Kickin’ It with Cowboy Cerrone & Suppressors
David Higginbotham
In Kickin’ It with Cowboy Cerrone & Suppressors on His 500-Acre Ranch, the latest video project from the team at SilencerCo, we’re offered a rare glimpse into Cowboy’s home on the range: BMF Ranch in Edgewood, New Mexico.
“I wanted somewhere where I could shoot guns, ride horses, play, and do whatever I wanted,” Cowboy explains, as if any of us needed convincing. And Cowboy’s philosophy is as easy to understand. Training hard is easier with some seriously fun distractions—but there’s a point to both.
Training With Cowboy
Cowboy Cerrone is best known for his prowess in the UFC Lightweight and Welterweight division, where the hall-of-famer fought for 11 years.
After rough beginnings in Denver, Cowboy found an outlet for his pugilistic leanings in kickboxing and MMA, cage fighting and ultimately UFC.
BMF Ranch, Cowboy’s home and training facility, has turned into a playground for those who attend and coach there. From the off-road racing to the mounted shooting, the space offers practical distractions from the rigors of fighting and training.
The diversity of activity may speak to the same people who are attracted to the extreme nature of professional fighting. Shooting and driving, both, call on different skills, different parts of the brain, and require the kind of attention to detail that tends to narrow focus on the task at hand, clouding out any other stressors.
New Mexico is the ideal setting for this type of facility. As someone who lived for years in New Mexico, I can attest to the rugged beauty of the state. The Land of Enchantment still has vibrant Native cultures, a strong cultural identity that bridges Spain and Mexican influences, and then the lingering vestiges of the 19th century ranching and cattle legends.
Albuquerque sits on the edge of the desert, at the trailing end of the Sangre de Cristos, where land without water rights is worthless—unless you want to shoot long range.
“I found this house,” he notes, “and when I bought it, it was just a single-wide trailer on 10 acres. I built myself a gym and then I would have all my training partners and all my coaches come live here with me.”
“Well, every Monday we have people come up here and we train… try and tell these guys like, look, let’s go, let’s go shoot. Let’s go drive the forest, go do something… and we can step outside of the monotony and… and then alright now we’ll come back.”
This need for escape is at the center of BMF Ranch. “I wanna say the very first thing I ever did when I bought this property was build that gallery,” Cowboy adds, about his expansive collection of steel targets.
But neighbors exist. Those of us who are converts to shooting suppressed understand the benefits of noise reduction. It doesn’t scare the sheep—the literal sheep, or the others. Cowboy is considerate of his neighbors and keeps it quiet.
“Oh, I’ll only ever shoot suppressed. Anybody comes over here with an AR or any kind of a hunting rifle wants to sight in there, like, oh, yeah. No.”
“So if I was gonna bring somebody out here for the first time and oh and awe them and really wanna show someone the magic of a suppressor and how cool and fun they are, I would let them use 300 Blackout with the Velos can on it.”
But not everything on BMF Ranch is quite so quiet.
Cowboy on a Horse?
Despite the equine allusion conjured by his mythic moniker, we don’t often see UFC champs on horseback. Riding hard, and shooting one-handed, though, seems right in line with what you’d expect from the adrenaline-fueled Cowboy Cerrone.
“When I first moved out here and I wanted to be able to shoot cowboy, I went and bought myself a horse,” he explains.
“So mounted shooting is like super cowboy. Yeah. I love it. So, yeah, you have to train—not only to train yourself, but you have to train the horse, or, like, there’s probably a hundred different obstacles and courses to run.”
Cowboy Mounted Shooting is one of the only elements of shooting sports that remains all-but impossible to suppress. The sport is driven by spectacle—a rider runs a closed course and shoots at balloons from horseback.
The trick, though, is that there’s no lead projectiles in the gun. Instead, the .45 LC guns shoot blanks. These are loaded with black powder, which burns more slowly than modern powders. These grains of powder fly from the barrel and are enough to pop a balloon. They also pattern more like bird shot from a shotgun, giving a wider margin of error for aim.
In the video, when you see what would otherwise be classified as dubious and unsafe muzzle control, there’s no real danger to the spectators or camera crew, as the expelled powder really only travels a few yards at any real speed.
Still, silence is golden, no? And there’s no way to get these revolvers silenced and still have the powder eject with the velocity needed even for balloon popping. And this means you need to have a horse that’s accustomed to the sound of gun fire (even, as is the case with CMS guns, guns that aren’t producing exceptionally loud shots).
Cowboys on Ziplines?
There’s a clear element of danger to just about everything Cowboy touches. From the obvious perils of fast offroad driving, to the brutality of MMA, just about all of the activities at BMF Ranch will make your mother nervous.
Running life-fire from a zipline? What could possibly go wrong? Forget I asked. It looks like a seriously fun run, and with a full-auto 9mm, it would be even better.
Accuracy, though, is an afterthought. “We call this the zipline shotgun effect. Just spray and pray.”
Testing Out the New SilencerCo Cans
In the midst of the madness, there’s work to be done. Part of this trip was to introduce Cowboy Cerrone to two new suppressors from SilencerCo.
“We’re at home playing with the handguns,” Cowboy says. “The Spectre 9 is probably the go to.”
About the new Spectre 9K and the S98, Cowboy adds, “I’m super excited to see how they thread on, how they shoot, and how they sound.”
One of the newest suppressors from SilencerCo is the S98. Those familiar with the Osprey line will instantly recognize the asymmetrical form factor of the new can, but SilencerCo has drawn on the success of the Scythe Ti to make this a compact, light, and efficient use of materials.
The baffle stacks on the S98 are welded and not housed in a sleeve. The low profile keeps sight-lines clear. The S98 will take SilencerCo’s pistol suppressors in a capable and easy-to-use new direction.
Like the S98, the Spectre 9K uses welded titanium baffles to build a compact suppressor that’s ideal for 9mm or .300 BLK. The Spectre is a tested design for SilencerCo, so the shorter version is a natural evolution.
Shorter suppressors offer practical benefits. First, the length added to the end of a gun is always a factor. Adding a silencer to a pistol, for instance, changes the way it moves during recoil. Longer, heavier cans will produce a wave-like movement on handguns that requires a different set of skills to master.
Shorter, lighter suppressors allow the gun to move more like it does when unsuppressed. This is a key aspect to their popularity, as it means you rely on the same skillset you already have ingrained in training and muscle-memory, and therefore a shorter learning curve and a less obnoxiously loud gun.
The Spectre 9K uses Alpha mounts and accessories, and is rated for 9mm and both subsonic and supersonic 300 BLK.
Bringing It All Together
Maybe the most conventional shooting at BMF happens from the elevated tower Cowboy Cerrone uses for long-range work. It is an ideal place for the stillness required for precision shooting.
Describing the meditative quality that he finds in these moments, Cowboy says that this is “…the best way to live.”
This may capture the zeitgeist of BMF Ranch. In a world full of extreme moments, there’s still a need to connect.
“I mean, it’s just you can have conversations up there.” And here, at BMF Ranch, where limits are tested.
Deep thoughts from a man who’s done most of his talking with his fists.
David Higginbotham
