Joe Bowman; sharpshooter thrilled many

Joe Bowman did it routinely, and he had a few more tricks up his elaborately embroidered western sleeve.

“I remember him throwing a washer up in the air, firing a pistol, and saying, ‘I shot right through it,’ ’’ said Dan Pastorini, a former quarterback for the Houston Oilers and a friend of Mr. Bowman. “I laughed and said, ‘Sure, Joe.’ So he wrapped a piece of tape over the hole in the washer, threw it in the air, and fired again. The tape was gone.’’

Joe Bowman, known as the Straight Shooter and the Master of Triggernometry, died June 29 in Junction, Texas, where he had stopped for the night after putting on a fast-draw and sharpshooting exhibition for the Single Action Shooting Society’s annual convention near Albuquerque. He was 84 and lived in Houston.

The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Betty Reid-Bowman.

At gun shows and rodeos across the country, Mr. Bowman dazzled audiences with his fancy gunplay and sharpshooting with pistol and rifle. In one of his more elaborate stunts, he put two lighted candles on either side of an ax blade, balanced a .22-caliber bullet on the blade, and then split the bullet with a rifle shot. The two pieces of the bullet extinguished the candle flames.

In the United States, he trained actors to draw a gun at lightning speed and twirl a six-shooter with authority. In “Lonesome Dove,’’ Robert Duvall hefted a heavy Walker revolver once used by the Texas Rangers, thanks to Mr. Bowman’s lessons.

Traveling the world, he performed for King Hussein of Jordan and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. In Houston, he taught police SWAT teams and FBI agents the technique of “instinct shooting,’’ a way to fire accurately under pressure by aligning the body correctly, rather than looking down the gun sight.

“I’ve seen fast, I’ve seen faster, I’ve seen fastest, and then I’ve seen Joe Bowman,’’ said James Drury, the star of the 1960s television series “The Virginian.’’

“In one five-thousandth of a second,’’ Drury said, “he could get off three shots and put them in the middle of a 50-cent piece at 30 paces.’’

“He could hit an Anacin tablet with a .22 rifle at 30 yards and pulverize it every time,’’ said Drury, who often appeared with Mr. Bowman at shows. “Firing with two six-shooters, he could keep two targets in the air until he ran out of bullets.’’

In his 80s, Mr. Bowman showed off his skills at schools and charity events. Along the way, he became the embodiment of Texas and a vanishing cowboy culture, which surprised him.

“Everybody comes to Texas to see cowboys,’’ he told his son in the 1970s. “Apparently, I’m it.’’