Board of Directors

Allow me to introduce myself, please. I am the other Jim Fulmer. I have not served as the President of the NMLRA, nor have I pastored a Primitive Baptist church near Atlanta, Georgia. The first I have never made the acquaintance, and the latter is my cousin. To paraphrase Steve Martin in the movie The Jerk, I was born a poor white kid. People said I never grew up. I said I don’t want to grow up. I was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. I spent most of my youth in Clark County near Arkadelphia, Arkansas. After several moves and a marriage and a daughter arrived, I landed in Bentonville, Arkansas, for a couple of years. It was there that I was introduced to the art of muzzle loading. During this time I attended my first competition. It was in the year of 1981 and was in Berryville. I became addicted to black powder shooting. I started with an Italian copy of the 1858 Remington Army revolver. After starting to work at Arkansas Nuclear One near Russellville, I purchased a Thompson/Center Arms Patriot Pistol kit. It looked okay after I assembled it, but it shot better than I could hold it. I shot that pistol for many years at Berryville and took medals and agg winnings many times over quite a few years. I met Harry “The Creature” Bowman at one of the shoots at Berryville and he invited me to one of monthly matches sponsored by the Arkansas Muzzle Loading Association near Hattieville, Arkansas. (Is there a pattern emerging: muzzle loading and living in Arkansas.) Upon arriving at the match near Hattieville, I introduced myself to AMLA President Pat Brain and asked if I could shoot the match with my pistol since I did not own a rifle at that time, I saw a big grin come upon his face and heard several snickers behind me as he replied “Sure. I don’t think anybody will object.”. The snickers subsided when I landed at the median of about 30 seasoned rifle shooters that day. That was when Pat gave me the camp name “Pistolero Jim”, which morphed into my email address. That was about 1985. Since then, I have missed very few weekends camping and shooting at the AMLA range. I have served as President and Secretary in the years gone by and now serve as Treasurer. When the Luther’s Charcoal Burners club collapsed in the 1990s, I convinced about two dozen of the active shooters at the two yearly Berryville matches to pull together and reorganize the Charcoal Burners into Luther’s Long Hunters and revise the Saunder’s Memorial Match to keep it alive. As I recall I served as President of the group and put in several years trying to get the blood flowing swiftly again. I managed to hang in there for a while until Zoe Caywood took over as President and the match director.  My shooting scores have diminished over the years, but the other shooters could not run me off. In the last year or so, Zoe saw a need to step down from the President’s position and I agreed to take the football and run with it this fall (2025).There is a wonderful group of people, both young and experienced (that’s a polite way of saying “old”} who have agreed to help me run the Saunder’s Memorial Match in September each year and to help with the newly planned NMLRA National Territorial  Match that is initially scheduled for June of 2026. I plan to work with these partners as long as I can in both mind and body and spirit and have a great time enjoying the sport of muzzle loading. I hope you can join me.