Back in the day my family was one of the first to do slow motion and dramatic set photography with bullwhips. But as I’ve said in an article titled the Class of 2005 of the young people coming up through the bullwhip community at the time, nobody really catapulted bullwhip work as brilliantly as Adam Winrich did. He has since broken nine Guinness Book of World Records in the field of whip cracking and makes his living exclusively doing shows as a bullwhip artist. And when it comes to photographing bullwhip work Adam has excelled there as well. In the beginning he watched a lot of my videos to find ways to improve on them. Now, these days, I watch his, because he does so many unique things with bullwhips. It was because of him that I learned how to cut a soda can in half with a whip. He has for the last decade been the premier whip cracker of our time, and I’m proud of him.
It was at Christmas dinner that I heard my son-in-law had received a new Go Pro camera from my daughter. The conversation migrated to what could be done with a Go Pro camera which of course ended up into a bullwhip conversation. Upon that, my brother let me know that the number one video on the Go Pro website broadcast over the Xbox network was a whip cracker by the name of Adam Winrich who had made a fantastic video using a Go Pro Hero3 camera combining slow motion and very well set up camera shots.
The video is quite beautiful to look at, the firewhip work was very well done, and the ability to show perspective of how the whips work from the view of the whip cracker is extremely unique, and admirable. Adam’s Go Pro work takes much of the excitement of being a whip cracker and puts regular people into position to enjoy it, which is marvelous. It is a very useful tool in advancing the sport.
So this next part is not intended for my normal readers here, but for Adam himself. Things like this are so hard to explain in an email. So pardon the deviation. If there was an opportunity to work for a film studio owned by a controversial conservative pundit deeply in love with traditional American values—is that something that would be attractive? The project I’m currently working on, which heavily involves bullwhip work could use a nine time record holder who is nice and young and can handle the innovations that this particular studio is looking for.
This particular individual is uniquely placed into the heart of the entertainment industry because of his success as a political pundit and even those from the political left are seeking refuge among his growing stable of stars. Within the next five years, his particular studio will be poised to directly compete with the Hollywood product model, and within ten to surpass it. Let’s see, that would put Adam Winrich right around 43 years old about that time and likely still in good shape to teach a new generation all the fantastic skills of bullwhip work.
I’ve been working on this Cliffhanger character for the last ten years refining things so that it’s a unique enough concept that can hold water for a new generation, but the goal has always been to popularize again an appreciation for the western arts the way westerns used to. But young people can’t identify with westerns any longer, so a new way to present that type of value based material has to be utilized. I’ve done a few bullwhip gigs for the Hollywood crowd and they just don’t get it. That’s why they are going out of business. They certainly aren’t poised to do anything positive for the western arts. But this one guy is–the catch is that he’s political.
The last film festival that I participated in was in 2009, since then I have used my skills to help real causes in the real world, but I don’t do bullwhip work professionally, so I don’t have to worry about not getting bookings because of my political beliefs. So it can be risky to embark on these kinds of adventures. But it can also be worth it. So it’s kind of a loose offer. There are a lot of things up in the air that has to be settled, but the first criterion has to be of interest. We live in an exciting time, and opportunities are certainly there for people who can see easily over the horizon.
There are opportunities with camera systems like the Go Pro to really change the way dramatic stories are told. I’d personally like to see something like Lash LaRue re-emerge without the camera tricks to cheat the stunts. Whip work has for the first time in history an opportunity to be done in a way that can stun audiences so long as there is a narrative justification for the suspense—and there is no better way of achieving that than with real stunts captured by camera systems like Go Pro.
So what does the schedule for Adam Winrich look like over the next ten years? Interested? These days, I’m busy writing, I still do a lot of whip work, and likely always will, but for this proposed project, I can’t think of anybody more committed to the art, and nobody more poised to bring a wow factor to further innovations. So before I make a pitch, I’d need to know some basic fundamentals. Could be a lot of fun, because in this case the hero does wear black—black as night.
I didn’t think much of it at the time because he was so young, not much older than my own kids, but Adam Winrich was one of those guys who worked out with bullwhips with the intention to become one of the best that the world has ever seen. Adam can be seen in the picture between my wife and children in 2005. I was very happy with that group, but always felt people like Anthony should have been a part of the festivities. There just aren’t many of us out there in the world. However, reflected in my discussion with the Hollywood stunt coordinator, there aren’t many films being done with bullwhips in them, so the competition is fierce on who will get the jobs when they do come about. I had no plan, or desire to challenge Delongis for a film coordination job as a master whip handler when I knew that people like my friends Gery Deer, and Chris Camp worked much harder at the technical aspects of whip work than I and should be doing those types of jobs over me. My interest was in actually doing some of the things I was writing about, so my destiny trailed off and away a bit into the realm of politics—where real threats are actually happening. Without giving away too much, I have spent my time since that Class of 2005 living life in much the same fashion as Don Diego did in one of my favorite films, Zorro’s Fighting Legion. I lost touch with some of those members of the Class of 2005 in the process, and one of them was Adam.
