by Hap Rocketto
The last prone match that most folks in the New England area shoot before departing for Perry is the Bell City Rifle Club Metric Prone Regional. The match precedes the National Championships by a week or so and usually falls on the second or third weekend of July.
By happenstance some 85 years or so before this year’s match Ernest Hemingway and some friends attended the Fiesta de San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain. The festival is a celebration of the patron saint of the Basque region of Navarre, of which Pamplona is capitol. After a week of overindulgence in food, wine, and bull fighting Hemingway followed his writing dictum in which he stated that, “My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.” The end result was The Sun Also Rises. While not one of my favorite Hemingway works, my choices being The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bells Toll, it was the work that first gave the world a view of his lean and athletic writing style, launched his career, and made the running of the bulls a required stop on any self respecting adventurer’s itinerary.
As strange as that may sound July events scheduled at both Pamplona and Bell City have something in common, besides the dates, and it is the bulls.
In Pamplona spectators peer from the balconies overlooking CalleEstafeta each morning during the second week in July and eagerly await the encierro, or the running of the bulls. Daily, for that week, six fighting bulls, as well as six bullocks, run about a half of a mile from a holding pen to the Plaza de Toros de Pamplona, where they will fight that same afternoon. Running amidst the bulls will be several hundred young men out to prove their machismo.
In order to participate in this event one must be 18 years old, run in the same direction as the bulls, do nothing to incite the bulls, and not be under the influence of alcohol. The first three make a lot of sense but I really wonder why anyone in a sober state would even think of dashing down a half mile of cobblestone street dodging six tons of excited, jumpy, and possibly angry, pot roast.
The Pamplona website warns possible participants, in a rather wry and understated announcement, that, “Not everyone can run the encierro. It requires cool nerves, quick reflexes and a good level of physical fitness. Anyone who does not have these three should not take part; it is a highly risky enterprise.”
The runners, dressed all in white with red sashes or bandanas, carrying rolled up newspapers for some unknown reason, assemble at the gates of the holding corral to wisely ask for the protection of the Patron Saint by three times chanting “We ask San Fermín, being our patron saint, to guide us in the bull run and give us his blessing.” before a small statue of the saint. Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are also none in the streets of Pamplona during the running of the bulls.
At eight o’clock a rocket is shot into the air to announce that the bulls have been released, as if the sight and sound of 12 snorting bovines wouldn’t be enough, and with that the melee and mayhem begins.
About three or four minutes later another rocket is launched to signal that the bulls are in their pens at the Plaza and the running has concluded. Well, except for the 50 or so runners each day who hobble, or are carried, off to the local hospital to attend to various cuts, bruises, contusions, and sprains which daily attend this event. The rest of the crowd will be off to a local bistro for three fingers of a liquid bracer, breakfast, and to brag on their bravado.
Now, you ask, “What has all this adventure in Spain got to do with a prone match in rural Connecticut?” As I said earlier, it is the bulls. While the Pamplona runners face six bulls just once, a rifleman on the line at Bell City must stare down 18 each day for two days, 27 if you count the sighter bulls.
The metric target being what it is, and the conditions at Bell City being what they are, it takes a lot of, as the Pamplona website said, “cool nerves, quick reflexes and a good level of physical fitness” to lie there wrapped in sweatshirt and shooting jacket, stock still, in the heat and humidity of a July afternoon facing down those bulls.
However, from time to time, after taking a long hard look at the score board, I have wondered if I might not have been better off if I had just swapped my leather shooting coat, sweat shirt, and rifle for a white shirt and trousers, red sash, and a rolled up newspaper.
