A Chapter of Accidents

by Hap Rocketto

As the supervisor of a high school academic department, which includes both chemical labs and art supplies, I find safety an issue that is always in the back of my mind. In the 18 years since my school opened my department has had only a few minor cuts and burns to report. They inevitably occur during one short lab when we teach the kids how to cut and bend glass tubing. Hot glass looks no different than cold glass and glass is brittle so when you mix those conditions with 14 year olds inevitably some skin will be scorched and some blood will flow.

In the many safety bulletins that I read I note that shooting rarely, if ever, shows up on accident lists. It should come as no surprise that this is the case because legitimate firearms owners are well aware of the inherent possibility of accidents with guns and respond accordingly with great responsibility. The shooting sports are very safe. However, I am reminded of some unusual injuries at ranges.

In the 1960s my brother Steve ran the rifle range at Camp Wakenah, the local Boy Scout Councils’ summer camp. I succeeded him in that post when he moved up to, if you can believe it, the position of waterfront director. There he was in charge of a half of a dozen well-muscled bronzed young men who taught swimming and boating. He was even bronzed himself, but that is another story. It turns out that in the five years that we ran the range it incurred the second highest accident rate at the camp.

We never had a shooting accident, however, while the youngsters were waiting to shoot they whiled away the time working on handicraft projects. Many of them had recently bought razor sharp whittling knives and neckerchief slide kits at the camp trading post. While they waited they took out the knives and furiously flailed away at white pine, yellow poplar, and their fingers. Our ready line accounted for dozens of stitches each summer.

The most dangerous area was the handicraft lodge itself. There the boys sat hacking and hewing at lumber and limbs from morn ’till night. The wooden floor was a rust brown color from many years of soaking up scout’s blood. The floor was always covered with wood chips, saw dust, and blood easily reminding one of a butcher shop. Perhaps the only other area that could match it was the scaffold in The Place De La Revolution upon which the guillotine stood during France’s Reign of Terror. Fed by tumbrels full of aristocrats, instead of Boy Scouts, the French abattoir barely outdistanced the handicraft lodge in bloodshed.

In the early 1980s Mark Lasrich and my brother Steve traveled the summer shooting circuit together. When this Laurel and Hardy team ended up at Perry, in 1983, the accident rate soared. About two days into the NRA Championships Lasrich’s glasses fogged up during a rapid sitting string and he tore off his glasses to shoot the last shot. The averages of having a punctured primer are astronomical. Lasrich beat the odds and was rushed to Magruder Hospital. The damage was slight but he had to wear an eye patch for the rest of the week forcing him to withdraw from the rest of the tournament.

The next day Steve, who is a brilliant theoretical and practical physics teacher, decided to leap off of one of the shooters’ trolleys that were provided to move competitors and equipment around the ranges. A quick calculation, based on the estimated speed of the vehicle, momentum, acceleration of gravity, and mass, informed him of the speed that he would need to avoid falling. He started pumping his legs and leaped from the cart forgetting that his mind is much more athletic that his body. Released from the Magruder emergency room with his left elbow in a bandage and his shooting at Perry finished he joined Lasrich on the disabled list. The two stalwarts did not let the rest of the week go to waste. They spent the few days remaining exploring all of those obscure places at Perry that we wish we could visit but never have the time.

Everyone in the free world witnessed me being shot between the eyes during the Wimbledon Cup Match in 1976, but few people either saw, or heard of, this little incident that involved my brother few years later. Steve was sitting on the bench next to the phone after scoring a Leg Day rapid-fire string at Perry. A strong wind was blowing and it dislodged the scoreboard on the target to his left. The scoreboard flew across his point and struck a member of the pit crew to his right a sharp blow to the head. The target puller dropped like a pole-axed ox as blood began to gush from his head like Spindletop.

As Steve turned to help he yelled to the man next to him, ” Get on the phone! Call for the camp doctor!”

“I am the camp doctor!” came the reply.

Surprised, Steve turned in his tracks and asked, “What are you doing here?”

The sawbones shot back the obvious reply, “It’s Leg Day, isn’t it?”

As a result of good training and responsibility there are precious few shooting injuries. Most are generally shooting related injuries, but Leg Day is always Leg Day.

About Hap Rocketto

Hap Rocketto is a Distinguished Rifleman with service and smallbore rifle, member of The Presidents Hundred, and the National Guard’s Chief’s 50. He is a National Smallbore Record holder, a member of the 1600 Club and the Connecticut Shooters’ Hall Of Fame. He was the 2002 Intermediate Senior Three Position National Smallbore Rifle Champion, the 2012 Senior Three Position National Smallbore Rifle Champion a member of the 2007 and 2012 National Four Position Indoor Championship team, coach and captain of the US Drew Cup Team, and adjutant of the United States 2009 Roberts and 2013 Pershing Teams. Rocketto is very active in coaching juniors. He is, along with his brother Steve, a cofounder of the Corporal Digby Hand Schützenverein. A historian of the shooting sports, his work appears in Shooting Sports USA, the late Precision Shooting Magazine, The Outdoor Message, the American Rifleman, the Civilian Marksmanship Program’s website, and most recently, the apogee of his literary career, pronematch.com.
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