We went out to the range and had a qualification day. I shot a better score than everyone in the Company. I was awarded honor graduate and the Company’s High Shooter award.
 Question: You bowhunt, gun-hunt and shoot competition in archery and other shooting sports. How do you shoot all these other weapons and throw tomahawks and stay consistent as an archery shooter?
Reed: Archery is the perfect platform to develop skills for all other forms of shooting. The skills you learn from archery – form, foundation, aiming, breath control, concentration, trigger control and sight alignment – teach you all the fundamentals for shooting any type of weapon accurately. To shoot 50-times consecutively and hit a 2-inch dot, you have to control your body, your bow, your ability to aim, your form and every-other factor required for shooting any other type of weapon accurately.
 Question: What’s the most-important ingredient to shooting any weapon accurately?
Reed: You can never underestimate practice. However, to shoot consistently, the number of hours you spend in practice isn’t nearly as important as the quality of your practice. If you don’t practice properly, you can’t shoot properly. You need the right technique with every shot you make, and you want to build muscle memory until shooting correctly becomes second nature. When you’ve done enough practicing, you won’t have to think about the shot, whether you’re shooting a bow, a rifle or a handgun. Your practice will teach your muscles what to do in each situation. Then you can just bring-up the weapon, aim and shoot.
 Question: Okay, how do you practice with a .50-caliber rifle or a tomahawk, if you don’t own one? These are some of the different weapons you had to compete with in Top Shot.
Reed: When I shot that .50-caliber rifle in competition, it was the first time I’d ever shot a .50-caliber rifle. But from shooting archery, I’d learned how to get a proper sight alignment and trigger control. Those were two basic fundamentals you needed with any type of shooting sport. So, when I laid behind the .50-caliber rifle in the prone position, I made sure that my body and the sight were centered, no torque was in my body, and I was pulling the trigger straight to the rear and not off to one side or the other. Although my stance was different laying on the ground than when standing on the line in an archery tournament, I tried to get as much of my body behind the weapon as possible and used my body as a mass to absorb the recoil. I had to determine the yardage, just like in archery, and the effect of the wind on the shot. So, the elements of shooting a bow correctly related to the elements of shooting any type of weapon.
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