Right Between the Running Lights

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. In 1976, during the long-range matches I was in the pit and my shooters had finished. With a little time on my hands I had wandered down to where my brother Steve was pulling targets. I thought I’d either pick up a new joke or perhaps some hot range gossip.

As I approached I noticed that he and the two other pullers, Paul Leberge of the famous Vermont shooting clan being one of them, was ankle deep in sand, splinters, and scraps of burlap. This meant that 1,000 yards away someone was not having a good day. As I approached, my ever helpful and concerned older brother suggested that I get up against the pit wall as there was debris flying all over the place. I leaned against the concrete in a nonchalant manner trying to look worldly and experienced in the art of long range shooting.

I was chatting with Paul, who like his many of his eight brothers and three sisters is named after a saint-there being a Peter, Luke, and Mark among them-about an entertaining little vignette I witnessed on Commercial Row the previous night. What seemed like the entire Laberge Clan had emerged from a store in single file, each carrying a caddy of rifle powder on his left shoulder. I remarked to him that it brought to mind the scene from the Disney movie Snow White where the Seven Dwarfs came whistling home from a long day’s work in the diamond mine. Paul politely replied with an indulgent chuckle at my observation. It must have been good powder because brothers Paul, Pete, Mark, and Al, under the scope of fellow Green Mountain long range specialist Jim Gomo, later won the Rumanian Trophy, the premier 1,000 yard four man team iron sight match.

As I was next getting ready to again open my mouth to utter some sage sophomoric advice to the shooter I was stung, or so I thought, by a bee right between my beady little eyes. What had actually happened was a that a round came through the top of a sand bag, struck the 2X4 upright of the target frames, and ricocheted back and down at a sharp angle. It passed under the brim of my hat and smacked me right between the running lights!

The spent 173 grain bullet broke the skin, caused a drop or two of blood to be spilled, cauterized the wound and then formed a blister about the size of a dime right behind the nose piece of my glasses. It also instantly made me a folk hero. I was the only man to be hit between the eyes at 1002 yards by a National Match bullet and live to tell the tale.

Since that time I have listened to many people tell the tale of how they were in the pits the day the guy got shot between eyes. Everyone who tells the tale was an eyewitness to the event as they were pulling on adjacent targets. My brother and I have tallied the number of different people who have told the story and now reckon that there were about 12,800, people (some still unborn in 1976) present. I take pride in knowing that I am personally responsible for one of the largest turnouts at long range. With 12,800 folks in the pits there must have been a like amount on the line making the total near 25,600 shooters!

I don’t know how I managed to find the bent bullet. I was scrounging around amid the thousands of shuffling feet and clouds of dust and only managed to spot the deformed copper clad chunk of steel because a tiny stray shaft of sunlight glinted off of it. Before my fingers were ground to a pulp by the feet of the milling throng I managed to snatch it up from the weathered gray splintered wood that is the Camp Perry pit catwalk. For years I carried it in my pocket as a good luck piece. It now rests in a Lucite block on my desk as a reminder of the most crowded long-range match in recent history.