I feel I have accomplished many of the political tasks I intended, and recently announced that I was going to put more of my personal emphasis back on the bullwhip as it has been such a large part of my life for over thirty years. The yearly Annie Oakley event still takes place, and some of those faces from the Class of 2005 still return every year, to meet up and tell stories of their previous year. But some of those faces have found it difficult to return as they are continuously busy working in the business. Adam is one of those guys, which isn’t a surprise to me. Adam worked very hard, and it shows. Since the Class of 2005 Adam has done shows everywhere from The Conan O’Brien Show, to football halftime demonstrations and everything in between and I think he is one of the most technically proficient bullwhip artists that there is anywhere. Many of the whip masters who learned from people like Alex Green and Mark Allen felt they had taken whip work to unforeseen heights and they had. Young guys like Adam then took the work several steps further breaking records and delighting audiences in ways that have never been done before.
I am very proud of Adam Winrich who has taken the sport of whip work to new levels. I knew there was something special about him when he was cracking his 100’ whip in the main path in front of the Darke County Fairgrounds Coliseum, only to get a reprimand by Gery because the activity was going on outside of the yellow tape danger indicators. Gery was right; the whip was very dangerous and could have removed the head of a person who wasn’t paying attention walking by. But Adam’s custom made whip couldn’t have been cracked anywhere else because it was so big and I enjoyed his constant enthusiasm to try new innovative ways to advance the sport. So Adam and I had the big whip in the crowd trying to crack it which was very reckless, and very fun.
I hope that in the future he can align his very busy schedule to returning to Annie Oakley as a new class of young whip crackers is emerging and could use his mentorship. The kind of enthusiasm that Adam brings to the world of bullwhip art is the type of thing that makes legends out of raw talent. I am very proud of the Class of 2005 because of people like Paul Nolan, my own children, and especially Adam Winrich. It is wonderful to see that the fire that burns deep inside a mind can translate to the end of a whip with antics that have never been done before by anybody. And it is my hope that such innovation and technical skill will continue to advance in subsequent Classes of Annie Oakley graduates.
Nice job Adam. I learned to do this trick from you. Nothing against Mark Allen, but he would have never considered such a thing before some of your technical experiments.
I know that especially lately, each new movie that comes out; I have had grand things to say about them which weaves back through my life to points of origin that are not only sentimental, but deliberately placed there by the important people in my life who raised me. Part of being alive as opposed to half-dead or socially subdued is that you feel things. And I feel things, lots of things—because I have never turned my mind off to the world. I love movies, I love music, I love visiting places, I love food, I love family, I love books, I love comic books, but probably more than anything in my life besides family, I love bullwhips, and I was elated to discover recently that one of the great whip makers with ties to Western Stage Props had made three bullwhips for the upcoming Disney film The Lone Ranger. I was happy to hear that Joe Strain from his business The Northern Whip Company had supplied the whips for the grand revisit to the Old West by The Lone Ranger because it would not only help my friends in the bullwhip industry who make large parts of their livings off sharing their unique skills with the public, but that the modern makers of The Lone Ranger were going to pay tribute to the use of the whip in the classic stories that took place from the 1930s to the late 1950s. Not only would the new Lone Ranger from Disney pay direct tribute to the classic silver bullet mythology, the tenacious horse named “Silver,” the “William Tell Overture,” a very ambitious rendition of Tonto played by Johnny Depp, but they were even going to put a few whip scenes in the film, which used to be a standard in westerns.
I watched every television episode of The Lone Ranger at some point of my life at least once. I used to watch it with my grandfather when I was a very small child. CLICK HERE FOR MORE. When I was a kid it was a combination of The Lone Ranger, Disney’s Zorro, John Wayne westerns, and Clint Eastwood westerns that I watched with my family as entertainment before there was ever a Star Wars, or an Indiana Jones. In most of those old westerns, a bullwhip was the secondary weapon of choice on many occasions. So I grew up with a tremendous reverence for the bullwhip as have many of my friends from the bullwhip world who are seen scattered throughout this article in videos of their own displaying their love of a uniquely American art form. In fact the only place in the world where the bullwhip holds even more reverence than in America is in Australia. It is there that the whip maker who made the two whips seen hanging from my holsters in the picture above resides–Terry Jacka.
