Sept. 16 Anvil shooting: Flying steel tradition has strong base here
When considering the impact anvil shooting has had on this region it’s difficult to differentiate between the equipment, the time-honored practice and the practitioner. In this region “anvil shooting” is synonymous with the name Gay Wilkinson.
At first glance Wilkinson doesn’t appear to be some kind of fanatic. His graying hair and beard, and slightly slowing gait, would indicate a family man, a grandpa, a common everyday man, even the office of authority he holds as a county official. But peer into the bed of his pickup truck, or look in his home shop, or even take a glance at the roof of his house and you’ll find a hobby which has literally become a part of his being … anvil shooting.
Recently Discovery UK visited Farmington to film a segment with Wilkinson for a series about weird science. Just prior to that the History Channel aired a segment of “Only In America,” the variety show featuring comedian Larry the Cable Guy, where the host spent a day with Wilkinson driving around the area and shooting some anvils into the sky.
But this public interest in the hobby Wilkinson learned from an elderly gentleman many years ago didn’t start there. Wilkinson and anvil shooting were also a main focus of a Science Channel one-hour feature show titled “Flying Anvils” detailing an anvil shooting competition held in conjunction with Farmington’s Country Days festival a few years ago. And there are several video clips available online showing Wilkinson shooting anvils for different events, including a segment for CBS evening news in which reporter-at-large Steve Hartman visited Farmington to explore Wilkinson’s obsession with anvils and shooting them into the air.
What is “anvil shooting” you ask? In simple terms it means loading a pound or two of gunpowder into hollowed out cavities in blacksmithing anvils, sandwiching them together, adding a fuse, lighting the setup and stepping away from the pending explosion and aerial show soon to follow. When the spark reaches the powder charge the explosion pushes the bottom anvil downward where it’s held fast by a steel plate lying flat on the ground. Since the charge can not go down it goes up instead, launching the top anvil – weighing up to 120 pounds or so – more than 100 feet into the air … ringing as it heads up, hesitates, then drops back to Earth. If done correctly the flying anvil will land within a few feet of the steel base and bottom anvil still sitting on the ground.
Wilkinson started shooting anvils in 1995 after learning the fading hobby from another area native, Tom Sawyer Nichols. In the years that followed he took his anvils and cases of black powder on the road and competed in and won several anvil shooting competitions, including a few “world championships”. Nowadays he prefers to reserve his shooting for local events and opportunities to share the nearly lost art with anyone interested in the history.
Anvil shooting has a long history in America especially. Shortly after the Mayflower arrived and white men began populating the original colonies, the shooting of an anvil off the base of another anvil was used as both a warning system and way to mark a celebration. Villages who didn’t have the benefit of a cannon for protection sometimes used the shooting of an anvil to ward off would-be attackers. And anvils were shot into the air to mark some of the biggest milestones in the nation’s early history – the swearing in of presidents, completion of the rail system across the western states and more.
While anvil shooting is still done by a few practitioners scattered around the globe, the fact remains that Gay Wilkinson’s involvment in the hobby, and the media attention he has garnered over the years, has made anvil shooting a definite part of St. Francois County.
