by Hap Rocketto
Much of the world unfortunately, and incorrectly, views shooters in a less than a favorable stereotypical light. Popular culture and political correctness paint an image of criminals, and knuckle dragging, tobacco chewing, illiterate troglodytes armed to the teeth with guns while holding decent society hostage to their depraved lawlessness. While I will be the first to admit that that such behavior does exist I am the first to say that it is overplayed in the tabloid press far out of proportion to its actual occurrence.
I have found in my nearly half century of shooting that, quite to the contrary, almost everyone I have met has been law abiding and hard working. Shooters run the gamut from blue collar to military to white collar citizens who pay their taxes, belong to civic organizations, and seldom see a police officer in a professional capacity for more than a speeding violation.
Many shooters have risen to the top of their professions. I know of at least two judges, Jim Hinkle and Bob Lynn, a brace of Geology Ph.ds, the late George Stephens and Ginger McLemore, a gaggle of teachers, a few doctors and lawyers, and none of them stand on protocol. Each are just another one of the many sweatshirt clad folks you meet in the ready area or in the pits pulling targets with you. As a matter of fact if it were not for the conversations in those two areas you would never know if the person sharing the point with you was a butcher, baker, or candle stick maker.
A case in point was the time I was squadded with a man who seemed no stranger to hard work. He was well built, had a deep tan, his well calloused hand gave a firm handshake, and was well spoken. I would have taken him for a farmer or ranch foreman but it turned out that he was an archaeologist. I have shot with a member of the brass section of the Metropolitan Opera Company, more military men than I can remember, a furrier, a man who put lug nuts on cars in an auto factory, a railroad engineer, a bank president, and a few other’s who jobs might have qualified to be featured on Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs television program, but this was my first archeologist.
During the course of the week of shooting we did a lot of talking and I listened closely because his was a field in which I am interested. I had minored in Physical Anthropology while studying for my undergraduate degree and there is a strong relationship between the two fields. I had read a good deal about archeology and some of is more prominent figures intrigued me. Howard Carter, who made a “tiny breach in the top left hand corner” of a doorway in an ancient Egyptian tomb, revealing the riches of tomb of Tutankhamen to the world came to mind. Yigael Yadin the Israeli archeologist, politician, and the second Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces who did seminal work on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Speaking of the Middle East could one ignore Britain’s Gertrude Bell who studied Anatolian and Mesopotamian ruins. Bell, along with another British archeologist Thomas Edward Lawrence, better known as “Lawrence of Arabia,” helped to create the Hashemite dynasty in Jordan as well as Iraq. We talked of one of my favorite archeologists because, like me, Hiram Bingham lived in Connecticut, was a pilot, and a member of the Connecticut National Guard. As a Yale professor Bingham rediscovered Peru’s most treasured historical site, Machu Picchu, in 1911.
At the mention of Bingham my new friend told me of an archeological find of his own that, in some ways, rivaled Bingham’s, but was yet unpublished. He had missed Perry the previous year because he had spent the entire dry season deep in the equatorial rain forest of the Amazon Basin. He had been leading an expedition investigating a small but unusual overgrown clearing that had been spotted by satellite photography.
After weeks of travel by foot and dugout the party reached the remote site, established a camp, and commenced clearing the choking undergrowth that now clogged the once open space. As the centuries of creepers and vines were removed excitement mounted. The clearing measured out to be about 500 yards wide with a very low raised mound running its breadth close the verge of the forest. Fifty yards north and perpendicular to the mound was a series of some 100 sets of holes about 18 inches apart placed at about five foot intervals, another line of similar holes was placed 14 feet behind that line and at 100 yards was a similar row. A large earthen embankment had been raised behind the last set of holes and behind that the forest grew thickly. It had to be a smallbore rifle range! The discovery of a nearby stone slab engraved with depictions of human figures using primitive representations of firearms removed all doubt.
The archeological party then began to quiz the indigenous tribesmen about any folklore that might be associated with the prehistoric rifle range. Luck was with them as the tribe did have a strong oral tradition. One chronicle described how once each Moon the Ancient Ones followed a two day ritual celebrating the weekly days of rest by throwing themselves prostrate and worshipping the gods with “Blowpipes of Thunder.”
My friend was recording an interview between a wrinkled gray haired elder and an interpreter. Wanting to know how the sport had managed to vanish for centuries before rediscovery he implored the interpreter to “Please ask him if he knows why the Ancient Ones gave up the ritual of the “Blowpipes of Thunder”
The interpreter turned to the old man and repeated the query. The elder made a sweeping gesture at the jungle with his arm while giving my new friend a look to tell him he was dim, and replied tersely. “Simple,” was the translation, “they couldn`t get any good lots of ammunition.”