In the typical Lone Ranger stories, the hero Texas Ranger Reid is gunned down with a group of fellow Rangers and left for dead by a group of thugs who wish to inject crony capitalism into their local business operations. (Do not confuse this with pure capitalism which I support adamantly) To do so, they gun down the legitimate law so that they can make easy prey of the people they wish to exploit. It’s a classic theme that can be seen in virtually every western made and no matter how many hundreds of westerns I have seen, I never tire of the message. It is a theme I resurrected in my novel The Symposium of Justice in 2004 which essentially was a modern western set in the current time, and featured the marketing slogan “Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip.” I enjoyed tremendously the opportunities writing that novel gave me, the ability to do some stunt work for the World Stunt Association, make public appearances, and even do some consulting work in feature films, CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. I understood why my bullwhip friends enjoyed traveling the country doing tricks for audiences and performing in large shows. But from 2007 to 2009 I was getting the overwhelming feeling that something of a real Lone Ranger was needed in the actual world and I wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. As I looked around at the diminishing crowds at some of the western events I attended and my friends with their commitment to traditional western arts were looking more antiquated each year by audiences who were rapidly losing an understanding of the typical values displayed in film westerns, I had noticed that a similar evil that was clear in the old Lone Ranger episodes was sucking the life out of the world around us, and I wasn’t content to just write about it in books, and show up on movie sets earning acclaim from top actors, directors, and producers just because I had a unique talent. I felt an overwhelming desire to not just talk about it, or write about it, but to actually fight for the values of the Lone Ranger in real life.
The whip trick video was featured on The Blaze by Glenn Beck’s new enterprise during its opening weekend. CLICK FOR REVIEW. Just a few days later I did a personal interview with The Cincinnati Enquirer where I spoke out openly against the tax increases proposed by the school and I did whip tricks for the reporters knowing full well what would follow. I knew that the established order of things would attempt to paint me as a radical traditionalist who was so in love with the “old days” that I couldn’t see the wonderful benefits of “progress” as it has been brought to America by intelligentsia, CLICK TO REVIEW. At the time, I had been involved in many personal fights with others, one on one, or otherwise, and had no problem with direct conflict. But as I was writing The Symposium of Justice and telling the story of Fletcher Finnegan, who was a modern masked outlaw named “Cliffhanger,” I had a persistent nagging desire to prove a theory that I had constructed in the book which had to be proven for the follow-up novel, which is how one man can take on a giant statist organization and survive. In my novel, it was the heroics of Cliffhanger that inspired good people in the town of Fort Seven-Mile to join together and form Cliffhanger’s Fighting Legion, to fight tyranny all the way to the powers that pulled the strings of political puppets beyond the reach of Washington D.C. Fletcher Finnegan was my modern version of The Lone Ranger, a masked man who instead of a silver bullet, used bullwhips to bring justice to the world. But for me, that wasn’t enough. I wanted to strike at the heart of the evil, not just the reaction to it, which had always bothered me about every western I had ever seen. It was one thing to fight evil and stand for the good, but what was the cause of the evil? To answer that I had to go on a dark quest of my own.
The bull whip video had started me down a road for justice and soon after I was doing many radio broadcasts, granting interviews to the AP, and speaking on television. As I had been working with several local Tea Party groups, I had grown concerned that my work with the whips might draw bad publicity for them so I backed off some of my public bull whip presentations relying instead on my speaking ability to perform the pursuit of justice. At this point I was already deep into my experimental theory which I am about to reveal the result. Over the next couple of years I found that like the Lone Ranger, I had put on a kind of social mask to protect the people I cared about in the Tea Party movement, and traded business attire as my mask, keeping the whip hidden from a media that was looking for every opportunity to paint me as an extremist radical that wanted to destroy the lives of children—instead of saving them.
