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Days Of Thunder

American Handgunner, March, 2000 by Roy Huntington

The foremost shooting and tactics school, Thunder Ranch, has designated a special Les Baer Custom 1911 as its "official Thunder gun."

Excellence has a tendency to seek a common ground, perhaps due to an unwritten rule or an almost magnetic manner of mutual attraction. Chances are very good if an attractive woman is driving an S600 Mercedes, she will more than likely be wearing a designer dress. Magnetism.

In a not so obvious manner, craftsmanship--be it rendered in the form and function of a tool, the product of a pottery wheel or the quality of work or ethic--also tends to attract. Such is what happened a little more than a year ago at the S.H.O.T. Show(r) in Atlanta.

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Clint Smith, the director of Thunder Ranch and the magnetic personality who keeps students returning time and time again to the Hill Country of Texas, met Les Baer. The polarity began to pull.

Les, of course, is known for his company's premier 1911 pistols and, like Clint, is at the epitome of his craft. One in steel and wood, the other in minds and bodies. Form and function, work and ethic came together as natural as, well, a blonde, a Mercedes and an Armani suit.

The Process

Clint saw a Les Baer Presentation Grade 1911 in Baer's booth and immediately recognized it for what it was--an unparalled fighting pistol, lurking just beneath the immaculate engraving, ivory grips and charcoal bluing. Clint ordered one and then proceeded to handle every pistol Les had on display and, I'm sure, one or two he wasn't displaying.

The two were drawn together in their mutual admiration for one another's craft and a bond formed. Excellence attracts like, well, you know.

Soon after the show, Clint called and put it simply: "You make the finest pistol in the world. Would you be interested in making a Thunder Ranch gun?" Les told me he about fell out of his chair. He was stunned.

"Clint could have had his choice of anyone and he picked Les Baer. I was honored and anxious to make it happen. I admire Clint for his pragmatic nature and thought we would be able to translate that into a pistol," Les said. And he did.

After some more phone conversations, the basic pistol design was agreed upon. All major parts were to be made by the Les Baer shop. Frame, barrel, slide you name it-- it had to be 100 percent manufactured and assembled by Les Baer's handpicked cadre of craftsmen.

The Thunder Ranch gun would be made by the man who made the FBI HRT gun, the man who has been making the almost legendary competition and personal protection guns for years now. The man who would now focus his skills and experience on one gun to make it "just right," according to one man's notion of the ultimate fighting pistol, Clint Smith's.

Those ideas are based upon a lifetime of working with combat pistols and seeing them in the hands of thousands upon thousands of students, not to mention carrying them himself on the streets as a cop and in the jungles of Vietnam as a Marine.

Those untold hours distilled themselves into a basic conceptualization of what works and what doesn't. The Les Baer Thunder Ranch Special was to be the epitome of what works. Period.

After making a prototype gun, Les sent it to Clint who, as he put it, "Shot the snot out of it."

The process became more refined, the file strokes shorter and lighter and the final design finally lay in steel and wood on a workbench. Clint wanted serial numbers one and two for, his wife, Heidi, and himself, and the rest were to be offered to those who had the foresight to understand and appreciate what a fine fighting firearm is all about.

TR000l and TR0002 now ride on Clint's and Heidi's respective hips during their duties at the ranch and at the time of this writing, about 170 people have had the foresight to understand what is going on here. Those pistols ride on a wide cross-section of knowledgeable hips.

What makes a fighting pistol in Clint's not unreserved opinion? "Real world reliability. It's gotta work 100 percent of the time, period. You don't have time to mess around when the other guy is trying to kill you," Clint said.

Don't other makes have this vaunted "real world reliability," I wondered? Can't you go into the local gun store and buy a Brand-X load it and rest on your increasingly spreading laurels smug in the fact you are well protected?

"No," said Clint. "I've been teaching for a long time and I've seen too many trash cans full of magazines, extended safeties, buffers, recoil spring guide rods and sights that have fallen off to believe anything I read. Unless I see that it works, that it holds up to 1,500 rounds in five days here at the school, then I won't trust my life to it. Would you?" the hard-bitten trainer said.

How can you argue with that? You can't.

The Pistol

Serial number TR0008 arrived in a humble cardboard box after being subjected to the attentions of our premier photographer who, I believe, was disinclined to return said gun.

First impressions-- be they of potential girlfriends, antique automobiles, old airplanes or quality guns--are all-important. Do you need a Les Baer Thunder Ranch Special? Do you need an immaculately restored 1947 Cessna 140? Probably not. Would a Smith & Wesson Model 10, blue-worn, grip-dinged, police trade-in keep you safe? Probably.

Days Of Thunder

American Handgunner, March, 2000 by Roy Huntington

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