You can stumble or you can soar, it is up to you…

by Hap Rocketto

It has happened to all of us. Some unforeseen event occurs at a match that causes us to either meet the dark angels of our shooting soul or presents a stumbling block over which we soar. For some it might be the very first rain squall that comes rolling in from 12 o’clock, darkening the sky and drenching the shooter. For another is might be a brace of Bald Eagles landing somewhere forward the firing line at Camp Perry or an wayward fisherman trolling for Lake Erie walleye drifting into the impact area on a day when humidity and temperature hover around 90. It might be showing up at a match without a sling or a spotting scope.

How we deal with problems can make or break a match. Having dealt with all of the above issues, some more successfully than others, during my shooting career I am always amazed at the new ways shooters find to erect roadblocks to success and then overcome them.

All of this was brought to my mind after an incident at the NRA Conventional Sectional fired at Smithfield, Rhode Island. After firing a 200-20X in the prone match Erik Hoskins was preparing for the standing stage when his rifle cart wheeled off of the bench and crashed to the ground. There was no one to blame but himself for he was the one who placed the rifle on the narrow bench leaving it unattended and at the unforgiving nature of the force of gravity. For many a good reason, safety first among them, rifles should never be propped up against a wall or the left balanced on a shelf. They should be laid flat, or standing on a bipod, because it is virtually impossible for a rifle to fall off of the ground.

The rifle had no visible damage. However, past experience has taught him that it only takes the tiniest nudge on a scope to make a dramatic change in zero. The situation did not allow him to check out the scope by firing it before the standing match began. Hoping for the best, but prepared for the worst, he carefully squeezed off his first standing sighter. A hole blossomed in the white at one o’clock just off of bull number six. Hoskins then cranked on what he thought was the appropriate sight correction and again fired at the sighter only to see another hole in the white. After more windage was added he was in the sighter and zeroed in.

Not thinking too clearly, understandably under the circumstances, he should have gone to his other target and fired his second sighter there because NRA Smallbore Rule 9.2.1(a) dictated that the second errant sighter on the card had to be counted as his first record shot-a miss. His next ten shots were eight center tens and two nines. He backed that up with a 98 on target two. Dealt a near fatal blow on his first standing shot he took it in stride and went on to go nearly clean for the rest of the day. Unfortunately he had inadvertently shot 11 record shots on the first target and had to take the low ten shots plus a penalty point for a score of 87. He ended that day with a 783, which might well have been a 794, which took the silver medal on a tie breaker. Hoskins had kept most of his wits about him. If he had kept all of them he wouldn’t have fired 11 shots. Still, under the circumstances, it was a performance worthy of note.

One of the great tales of dealing with an adverse situation centers about Jack Spurling, one of two brothers from the Tennessee National Guard Team and The National Guard Marksmanship Training Unit of the 1960s through 80s. The long, lanky, slow talking Jack had a dry wit, a sharp eye, and a toothpick inevitably tucked into the corner of his mouth. His brother, Jim, was built the same way. He had bit less hair but he was more talkative and was no less the fine gentleman and rifleman.

One day, in a team match, Jack had his moment when circumstances turned against him. In the days of the M14 the accepted practice, when securing the M1907 leather sling, was to take the claw hook on the end nearest to the lower sling swivel, turn it back, and hook it through the closest pair of holes. Some hooked it around the swivel and others looped it about itself so the sling could run free. Spurling used the latter method.

Jack had worked his way through the prep period for a string of 300 rapid prone. At the command, “Shooters rise!” he stood up, mentally marked where his elbows were going to be placed, set his feet, and assumed a somewhat forward crouched position that would allow him to get into a good solid position as soon as the targets cleared the berm.

The command to load was given, the flag went up, waved, went down, and the targets popped up. Jack uncoiled into position, grabbed the stock of his rifle and forced the butt into his shoulder. He was startled to feel his right leg being pulled up. In response he straightened it out only to have the rifle squirt backwards through his hands until he was holding it by the handguard, with the muzzle of the loaded rifle uncomfortably close to his head. Unbeknownst to Jack the sling hook had caught the lace of his right boot when he crouched over.

Startled, but under control, he jammed the rifle back into his shoulder a second time, pulling his knee nearly into his armpit. In that awkward position he fired his first two shots, managed the reload, and finished the string with a score in the high 90s.

No circus contortionist ever pulled off a stunt equaling Jack’s quick thinking, limber legged, and loaded rifle exploit.

Like the eagles that occasionally cause a cease fire at Perry, Jack and Erik ended up soaring above the rest as they hurdled their particular stumbling blocks.

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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