What I learned during this endeavor is exactly what I set out to understand. Government statists spread their evil by creating anti-concepts. If the American western was about creating in the mind of viewers a “concept” about tradition, and value, then the anti-concept was about destroying that value. This was the cause of the declining popularity of the American western and why my bull whip friends were finding declining interest in their art form over the years. This anti-concept theory is being taught in public schools to metaphorically deliver the souls of millions of young people to the slavery of a giant Cavendish gang represented in reality by statist governments all over the world. Before I started all this activity the biggest fear that small government activists had was retaliation, particularly from labor unions set up like parasites in government institutions such as public schools, and IRS agencies. These unions got what they wanted by acting identically to the gangs of the Old West who robbed trains, stole cattle, and harassed settlers. They used force, or the threat of it, to take what they wanted and imposed fear on their victims so they could maintain their regional power. These statists functioned from misleading facts through the formation of the “anti-concept”—by stripping away values from society. The way to destroy a concept is with open attack, using the threat of force, or by subversion, by undercutting the value of an argument. For instance with the public school mentioned, they failed to recognize the need for their tax increase was caused by their mismanaged finances. They associated the value of education to money equaling goodness for children even though the facts had nothing to do with that reality. If someone challenged that premise, the union would show up in collective force to protest the school board sending a message to the community that if anyone stood in their way, they’d be vandalized, personally harassed, their children would be tortured in various degrees, and they’d be turned into social outcasts. Because of this threat, nobody challenged them, even the so-called wealthy elite who understood clearly what was happening but were unable to do anything about it for fear that their businesses would come under attack by union thugs and social radicals. What the unions were doing was no different from what the Cavendish gang did in The Lone Ranger. They used fear to impose their statist will on the innocent.
It is one thing to think such a thing, but quite another to speak out against it. After all, nobody wants to be called a mean, selfish, or a diabolical menace to the fibers of an interconnected society which is how the villains in this case had destroyed the concept of goodness. They had subverted entire communities into sitting on their hands and not speaking out in fear of being considered socially as an outcast—or even an outlaw. I theorized in The Symposium of Justice that the way to beat these types of villains was to challenge their premise with the question “why.” When the statist enemy cannot answer, which they never can, they then turn to force. This is where my hero Fletcher Finnegan/Cliffhanger used his bullwhips to impose justice on those who tried to use force to remove the concept of goodness from society. My problem was that I knew such an idea worked in small combat situations with fewer than ten combatants at a time from personal experience. But I wasn’t sure if the same could be applied to statist government all the way to the top of the food chain which is what my next novel in the series is all about.
When I did the Enquirer interview Mike Clark asked me if I knew what I was doing in bringing my whips to the front page of Cincinnati’s largest paper. I knew as he asked the question that I was looking at a future Judas, a betrayer who would pretend to be a friend just like the villain in The Lone Ranger who led the Texas Rangers to their deaths in the canyon trap set by the Cavendish gang. But this time, I would use the bait to my advantage—and I did. I knew that if the threat of personal harm was removed from the unions’ arsenal of weapons that they’d be defenseless against me because they certainly couldn’t answer any questions regarding “why.” When I have my Terry Jacka whips, nobody is going to bring personal harm to me with any melee weapon. For those hired thugs who don’t care to use a firearm, the decision of that kind falls into a level of thuggery that our current statist society still recognizes as bad, so it doesn’t happen often and that is when firearms are needed for defense. But for all other circumstances, no gang of thugs can bring harm to a person who can use bullwhips in the fashion that I do. By presenting my whips to the unions all across the State of Ohio through popular media, I had taken away the weapon that all statist organizations use to impose their will, the threat of force. This allowed me to give many dozens of interviews to the media against unarmed opposition because the statist representatives of public schools could not answer the “why” and they could not stop me with force. So they were unable to stop me and this remains the case to this day. Without thuggish force, without bringing harm to others, they have no ground to stand on. The way to beat them time and time again is to ask them “why” which they can never answer, and then to let it be known that physical force, social intimidation, and extortion will not serve them. When they learn that, their game is over. They cannot win with facts of any kind.
When I say, “Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip” this is what is meant; that statist villains have had their most important weapon removed from them—the ability to apply force. This is why whips were so popular in the early westerns like The Lone Ranger and Zorro, because they represented the “concept” of justice in a way that does not involve killing your opponent. The whip allows the wielder an ability to disarm those who wish to use force against others. The bull whip cuts like a knife, is far faster than a pair of nunchucks, and much more versatile than a sword, staff, or baseball bat. In short, a person who learns to use the bull whip anywhere close to the kind of people shown in the videos on this article know in their mind that nobody can harm them in one-on-one or group combat. That self-assurance is a measure of freedom that allows goodness to be seen clearly, and solutions to statism are then solved.
As The Lone Ranger puts on his mask in the new Disney film, I’m taking mine off. I am no longer concerned about what anybody thinks about my use of the bullwhip as I have made my point. For me, the bull whip is a symbol of justice because it prevents those who wish to steal away righteousness from the innocent eliminating the ability to invoke any fear to do so. It forces statist opponents to take the next step which involves more lethal force and in this way the “ground” to combat is controlled by the whip holder, because they know what their opponent is going to do since their options are so limited. Before that next step, which obviously the Clinton’s have no problem utilizing, CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW; decisions have to be made on how the public perception of such an action can be justified. Most statist enemies lack this type of arrogance, or network to pull off such a feat, so they are paralyzed when threat of force is removed from their social holsters, and that is invoked by the bull whip.
