by Hap Rocketto
Shooting range safety is serious stuff. All good ranges have safety procedures and mechanisms in place to prevent interlopers from crossing the firing line when the range is hot. In some places it is a simple hinged sign that drops down to warn all that there is shooting taking place, as if the rattle of gun fire isn’t enough warning. Other ranges place a red flag down range to signal that the line is closed for target changes. Flashing lights and intermittent klaxons are also a favored safety measure. There are clubs where a range officer must be present anytime shooting is taking place.
Blue Trail Range, Connecticut’s largest commercial shooting facility, has probably the most elaborate system I have ever seen. The entire range is surrounded by a tall wire mesh fence while a second interior fence encloses the actual shooting grounds. After checking in at the main office one is issued a magnetic swipe card in order to pass through the firing line gate, held shut by a magnet so powerful as to threaten to pull the fillings right out of your teeth and to make it a danger to your wristwatch as you pass through. Once inside there are range officers patrolling on foot while another sits in a glass walled shanty where he supervises his subordinates while he scans a bank of television monitors hooked up to strategically placed surveillance cameras. Target changes are announced by both public address system announcements and horn blasts as clear instructions are issued by the range staff for going down range. In addition there are towering berms behind the target butts as well as baffles to prevent muzzles from being raised high enough to aim over the berms. I have shot at a lot of places, from sandpit to Perry, and it is one of the tightest controlled ranges on which I have ever competed.
That being said, as well controlled as a range may be, anyone who has shot for any appreciable length of time has been subjected to cessations of fire for any number of reasons involving someone or thing down range. If a fellow member absentmindedly wanders down range during a Saturday morning plinking session at the club he will be well rounded upon by his compatriots for not being aware of his surroundings and inconveniencing his fellow club members. At a serious match the reaction of the line and officials may be a little less charitable.
Having more than a few years of shooting under my ample belt, I have been subjected to more than one unusual cessation of fire. Boats in the impact area at Camp Perry are annoying and they may be the most common source of cessation of fire there, right ahead of the vicious thunder and lightning storms that whip through Ottawa County in the summer, or the occasional eagle nesting and feeding down range. I am not much worried about hitting a boater but the United States Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act scares me. An eagle, dead at your hands, can cost you a $100,000 and a year in the slammer. With my luck it would be one of my errant foulers, pun intended, that they would be pulled out of the carcass and my days on the range would be a memory. I’ll stop shooting for an eagle because they don’t know better. However, boaters and jet skis are a different matter all together.
What I am talking about is really unusual reason to cease fire. Like the time an old gent dropped dead next to me at a highpower match-which led to no end of grumbling from the impatient pit crew who were miffed at being stuck in the pits doing nothing and had no idea of the drama that was happening 200 yards away, or when the beer delivery guy swung open a downrange door in the basement of a local rifle range in the middle of a match and proceeded to roll in a keg right in front of the targets because that is where he always delivered the suds, or even the railway cars transiting the range at O’Hare’s in Maplewood, New Jersey that required the belly shooters to stop shooting.
Perhaps the most unusual cessation might be caused by an Army pilot who elected to do touch and go landings at Camp Perry in the late summer of 1924. That, in itself, was no problem as Camp Perry was listed as an auxiliary airfield on the air navigation charts of the day. The real problem was that he elected to do it was right in the middle of the 1,000 yard stage of the National Trophy Rifle Team Match for the “Dogs of War” trophy.
The line was filled by teams of pair firing competitors shooting for the premier service rifle team trophy. A large gallery had crowded in behind the firing line and was treated to more than they expected, an unscheduled air show. The gusty six o’clock wind was not much of an impediment to the rifleman but it meant that the aviator had to crab into the wind as he made his final approach and then straighten out just as he touched down to avoid ground looping. As a matter of fact a little cross wind practice on a large forgiving sod field might have been just what he was after.
The riflemen were methodically shooting as he touched down on one end of the line, and the cry of “Cease Fire!” quickly burst from sundry lips. The plane rolled out, took off and made two more touch and goes, causing a long cessation, much to the disgust of the shooters. This was in the days before aircraft radios so there was no way to contact the endangered pilot. Reports in the American Rifleman stated that this was the fifth consecutive year that the match was delayed by the Air Service’s close attention to the chart and lack of respect for .30-06 rifle fire. Ignorance certainly was bliss.
