Bill and I Set the Record Straight

by Hap Rocketto

Cartoon illustration by Bernie Schuman, a Massachusetts Guardsman, who is both Distinguished and a commercial artist. The cartoon appeared on a 1981 publication entitled “The Lighter Side of National Guard Marksmanship” published by the National Guard Marksmanship Training Unit.

During the course of my shooting career I have managed to bag a couple of National Records. Some were a result of good shooting and some were the result of being in the right place at the right time. I guess there is no such thing as holding a “bad” National Record but some shine brighter than others. Of those that I hold there are two that I am most proud of earning. The first was a perfect score of 600 that I fired in an any sight English Match during a Rhode Island State Championship. A group of us had fired a 3P match at the Quaker Hill Rod and Gun Club and then rushed up to South County Rod and Gun Club for the last relay of the prone match. It was a perfect day for shooting with a light overcast and an equally light rain. The rain was so light that it barely got you wet and was perfect for reading the wind if there had been one. I was shooting next to Spike Hadley and we were running neck and neck. When it was all over I had a clean and Spike had a 599. Our biggest regret was that there was no two-man team match because an 1199 would be a hard score for any team to beat. The target has been retired and that locks in the record.

The second record was one that was set almost by accident this past summer at Bell City. I was shooting in a Connecticut Big Bore League Match on the Sunday of the Metric Prone Regional and had made arrangements with my fellow Guardsmen so that I could just shoot and leave from the high power match. As luck would have it the rains threatened and the match was delayed rather than postponed. As I beat feet to Bell City the rain stopped and I made my relay at the smallbore match.

During the day someone mentioned that the Reserve Record for the Two Man Dewar Team Match was vacant and wasn’t it a shame that I was the only Guardsman there. In an instant I discarded my original idea of shooting the match solo for, even though it would have established a record, my act would have been disrespectful to the process. After a few minutes thought I called my All Guard team mate Bill Lange, who lives in nearby Southington, and told him of the situation. He had finished the morning’s big bore shooting and was agreeable to team up with me. A little later he came rolling in and unloaded a couple of parachute bags full of stocks, barreled actions, and scopes from his pickup. While I shot the final stage of the match at 100 yards Bill sat on the tailgate of the truck and slapped together a prone rifle from the bits and pieces he brought and soon was in the club’s indoor 50-foot range zeroing in the rifle and scope.

We then hit the line for the team match and, because the frames were already there, we fired the 100-meter stage first. When time expired we estimated that I had dropped three points and Bill went for just two-not bad when one considers he only had a 50 foot sight setting with which to work. We then, in the range speak of the high power shooter, “moved back” to 50 meters where Bill went for an estimated three and I for two. At that point we knew we had established a new Reserve record and thought we were down ten and had tied the existing open record of 790X800 held by our friends Greg Tomsen and Steve Hogan.

We were in for a bit of a pleasant surprise for when Charlie Goss, the chief scorer, had finished with his plugs and overlays the score stood at 793×800. I had only dropped three for a 397 and Bill had carded a 396, down four. Oddly enough Bill had lost three points at 50 meters, the sight setting he had started out with. It was a new Open National Record and we had upped it by a substantial margin. The match stands out in my memory for two reasons. First, I was high man on a prone team, which is no mean feat when shooting with Bill Lange. The second was the pleasure of watching a shooter of such supreme skill and confidence come to the line with untried equipment and still bang out a championship quality score.