by Hap Rocketto
I am getting a little long in the tooth but I work to stay in competitive shape for position shooting. I shoot two winter position leagues and specialize in prone during the summer months, with a little four position centerfire league thrown in to leaven the mix.
Deep down inside I hope to [...]
A couple of weeks ago I was idly leafing through some Shakespeare when a line from King Henry IV Part I leapt from the page and stirred my memory…
Hap Rocketto remarks about NRA National Records and how some are “good” and others are…well…not so good
by Hap Rocketto
[Editor's Note] This is a Gallery Match primer!
I have just arrived home after shooting the Connecticut Gallery Championship, a match I first shot as a high school freshman in 1962. Way back then The Gallery Match was the largest indoor match known to man. On two consecutive weekends sub-juniors, juniors and seniors [...]
by Hap Rocketto
Those who are familiar with Yankee Stadium know about Monument Park, a collection of monuments, plaques, and retired numbers honoring distinguished members of the New York Yankees. It was built during a renovation of “The House That Ruth Built” to contain the monuments, plaques, and flag pole which were originally in fair [...]
by Hap Rocketto
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall combined to touch off a chain of events that threatened to change the face of American Conventional Prone Shooting forever. Why events in Europe and Asia would effect the lives of such venerable Black Hawks as Marianne Driver and Earl [...]
by Hap Rocketto
I am sure that you are like many people who notice when little technical things in stories, or movies, are not quite right. If you are a SCUBA diver you might notice that the character is wearing the wrong type of regulator. If you like airplanes an interior that does not [...]
by Hap Rocketto
Each year, at the National Smallbore Rifle Championships, with a gaggle of unenthusiastic juniors in tow, I make for the NRA Trophy Room to insure that the kids see these magnificent works of art and begin to appreciate the many fine riflemen and women who have earned them. Too often the [...]
by Hap Rocketto
I shot my first long-range match in 1972 at the Colonie Club outside of Albany, New York. I was working in a small private school in New Jersey and was going to meet my fellow shooters from the Magnum Rifle Club at the range. I didn’t have a long-range rifle [...]
by Hap Rocketto
Decision making and problem solving are two very important skills a shooter must have to be successful. Each time a shooter prepares to release a shot though the process of the integrated act of shooting a great many factors are weighed and each requires that a “go” or “no go” decision [...]
by Hap Rocketto
Some years ago, when I was a young pup, my National Guard Rifle Team won the US Army Combat Rifle Championships. Each shooter was given a small Blackington medal and a handshake by the general. Back in the barracks, after the awards had been passed out, I was bewailing the fact [...]
by Hap Rocketto
There are a few of Lee Marvin movies that I very much enjoy, in part because he was an excellent actor and in part because of the story line. The Professionals, Heck in the Pacific, Cat Ballou, and, of course, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance are films which come to mind. [...]
by Hap Rocketto
There is pleasure in being a necromancer. I recently resurrected Harry Seeburger. You will remember that Harry was the character that vainly chased Distinguished designation for more than four decades. Some years ago he went on to his reward lacking but 24 points to earn the badge. Heaven, for [...]
by Hap Rocketto
When I was a young unmarried pup I usually went to Camp Perry for the both phases of the smallbore matches, The DCM Board Matches, NRA High power, and rounded out the stay with attendance at the long-range matches. It was about 30 days of the most intense kind of shooting. [...]
by Hap Rocketto
It may be a small footnote in shooting history, but it is my footnote. I took Art Jackson to his Camp Perry finale. After several years of cajoling I finally convinced Art that he should shoot the prone matches at Camp Perry in 2000 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his [...]
by Hap Rocketto
I am fortunate in that I have known some of the great smallbore shooters of both the modern era and what might be called the “Golden Era” of shooting of the 1940s to 1960s. One of the things that make the two groups different is the way they talk about equipment and [...]
by Hap Rocketto
The world is full many unusual coincidences, perhaps chief among them is the occasional shot loosed from my rifle that strikes the X ring as it meanders into the bullet’s path. Another is the way that a series of seemingly unrelated historical occurrences seem to link up unusual and diverse events and individuals. [...]
by Hap Rocketto
In smallbore prone shooting there seems to be an underlying current of thought that if you can’t win the match on the firing line you might stand a chance in the stat shack. This belief seems to grow from the old statistical theory that given an infinite number of monkeys and typewriters one [...]
by Hap Rocketto
A lull in the firing, as I sat behind the line as a scorer during the 2005 Pershing Match, allowed my mind to part its moorings from the job at hand and drift into distant waters. Idle thoughts about the British lead me to recall how that particular race prized eccentricity. The characters [...]
by Hap Rocketto
Three weeks before my 18th birthday, in January of 1965, the poet Thomas Sterns Eliot died. Oddly enough his wife Vivian died in January of 1947 within a few days of my birthday. Regardless of these curious coincidences I was not particularly a fan of the author of ‘The Waste Land’ [...]
by Hap Rocketto
My loyal fans will remember that I am a classic movie fan. I have just finished watching the Marx Brothers’ A Day At The Races. While trying to regain my breath after the gut wrenching comedy a thought shot through my mind. One of the great comedic scenes is that of Chico [...]
