Grown-up Professionals Play Cowboys

Many of us used to play cowboys and Indians when we were kids. Some of us, apparently, never grew out of it, CBS News Correspondent Steve Hartman reports with Assignment America.

By weekday they are Jerry Hinkle - a mild-mannered photo editor and his wife Grace Galik - over-protective neurologist. But come Saturday, they are totally different people.

"Innocent Bystander" he says.

"Sacramento Johnson" she chimes.

Innocent and Sacramento are just two of more than 80,000 wanna-be cowboys world-wide - who shed their identities every weekend.

"I don't even know what people's names are," he says.

They leave their day jobs behind and become pardners.

"I can go out and pick up my guns and forget about teeth," says one cowpoke, a dentist by day.

Their group is called the single action shooting society. They get together at places like this ranch outside Albequerque, N.M., to compete at taking down metal bad guys and rustling up imaginary grub.

"There's part of me that wants to mock it but there's part of me that's jealous," Hartman says.

"It seems really strange when you first see it but, I tell you what, it's very addictive," says one cowboy. "I practice all the time."

Sharon Fortner - aka Shanty Sue - is so into this she says she'd rather shoot than eat. In fact sometimes she does both at once.

"If I'm stirring spaghetti I might to pull my gun and shoot at one of the pictures on the wall," she says. "I can't take time to go to the range all the time so I just shoot things around the house."

Without bullets - thank goodness. It's that kind of passion, combined with this kind of outfit that have made single action shooting the silliest looking and fast growing shooting sport in the world.

"It may not be like the old west," Hartman says. "But, it's like we think it was. And that's good enough."