“The Star-Spangled Banner” has barely finished playing before a rock buggy skids down a giant boulder, over-corrects, then crashes sideways. The sight is startling, but it’s common at the Texas Top Gun Shootout, a rock-crawling competition held annually, in November, at the Katemcy Rocks Offroad Park northwest of Mason. The landscape is littered with trucks and Jeeps jostling through rock fields as custom-built buggies clamber their 42-inch tires over granite rock faces. The constant sounds of engines revving and rubber spinning, and the occasional driveline shattering, fill the air. From farther away, the sound of a metal frame torquing and bending could be mistaken for the screeching of a wild animal.
Organizers Shain Chapman and Randy Kruse have day jobs as