There are many great whip makers in the world for my money; Terry Jacka is the absolute best. Right up there with him is Joe Strain and my old friend Paul Nolan who was seen in the video on the pillars at sunset with his wife and friend T-Rex. A lot of whip masters don’t talk about it, but when they put a whip in their hand the power they feel is not one to inflict pain and suffering on other people the way some statist slave master might think. What they feel is the power to defend themselves from any melee force that might attempt to enter their barrier of protection. Speaking personally, when you see a whip artist standing at the center of a two-handed Queensland Crossover, or other two-handed routine, they know they are standing in the middle of spinning knives that can cut to shreds anyone who tries to penetrate that parameter. When I wear my Jacka whips with the long 12” handles pointing out like Samurai swords on both sides of my hip I do so to have quick access to them off my quick release holsters, which were specially designed for me by Gery Deer. I know when I walk around with them that I have complete control over my life because the whip keeps anybody who might wish me harm from entering my parameter of individuality, and that is a wonderful feeling.
It is in this spirit that the bull whip was used in the Old West mythology as a symbol of justice instead of pain. The greatest of them all was Lash LaRue who was known as The King of the Bullwhip. He was another of my favorite western protagonists. So it brought me great delight to see that Disney had purchased three whips from The Northern Whip Company to be featured in the new Lone Ranger film. I would love to see a film where whips are used in them to the level that Lash LaRue or Zorro did, but I’ll be very happy to see a scene or two with the Lone Ranger bringing about a bullwhip to implement justice in a way that only bullwhip masters understand.
As for me, the bullwhip is an important part of my life, and I am taking the social mask I put on for a brief time off. The justice I seek doesn’t require a mask, because in the hands of a bull whip master, there is nothing to fear. It would be my hope that I could share this self-assurance with as many people possible so that they too could learn such a skill that would free them from the tyranny of fear that so cripples such vast majorities with the constant threat of personal harm while in pursuit of honor.
Check out Joe Strain’s bull whips for yourself. I’m sure he will have replicas of the ones he made for The Lone Ranger available soon.
Another great champion of the bull whip sport is Adam Winrich. He is a wonderful whip maker, but spends most of his time these days doing professional gigs. He also has dozens and dozens of instructional videos on technique some seen here on this article.
Then of course there’s Chris Camp who laid the foundation for many world record endeavors and stays busy as a whip professional traveling the world with his family for many corporate clients.
And if you want to take some classes on how to get started in a nice comfortable bull whip training studio that is just a short drive north of Cincinnati, contact my friend Gery Deer. It’s the only one of its kind in the world. Most of the names mentioned have attended Gery’s Annie Oakley Western Showcase event each year in Ohio during the last weekend of July.
But the first step is in deciding not to live in fear, then learning what can be done about it. Justice Comes with the Crack of a Whip, and for each of us, there is nothing more important.
I had no plan, or desire to challenge Delongis for a film coordination job as a master whip handler when I knew that people like my friends Gery Deer, and Chris Camp worked much harder at the technical aspects of whip work than I and should be doing those types of jobs over me. My interest was in actually doing some of the things I was writing about, so my destiny trailed off and away a bit into the realm of politics—where real threats are actually happening. 
I know that especially lately, each new movie that comes out; I have had grand things to say about them which weaves back through my life to points of origin that are not only sentimental, but deliberately placed there by the important people in my life who raised me. Part of being alive as opposed to half-dead or socially subdued is that you feel things. And I feel things, lots of things—because I have never turned my mind off to the world. I love movies, I love music, I love visiting places, I love food, I love family, I love books, I love comic books, but probably more than anything in my life besides family, I love bullwhips, and I was elated to discover recently that one of the great whip makers with ties to Western Stage Props had made three bullwhips for the upcoming Disney film The Lone Ranger. I was happy to hear that Joe Strain from his business The Northern Whip Company had supplied the whips for the grand revisit to the Old West by The Lone Ranger because it would not only help my friends in the bullwhip industry who make large parts of their livings off sharing their unique skills with the public, but that the modern makers of The Lone Ranger were going to pay tribute to the use of the whip in the classic stories that took place from the 1930s to the late 1950s. Not only would the new Lone Ranger from Disney pay direct tribute to the classic silver bullet mythology, the tenacious horse named “Silver,” the “William Tell Overture,” a very ambitious rendition of Tonto played by Johnny Depp, but they were even going to put a few whip scenes in the film, which used to be a standard in westerns.
The Overmanwarrior 